Welcome to a fun summer week, if you haven’t checked out the winners of this summer’s Olympic Fashion Week Shows, Dolce and Gabbana has our vote. This week we’re talking about the King of Style book and talent stylists using specialty fashion shops to snag custom deals for clients. It feels like a good topic as Horizon landed a deal for Netflix to produce all 4 parts which feels like an industry win for everyone. Good on Kevin Costner and Netflix. Getting tickets to see it in Raleigh was incredibly difficult as it only played in niche arthouse theaters, probably as marketing for winning the Oscars, so thanks streaming. My 70 year old mother was bummed. We’re holding out hope that he’ll get the funding to do all the way through the US Civil War to the Mexican-US War so we can all get our Mark Wahlburg moment as a Jesuit priest with a cameo in parts 2 and 3 to do a great character reveal in part 4 over Texas, but we’re not screenwriters and Costner is really good. Catholic bestseller books in the Americas are many, but a Jesuit Catholic priest playing a Baptist/Protestant small town preacher undercover in the 1800s? Gold. Carter and Nicaragua in the 70s? Conclave trailer getting 8 million in under a week? Moving on.
We’re seeing a huge up-tick in Greek and Roman style beading and 1600s Baroque handwork. Every major Western fashion culture for the past 2,000+ years from Western Cowboys to French Courts to Italian Popes falls in love with the classics, but it’s fitting the Italians are owning the moment. Which brings us back to today’s topic: window displays. For thousands of years, artisan window displays in shop fronts showed off the latest fashion trends. The wow costumes most clients see in today’s windows are often one-offs dealer’s specials installed each Tuesday. If you find a smaller shop that’s doing this in your neighborhood and you are a size 4 or smaller, you can often get away with getting the master samples for a fraction of normal in larger cities. It’s often the owner or owner’s friend who is supplying the looks. Or they can add bling and trim. The King of Style book which talks about the nuts and bolts of taking ready-to-wear garments off the rack or ordering special from small niche stores and creating stage costumes is one of a handful of books every performing musician or artist should read for their own career. If you don’t have $30-50 to buy a copy, there’s YouTube videos.
Store displays are generally $400-600 for small jobs or a window and $1700-1900+ for a large job which you can mix and match on if you need wow costumes for runways or live tours. Find clothing that fits you well and you look good in, then add the bling. A great custom jacket beats almost everything else. Accessories are a musican's friend. Rhinestones twinkle under stage lights. Or get the buttons switched out for whopper poppers to help with costume changes. The cheapest time to get bling upgrades and costume changes is after the Christmas holidays in January where you can typically get them to bill by the hour. Florida bills at $30-60/hour before taxes or again $700-900/week. Costume technicians are NOT getting rich, please tip them. If you’re a young musician or performer, spending a year picking up cool accessories, jackets, accessories, and dresses during the year from small shops in your travels then taking a few hundred or thousand dollars in January to have all your band alterations done during the off-season can save you all a bunch of money. If you can't wait til January, the other slower time period is summers. Or hit up a small regional theater in your area to hem jackets, pants, and add beads. We hope this is helpful for pricing and we are offering a $100/class on the topic this fall if you want to do band or theater troop alterations and are on a budget. Have a great week.