What Lives in a Costume Store

What Lives in a Costume Store

A small company's costume store is not a wardrobe. It is a working archive of every season the company has staged, sorted by the people who have to find one jacket at nine at night. This feature looks at how garments are labelled, altered, stored and brought back for another run, and at the question the racks answer slowly: what actually lives in a theatre's costume store?

Nothing in a store is neutral. Every coat on a rail was chosen for a part, cut for a body, and kept because someone decided it would earn its second life. The New York Public Library's digital collection on costume stock and storage shows how far back that instinct runs: costumes were preserved, catalogued and reissued long before any regional company could afford a dedicated room. The practice is old. The reasons are practical.

Where a Production Actually Is First Read

Before a director can cast, before a designer can sketch, someone has to know what the company already owns. That is the quiet work a store performs at the start of a season. When a script arrives, the wardrobe lead reads it the way a producer reads a budget: which characters can be dressed from stock, which need building, which need hiring. It is a form of casting done in a cupboard, and it shapes the show as much as the audition does. The point where a script meets the rack is often where a production's real limits, and its real look, are first set. A play that needs six period coats can be staged for almost nothing. A play that needs one impossible dress can consume a whole season's cloth budget. You can see how those early decisions get made in the account of how Actually Is First Read at a company that runs on what it already owns.

How a Garment Gets Its Name

Labelling is the first discipline and the one most often done badly. A garment without a label is a garment you will never find again. Companies tend to mark the inside of a collar, a waistband or a hem, in a place that will not show when the piece is worn on stage. The label carries what the wardrobe team needs to retrieve the piece: the production it came from, the character it was worn by, and the size or the body it was cut to.

The wording matters less than the habit. A name written in permanent marker on a hem survives washing better than a sticker, and a sticker survives better than nothing. The mistake every small store makes once is labelling by actor rather than by role: the actor leaves, the role stays, and the next season's wardrobe lead is left holding a coat labelled with a name nobody recognises.

Why Does Everything Get Altered?

Almost nothing in a store fits anyone as bought. A jacket from a rack was cut for an average, and a company stages people, not averages. So the store is also a sewing room, and the question of who does what in it is never settled for long.

The rule a store learns to protect itself is reversibility. A hem taken up is stitched so it can be let down again. A waist taken in is pinned and basted before it is sewn, because the next wearer may be larger. Where a piece is too valuable to cut, the alteration is done with a temporary tuck or a hidden pin that the actor is warned about. And when a garment is cut for good, the offcut is kept with it, so a future hand can put back what a past one removed. You can follow who does what in a company, from the wardrobe lead to the dresser to the stage manager, in the guide to Who Does What in a production team.

How Is a Store Kept Usable?

Storage is a set of small cruelties against entropy. Daylight bleaches fabric, damp breeds mould, and heat cracks leather, so a store is kept dark, dry and cool where the building allows it. Garments go on padded hangers where shoulders would otherwise stretch, or folded in acid-free tissue where hanging would pull a hem out of shape. Shoes keep their shape on trees, hats rest on blocks or in boxes, and anything with feathers, fur or elaborate beading is wrapped rather than hung.

Dirt is the enemy that arrives quietly. A costume worn for a run collects sweat, makeup and stage dust, and a piece put away unwashed will be found rotten a year later. So the last act of any production is not the strike, it is the laundry: everything clean, everything labelled, everything returned to its place before the store closes. A store that skips that week pays for it in the next one.

What Comes Back for Another Season?

Not everything does, and the store is honest about it. A piece returns when it still reads as what it was: a plain Victorian waistcoat works for any number of plays, while a dress built for one unmistakable scene is dead once that show closes. Period and neutral garments earn their space. So do uniforms and workwear, which can be rented out or pulled for a different war entirely. If the answer is no, the company faces the choice every small wardrobe faces: keep it, lend it, sell it or cut it up for fabric. Keeping too much is its own failure, because a store so full that nothing can be found is a store that has stopped working.

What the store keeps coming backWhat rarely returns Plain period waistcoats and shirtsDresses built for one scene Neutral suits and coatsGarments cut to a single body Uniforms and workwearAnything stained or unlabelled Untouched offcuts kept with a cut piecePieces grown too fragile to wear

The Second Life of a Coat

The theatre that inspired the web is the theatre that was rebuilt, and the costume store lives by the same logic. When a piece comes back for another season, it carries the last season with it. The label inside a collar tells a wardrobe lead not just what the coat is, but what it once did. That is the pleasure of working from stock, and the reason small companies guard their racks so carefully: every garment is a decision made years ago that has just come due again.

What lives in a costume store, in the end, is a company's memory of every problem it solved cheaply. The next question is the one every wardrobe lead asks in the week before a build: not what the store has, but what this coat can become.

About the New York Public Library costume collection

The New York Public Library's digital collections include a costume collection documenting historical dress, theatrical costume, and the practice of costume stock and storage. It brings together digitised images and records of garments and designs held by the library. It is a research resource for anyone tracing how costumes were made, worn, catalogued and kept.