An Inside Look at the Spectacular Costumes on Display at the Showstoppers! Exhibition

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

As Broadway gets ready to open up, I'm in the heart of Times Square to bring you a sneak peek at the brand new interactive exhibition called

Showstoppers, Spectacular Costumes from Stage and Screen, which will benefit the Costume Industries Coalition Industry Fund

I'm the business manager at John Christensen, New York, one of the costume shops in the city

John is also my life partner. And in the wake of the pandemic, we were sitting around wondering what we were going to do

And May of 2020, when the timeline kept stretching, we knew that we would have to stand up and

make some noise because we're sort of a forgotten industry. And as we were watching other people shut their offices, we knew we couldn't

Our mini shops that are in and around the city couldn't simply shut down to reopen when Broadway was ready to come back

So we started the coalition to advocate for our collective survival. So we now have 55 member shops in and around the city that create, supply, and care for the costumes for Broadway, television, film, dance, opera, everything

We represent over 500 specialty artisans and costuming experts. and we been fundraising just to keep afloat We lost million in gross revenue in 2020 and we millions of dollars in debt because we have all the back rent to pay So this exhibition is really not only a

chance to raise some funds, it's to show off a little bit of what we do, but also how we do it

Tonight you'll see some people on the floor actually working. We have a full shop actually

set up. They're over there working their patterning and their stitching. I've got an embroiderer here

tonight. I'm going to have a knitter on hand and our milliner is working. So there are quite a few

people tonight that are going to be on hand for you to see what they do. The government has done

what they can with the Save Our Stages, which is great for the stages, but ultimately we realized

we had to sort of motivate ourselves to raise some funds. So we partnered with a not-for-profit

501c3, called the Artisans Guild of America. Their mission is to perpetuate the American

tradition of the artisan workroom. That's what we are. So with that, we were able to raise funds

We've raised over half a million dollars so far for our recovery fund, doing all sorts of things

We've had a couple of angels come in, which has been amazing. We did a pattern project with Paul

Tazewell, Hamilton's designer. He did a pattern that we actually have sold online. We sold it on

Etsy. We sold over 3,000 patterns. We've raised over $60,000 for our fund in patterns. And I have

little secret because I can't really, it's announced. I think it's announced. We have another pattern coming and it's actually on the floor. Yeah

I'm going to let you go find it. I'm not going to tell you about it. What were these past 15 months like for you

I mean with the shop and just trying not knowing anything none of us knew anything starting out Can you put the last 15 months into perspective Devastating Really really hard

As soon as the pandemic hit, I downsized. So I have a much smaller staff than I did, but that meant it was me for months on end

And downsizing meant scaling down the shop itself. It meant I rented out half the way, half the shop

There's somebody else in that. They're wig makers. They're stuck in London because there's no work here yet

Everybody in the industry has really struggled to try to figure out how to make their way through this

Fortunately, we do some TV and film work. So picking up on that was able to carry us through the summer months

And now theater is picking up again and hopefully will continue. This exhibit is a way to open up the sort of spectacle of show business

and open up the spectacle of costume making and give people an insight into the fantastic community

that makes these things and works always behind the scenes and kind of bring them out of the shadows

What went through your mind right away of how you thought it was all going to lay out? Well, we came down here and looked in this space

still had a lot of retail fixtures piled in the corner and stuff, and I thought, well, we've got some work to do

But what we really wanted to do was bring the makers and the finished costumes into juxtaposition

And originally, we thought we'd sort of do a ring of the shows

and put the makers in the middle and then we look at it It not very interesting So we began to create this kind of maze where you get a little bit of front of house a little bit of back of house and begin to have a kind of interplay and a conversation

And it's been exciting to develop. What do you hope people walk away with after they come to this gorgeous exhibit

a bigger and better appreciation of what it is and what it takes to get something on stage

A lot of people think that when they think of costumes, they think Halloween or something

We do couture work. Every single thing we make is done by hand. It's done for an individual body, an individual person

It is constructed in a way that will last eight shows a week, 365 weeks a year

People don't understand that, yeah, that's one costume, and it has to last that long

So it's not just us, it's the wardrobe people who maintain it. There's a whole ecosystem of community that really make this happen

Now, if somebody wants to donate to the fund, where do they go? They can go to our website. It's thecostumeindustrycoalition.com

There's a little donate button there, and it goes right to our GoFundMe charity page

where you can make a tax-deductible donation. It's like all the Broadway shows and every show in here is having a little conversation with each other

And that's a kind of lovely thing to make