Article

Dressing Up

November 1978
Article
Dressing Up
November 1978

At 9:00 a.m., on a rainy Saturday a few weeks before Halloween, people started to gather in the bowels of Hopkins Center, following the signs leading to a set of double doors marked "CLOSED!" By 9:45, the line was backed up to the stairwell. (By 11:00, it would reach all the way back up the stairs and around several corners.) Students, faculty, people from the community, and anxious children stood or sat along the corridors jealously guarding places in line. At 10:00 on the dot, the doors were thrown open by an alligator, who waved the crowd in. In seconds the room was jammed with people pawing through racks and racks of clothing put on sale by the Hop's costume shop.

It was Filene's Basement cubed. The mob bobbed and surged as people ducked under each other trying to find their heart's desires, and arms and legs flapped madly as they struggled into strange garments. Over shrieks of laughter, people yelled at their friends: "Here - try this !" "Hey - what's a 'farthingale'?" This is a little small — but I want it anyway!" "That's not a cape - that's a bathroom rug!"

Before the mirrored east wall of the room, a little girl of seven tried on a towering 18th-century wig and a burly student peered over his shoulder as he flapped a huge pair of red gauze wings up and down. A middle-aged woman preened herself in a medieval robe - a brocaded "Houpeland" with trailing sleeves lined in fur. A dumpy green robot whose occupant was too small to see out of the headpiece jumped up and down trying to get a glimpse of itself. In the corner, two 12- year-old Star Wars fans squared off in red plastic tunics, brandishing strange space weapons. And through it all strolled the insouciant alligator, patting people on the shoulder and murmuring, "Oh, yes, very nice, buy it, buy it."

It was the third of Professor Margaret Spicer's costume rummage sales, this one advertised as "Subject to Fit - 1,000 Years of Costumes!" Spicer, the Hop's costume designer, decided several years ago that the way to weed out the chaff of her wardrobe stock and make muchneeded room for new costumes was to hold a public sale just before Halloween. She keeps a stock of some 10,000 period costumes on hand, and since her shop's standards require that at least two-thirds of the costuming for any performance be made new, space is always in short supply.

This year's sale was run by costume assistants Elizabeth Stillman and Aurore Dione (the alligator). Not only does the sale make both space and money for the Hop, according to Stillman, it also assists the community. "People are always calling us to borrow or buy costumes," she said, "and the Center has a policy of lending only to events sponsored by the Dartmouth Drama Department, which limits our lending pretty severely. This way we make our excess available."

Decisions about which items to let go are made on the basis of usefulness. Anything easily recognizable goes, the shop keeping mostly basic costumes that can be retrimmed for new performances. Many are sold because of their small size. "People are larger today than they were ten years ago," explained Stillman, "and we can't use some of the costumes the shop made back then."

Most costumes go for less than $5, and the highest price put on any item at this year's sale was $25, asked for an 18thcentury gown encrusted with sequins, which had cost the shop $100 to make. When the smoke cleared this year, the racks were empty and the shop's coffers were richer by some $3,000.

The costume sale: courtly couture, 18th-century curls, and 19th-century bonnets.