Suiting Up

My theatrical aspirations have never gone beyond the role of the grandmother in Tobacco Road, who moans so loud and so long onstage in her deplorable garments. But when I was introduced to the wonderful world of the Brooks-Van Horn Costume Company, the desire to become somebody else via a set of clothes became powerful indeed, though as yet unfulfilled. However, we shall see.

Brooks-Van Horn is the nation’s most famous theatrical costumer and a multi-million-dollar business. The company owns a large building at 117 West 17th Street in New York City in which there are more than 300,000 rental costumes; large work rooms teeming with designers, tailors, and seamstresses working on the next production Brooks-Van Horn is costuming; milliners specializing in regal crowns, dragons’ heads, and Paris frou-frou of the past; a dry-cleaning establishment; a research library; and offices with people going to and fro with costume sketches, odd bits of material, or perhaps an Elizabethan doublet. This is the ultimate fairy-tale world, a Fellini setting come to life.

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Nika Hazelton

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My theatrical aspirations have never gone beyond the role of the grandmother in Tobacco Road, who moans so loud and so long onstage in her deplorable garments. But when I was introduced to the wonderful world of the Brooks-Van Horn Costume Company, the desire to become somebody else via a set of clothes became powerful indeed, though as yet unfulfilled. However, we shall see.

Brooks-Van Horn is the nation’s most famous theatrical costumer and a multi-million-dollar business. The company owns a large building at 117 West 17th Street in New York City in which there are more than 300,000 rental costumes; large work rooms teeming with designers, tailors, and seamstresses working on the next production Brooks-Van Horn is costuming; milliners specializing in regal crowns, dragons’ heads, and Paris frou-frou of the past; a dry-cleaning establishment; a research library; and offices with people going to and fro with costume sketches, odd bits of material, or perhaps an Elizabethan doublet. This is the ultimate fairy-tale world, a Fellini setting come to life.