{"id":258533,"date":"2026-04-09T01:12:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T01:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/258533\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T01:12:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T01:12:18","slug":"the-notebook-costume-designer-brings-san-diego-to-broadway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/258533\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Notebook’ costume designer brings San Diego to Broadway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paloma Young, now a Tony-winning costume designer<\/a> living in New York, is celebrating a full-circle moment as her designs return to the hometown where she got her start.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After receiving a master\u2019s in fine arts in costume design at UC San Diego, Young found jobs at The Old Globe and La Jolla Playhouse until one of those works, \u201cPeter and the Starcatcher,\u201d took her to Broadway \u2013 and won her a Tony.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Paloma Young (Photo courtesy of Broadway San Diego)<\/p>\n

\u201cLa Jolla Playhouse hired me to do the jobs that they couldn\u2019t afford to hire a \u2018fancy\u2019 New York designer to do costume design,\u201d Young said. \u201cAnd then that led to me becoming a \u2018very fancy\u2019 New York designer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now her latest Broadway work, \u201cThe Notebook\u201d musical, has a national tour coming to San Diego April 14.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Young designed the costumes of \u201cThe Notebook\u201d leads, Allie and Noah, to fit both the historic eras they are in, their evolving characters, and also to create the through-line for the audience between the six actors hired to show the characters at different life stages.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to set that up for success with the audience, in terms of being very clear that these are the same person, even though they are not literally the same person. They are three incredible actors who have not been cast necessarily because they look like the same person,\u201d Young explained. \u201cThe costumes can help with that signifier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fitting all the exact historic and character requirements was actually more difficult than in \u201c& Juliet,\u201d which was the last time San Diego<\/a> saw Young\u2019s work. That pop-infused Shakespearean epilogue had more leeway with the audience since the playful, fusion costumes never aimed to be historically accurate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For \u201cThe Notebook,\u201d she built outfits that include jeans familiar to audiences, which notice if it hangs wrong. That makes engineering the technical aspects, like hiding mics, harder. Plus, the costumes need to be taken off quickly, including in sexy scenes on stage, while not tripping up the actors or taking the audience out of the moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are all these things that need to be secretly happening from an engineering perspective, but you still need to make those clothes feel real,\u201d Young said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Younger Noah (Sketch by Paloma Young)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Older Noah (Sketch by Paloma Young)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Middle Noah (Sketch by Paloma Young)<\/p>\n

Despite the differences in tone between \u201c& Juliet\u201d and \u201cThe Notebook,\u201d Young still approached both designs in the same way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe approach initially is very much the same, and that is understanding the characters and the story that we\u2019re trying to tell, and then also trying to understand what is the conversation that the costumes are having with each other on stage,\u201d Young said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just designing individual pieces of clothing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Young\u2019s San Diego and California roots still inform her storytelling, even after she moved away almost two decades ago. She describes it as a sense of ease and sense of humor she brings into her design style. Growing up in North County, she developed a love of music, art, theater and history that all influence her design approach. While she was never a theater kid, she attended Broadway tours and other productions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad did raise me to have this great appreciation for theater, and there\u2019s just a really rich tradition in San Diego of a vibrant theater scene,\u201d Young said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When she decided to pursue costuming, she visited many East Coast schools, but it was UCSD\u2019s design program<\/a> that interested her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After school, she was first hired on for plays. In the last few years, she\u2019s finally been able to return to her love of music by designing for musicals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cThe Notebook\u201d with all six actors playing Allie and Noah. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni\/Broadway San Diego)<\/p>\n

When approached about \u201cThe Notebook,\u201d it was the music that made her decide to take the job, despite not liking the 2004 film adaptation. She felt that the demo music flowed like water, and she wanted the costumes to emulate that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Young appreciates that the musical does not try to recreate the film but sticks closer to the original Nicholas Sparks book while adding subtle theater storytelling. The one significant departure from both sources was moving the setting up in time, to feel more immediate for audiences, by including a Vietnam War veteran rather than a World War II veteran.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This version has special meaning to her partially because her family cared for her grandmother while she suffered from dementia, something she says the musical depicts accurately.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe film was a love story,\u201d Young said. \u201cThe musical is still a love story, but it is more largely a story about human connection and family.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her own family will be seeing the musical to support her career, but she thinks they, along with San Diego audiences, will connect with the material as a whole.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Notebook\u201d will be in San Diego from April 14 to 19 at the Civic Theatre. Find tickets at broadwaysd.com\/upcoming-events\/the-notebook<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paloma Young, now a Tony-winning costume designer living in New York, is celebrating a full-circle moment as her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[61652,114135,74,76,75,5729,14725],"class_list":{"0":"post-258533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-broadway-san-diego","9":"tag-la-jolla-playhouse","10":"tag-san-diego","11":"tag-san-diego-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego-news","13":"tag-uc-san-diego","14":"tag-ucsd"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}