Susan Kulkarni is an award-winning Anglo-Indian Costume Designer based in London. She studied English at Somerville College, Oxford, and Costume Design at RADA, and has spent over two decades working across theatre, film, television, immersive entertainment, and global live events.
Her design credits include Come Alive! The Greatest Showman (London, and Sydney); Disney’s flagship show Rememberfor the brand new‘Adventure’ Disney Cruise Liner; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Riverside Studios); Elvis Evolution (Layered Reality); Fame Factory (Done+Dusted); Indigo (Curve, Leicester); We Belong Together (Disneyland Paris); and East is East (National Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, Birmingham Rep). Additional credits include Steel Magnolias (UK Tour); Herding Cats (Soho Theatre); United Queendom (Kensington Palace); Detroit, More Light and Prince of Denmark (National Theatre/West End); and The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute (Central City Opera, Colorado).
Her large-scale and stadium work includes the Opening Ceremony of the Valorant Games (Done+Dusted, Paris); MIAMI the Band (Kuwait and Saudi Arabia); UAE National Day 48 (Abu Dhabi); and the Closing Ceremony of the Islamic Solidarity Games (Baku), creating costumes for over 2,000 performers for international broadcast.
Screen design work includes Ricky Gervais’s 7 Minutes (BBC), Count Abdulla (ITV), Mrs Dickens’s Family Christmas(BBC), Big Ballet (Channel 4), and films for English National Ballet. She was Assistant Costume Designer on Silence(dir. Martin Scorsese) and The Peripheral (Amazon), and part of the costume team on Downton Abbey, Wolf Hall, The Huntsman, and Spy.
She is the long-standing Head of Costume for Secret Cinema, designing productions including Bridgerton, Stranger Things, Bond, Dirty Dancing, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Grease: The Movie Musical.