Costume design in Guyana has been an area in performance which needs some work.  Generally costumes tend to be badly conceptualized, poorly finished, easily damaged and not as aesthetically pleasing at they could be.  Local designers, though talented, have been largely self taught and have had little access to materials which make the mas of Trinidad and Brazil so appealing. According to Godfrey Chin, one of Guyana’s veteran designers whose involvement in costume design in the country pre-dates Guyana’s independence, the country saw two high periods of costume design. The first was in the late 1950-60s and the again in the early 1980’s. He recalls names like John Fernandes, David Lammy, Bernard Ramsay, Andre Sobyran and many other important designers who came to the fore when Mashramani was introduced to Georgetown from Linden by the Jaycees of Linden in the late 1970s’.
In the Theatre, the names of Daphne Rogers, Henry Mutoo, Godfrey Chin and  Cicely Robinson were synonymous with costuming. These among many worked at the Theatre Guild of Guyana which was in the 1960’s the space for Theatrical production .
Together with veteran actors and designers such as John Rawlins and Father Bernard Gardner during that period, huge productions like Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Madame Butterfly were magnificently costumed.
The decline of amateur theatre in the 1990s and the rise of professional theatre in the same period saw also a decline in the care, time and attention paid to supporting theatrical elements in theatrical costume design .
Costume design as a distinct technical discipline in the performing arts was quietly retired with only a few companies making any effort at ensuring proper costuming of productions. Notable among these were Ron Robinson’s Theatre Company and United Performers Theatre.
The need for strengthening costume design in Guyana was noted in the culture capacity audit done by the office of the Artistic Director during Carifesta X held in Guyana during 2008. To try to address this issue in the short term, the Ministry of Culture implemented a Technical Theatre Training Programme  which,  among 15 other technical areas, trained about 100 young people in very basic costume design during March to June, 2010. The costume design element was conducted by Daphne Rogers and Carolyn  Lacaille of Trinidad. This workshop saw magnificent costuming of several workshop productions and parts of the Opening Ceremony of Carifesta X as well as the “ Silk Cotton Tree “ Guyana’s dramatic piece which was Written and Directed by Al Creighton and Barrington Braithwaite.

Following that trend, the Theatre Guild of Guyana held a week long costume design workshop conducted by Damain Moore, a  Guyanese who has been living and working in Trinidad, most recently with the celebrated ART FACTORY of Brian MacFarlane.
Moore, 26, who has academic qualifications in fine arts and design, taught about 27 local designers and members of the performing arts community the finer details of designing for mas and for stage, such as wire bending, cane work, installations, backpacks, cloth designs, mask making, papier design and much more.
The participants were from the National Dance Company, Merundoi, Allied Arts, the National Cultural Centre, The Theatre Guild, Lichas Hall in Linden, Burrows School of Art , and the Fine Arts Department of the University of Guyana, as well as several well known local designers such as Godfrey Chin.  The workshop was co-ordinated by Daphne Rogers , Dr. Paloma Mohamed , Malcolm Defreitas and Desiree Whyles Ogle, who is the training director at the Theatre Guild.