I never anticipated Catprint acquiring a wardrobe department. I had never really thought about it or planned to make one, but we have one now. It kind of snuck up on me.
When we started back in 2011, we borrowed or hired all the costumes we needed (from Sarah @ A2Z in Woori, or from PLOS in Frankston) for our shows, and that did us very nicely. It wasn’t until 2015 (when Catprint was 4 years old) that we made our first garment for a show called The Chairs by Ionesco, because I wanted something very specific that we could not source (tiered lace skirt in cream).
2015 was also the year that we inherited Valley Productions wardrobe department. They gave us a huge number of costume boxes to sort through. A third of them had deteriorated and were unsalvageable. Half of the remainder were unsuitable for us (childrens sizes or easily replaceable eg white shirts) so we op shopped them. The remainder we kept with grateful thanks. We took photos, bundled them back into boxes and put them in to our storage container. Our little department had begun.
In 2016 we made half of the costumes we needed for Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead and hired the balance. In 2017 we only needed to hire a few specific items because we already had the rest of it! Our small department was slowly growing bigger.
In 2018 we were lucky enough to be given a huge number of spectacular costumes from our long standing member Susan Casey. She has performed on stage for decades and kept everything she ever wore, many of which were lovingly created for her by her mothers own hand. She invited me over to choose what I thought we could use and I took the lot. It took 2 car trips to transport it all and it quite literally doubled the size of our department. There was one dress that I laughed at, saying that I couldn’t imagine that we would EVER use it, but as it turned out, it was perfect for her character in our next play. So I put her back in it all these years later & she was thrilled. Our Wardrobe department is known as "Casey" by the Committee, in her honor.
Our container was now bursting with boxes full of costumes. We were fortunate to be offered a permanent storage space at the Warburton Community Space in 2019 so now we have our first very own, actual, physical, dedicated wardrobe department. It has; hanging space for all our long dresses, shelves for all our boxes, a large mirror and enough room left to hang items for each show as we collect and collate them. It’s perfect.
Our inventory shows we now have over 500 garments including 130 dresses and we are able to provide 25-75% of the costumes we need for each of our shows. We will eventually get it all cataloged, computerised, cross referenced and labelled, but in the mean time I am proud to announce that photographs of all our garments are now available for viewing on line, here.
With Arts funding at an all time low, we are endeavoring to increase our income by hiring out our assets. So if there is something you would like to hire for a small fee please let us know. And please tell your local schools that we are here and have things that might help them with their school productions too. (Sets & props here & mural backgrounds here.)
Thank you!
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