You Have No Idea

We had some kids and their mothers from a private school in yesterday, to get costumes for their end-of-year show.

Some of them seemed a bit strange and out of touch with reality.

Frinstance, I asked one of the girls about her character, trying to get a picture of what was needed. The girl said the character was "a ho." I thought, that must be an odd play for the Christian private school to be doing! So I asked her to elaborate, and she told me that the character "flirts with all the boys."

There is rather a wide gulf of behaviour between a "flirt" and a "ho," don't you think? Apparently not in her mind.

So, I'm working away on (heh) "Whorehouse," while Ramona is taking care of the school show. Two of the mommies are around the corner, where they have forgotten I am in earshot. One of them is looking at all the immense (six figure) inventory, and says, "They must spend a lot of time going to garage sales!"

That was too much for me. I stuck my head around the corner and said, "We don't have time to go to garage sales!" She then responded with, "Well then, somebody did, or else, where do you get your stuff?"

I did not like the implication that our stock is just a bunch of used clothes, so I told her that Ramona built about a third of it, and then bought two inventories from costume shops that were going out of business, and that we build from scratch when necessary, and adapt, and use vintage stuff as well.

Ramona is constantly telling me that people have no idea what we do. I know she's right.

Of course, people see their show as being the only show. They come in, and see us working away with no other customers in there, and think that they are the only business we have.

The lady also told Ramona, "I'll bet you're busy around Halloween!"

Well, that's true. We are. Still, we are steadily busy all year round. In fact, if we are only working on a single show, it's like a week in the country! Usually we are working on at least three, and sometimes up to five or six at a time.

I get irate with people who return things late, in fact, I blistered a couple of people last week. Their stuff was due on April 5th, and Ramona called them on the 29th to ask them when they were bringing it back.

They seem to think we use the costume exclusively for them, and that it's OK to just keep it until they come to get their stuff for the next show, never thinking for a moment that we might need it for another show in the meantime. I had to explain that we lost money because we didn't have it to rent out in that almost month that they kept it past the return date.

The have no idea.

We are not a used clothing warehouse. We don't have time to go to garage sales. Even if we did, the acquisition ratio would be about one item per 100 garage sales, and nobody has time for that! We do take donations of vintage stuff, but we probably don't want to buy your grandmother's hats.

People seem to think that we just pull stuff off a rack and rent it. When we are lucky, we do that. However, most of the time, things have to be re-sized, redecorated, rebuilt. We restyle 80s dresses so they look like 20s dresses. We remake prom dresses for the "Whorehouse" number in which all the girls whisk off their dresses. Doing that has been a three day project for me. You can't pull tear-away evening dresses off a rack!

People have no idea!