A post on another thread leads me to ask - do you have a personal stock of costumes? And if so, what bits of costume are your favourites? What do you find most useful?

Ian and I have a costume cupboard (a built in cupboard over the stairs in our bedroom) crammed full with stuff. The sort of things we find most useful are:

- a variety of shoes and boots that can vaguely resemble all sorts of periods.
- waistcoats - Ian has a selection of these in various colours often used for cockney-type parts
- various accessories like lacy gloves (cream and black) and different kinds of handbags. Nice gloves are always worth picking up

And now I come to think of it, there's not that much else that we do use THAT regularly. Hmmm, I feel a pruning session coming on....

The loveliest bit of costume we have though is a brand new pop up silk top hat. Gorgeous....

I do indeed. I converted our second loo into a costume store.

Favourite bits? hmmm. i seem to have amassed a large collection of basques and 'stage' underwear over the years.

I have two proper steel boned corsets which i love, wore the white lacy one for calamity when she strips. its fantastic. reduces my waist by about 9 inches and gives me perfect posture (nightmare to sing in tho) I also love the dress i had made for me for jejyll and hyde.

Most usefull stuff, like yourself all the stuff that can suit loads of things, gloves, boots, accessories etc etc etc

of course some sort of sytem would help . . .

Have a few "Stage" shirts and trousers but that's about it.

I'd love to open up a Photograph Studio though and have loads of
costumes about for people to dress up in.... Cowboy stuff etc...

Would be a good laugh...

we should go into business - you take the photos i'll do the costumes, i have loads of stuff that would be suitable for that sort of thing . . .

We've got a variety of stuff in our attic.

Lots of fancy dress stuff - Halloween, 60s etc

quite a few wigs

some old suits and RAF uniforms

oooh, wigs, i forgot about them. got about 60 ish at last count . . .

I thought that as your real hair....

Geeese...

Hope you're taking this stuff down with you when
you come to get your photographs taken....

You cant see them, but im making obscene gestures at you . . .

hehe I have a mental picture of PamelaJ in her corset and Geroge taking the pictures ... You'd both make a fortune ... my brothers Internet site would probably be interested !

Yeah...

I thought Pamela didn't mean just "supplying" the costumes.....

LOL

A wardrobe in my spare bedroom ( well I seem to remember putting a bed in there once. Can't find It at the moment) Its get a couple of suits and some jackets

I seem to have a collection of gloves building ... no matter how many colours and lengths I have them in i always seem to need a colour or style I don't already have ... i think that's called disallowed word's law.

gloves breed, am sure of it. . .

But strangely - having bred, gloves lose their partners until the moment you throw the odd one away and then the second one materialises from nowhere.

I am a costume squirrel and have a loft plus a spare bedroom with huge built in wardrobe, plus acres and acres of fabric, plus literally hundreds of meters of trimmings I bought cheap.

Most used items - a set of sparkly skirts that I've added to and can fit a chorus out with, plus a set of black and white shifts I bought/made for the frug in Swet Charity. I almost threw away the rags after we did Les Mis, but they were then borrowed by another school, and then we used them again for winkies in "the Wiz". Many of them were made from old curtans that had been up so long they were virtually rotten - you know, I bet you could build the idea of costumes from curtains into a musical. Say you set it in the alps.............

I used to have loads of bits and pieces, but I've now donated them all to a very good home - that of my usual wardrobe mistress. I had original 20's dresses (beaded and knitted), lacy gloves, harem pants, nigerian ceremonial dress, leather mini dress, inflatable football helmets, and all sorts of things.

But Kris can make far better use of these now, and I can borrow them back whenever I want. I get quite a thrill out of seeing some of my favourites on stage in different shows, as she is the wardrobe mistress for several local groups as well as having a good hiring business.

Mind you, I still can't part with my purple glitter platform boots from "Saucy Jack"......

I do sometimes wonder whether we could get misunderstood as wardrobe mistresses. I one ordered on the internet a rubber flying helmet and 12 pairs of green fluorescent fishnet tights (for Honk! in case you were wondering, honest constable) Oh the power of making people dress according to one's whims.

LOL

*pamela runs to find the nearest course on wardrobe*

I do wardrobe for school and youth theatres and suspect I've scarred some of the little perishers, I mean young actors, for life. Still it's a great way of getting your own back - do it again and I'll make you wear lurex tights. Unless you want to wear lurex tights of course, and then I won't let you!

This is a sore point at the moment as about half our group's costumes are stored in my attic. Well, all over it, really.
Most useful items, as other people have said, tend to be very basic skirts, tops etc, which can be "tweaked" into the right look for various periods; and the accessories to make them look right - hats, gloves, shoes etc. I swear I has a great collection of gloves at one time, but I'm very short of pairs now!
Indeed, I should be working on the latest lot of tweaking even now......time I went!

Another key item is of course the slappers' fur jacket. Appears in most farces....

Yes, I must make them give mine back to me. It's cold out of a night, you know.

Well I have a Costume cupboard, a props cupboard, a lighting cupboard, a technical cupboard, a script cupboard and a? and a! and on and on! One day I will get a cupboard just for me!
[& then I'l have to settle for just a coffin!]

One day... I want a double garage FULL of stuff....

Stuff stuff and more stuff....

The most important item is, of course, the full length heavy-duty leather trench coat. Can anyone manage without one?

Our Herr Flick wore one (of course) in 'Allo 'Allo. He wore it over a full German uniform. In JUNE in a theatre with NO AIR CONDITIONING...

Poor Douglas who played Saucy Jack wore leather trousers, waistcoat and the full length coat all night every night for 2 weeks - the nights he wasn't on stage he sat in the audience in costume. He lost pounds and pounds that week. Then he bought the coat from wardrobe so that he can wear it everywhere.

Mind you, Rosie did too I think, as she was all in leather. Costumes actually had to be reduced part-way through the run because of the risk of people collapsing!