Someone asked me the title of the book I read on film costuming. It's
_Costume Design 101_, by Richard LaMotte, a guy with about 30 years of
experience in the Hollywood costume business. There is, as I said
before, a great deal of information in this book about how the film
costuming profession works, and very little about how to design or build
costumes. Then again, there are many other books on the latter.
This book might help you/Sylvia to see the rental business from the
other end--how film companies use costumes and what they want out of a
rental business.
We've sold a lot of books to costume rental businesses. As far as I can
tell, aside from any filming that may be done locally--and in many
localities this is probably not very much or very often--they rent to
theater companies, professional, semi-professional, and school; and also
to individuals for theme weddings, murder mystery parties, Halloween,
and any other event anyone might want a costume for. Some of them even
stock costumes for people who want them for their sex lives--French maid
costumes and so on.
Whoever is rented to, I gather there is a lot of loss and damage. I've
been told that for every rental you need a standard contract that makes
the renter pay in full for all loss and damage, including total
replacement if necessary; and you need to be the one who legally
evaluates what has gone wrong and how much to charge for it.
Frankly I would not advise getting into any business at all until you
know a great deal about how that kind of business works.
Fran
Lavolta Press
http://www.lavoltapress.com
Sylvia Rognstad wrote:
I just heard about an opportunity to buy a costume business and recalled
that someone of one of these lists was discussing such a prospect that
came up in Denver, CO.
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