Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542297
I think he even joked that I should be paying him because he was training me!" Foster returned to American in 1998 to work in the family business starting in the women's and men's departments and eventually moving to the front office in accounting. "I learned the ins and outs of running the company." Bayless wanted to hand down the business over to someone who would run it the way he wanted. "He told me I had to handle every piece in this business before he would hand it over to me, and for those people who knew my dad, he didn't hand over the reins easily. He made me work for it. And I'm not talking about coming to work every day. I had to prove myself to him, and that's not an easy thing to do, but I did it." In the early 2000s, Bayless was we were founded by a Costumer and so when my dad started this company, he organized it to be effective for a Costumer to pull, and he knew what that took. Everything is organized, very well organized, and it's in areas that fit within that characterization. So, when you come into the work section for the 1930s, everything from head to toe is within two pipe areas so that you don't have to walk too far. He knew that people's time was valuable, and you didn't have a lot of time to be digging through boxes and going from this room to that room and everything like that. considering retiring but without giving over full control, he began having Foster run the business to take responsibility for organizing the shows that worked with the company. "I began working on the deals with shows. I remember one of the very first shows was Gilmore Girls, and they had a flashback for a Civil War episode, and I had to figure out by myself how to do a breakdown for them with a budget they needed aging on it, and I was able to take care of all that for him for the very first time, and I just kept going from there." American Costume Company supplies a look from head to toe and will not rent out costumes that are incomplete, that has been the policy since the company was started. "You have to remember that Opposite: Luster Bayless and Diana Foster. Above: Entrance to Western section at American Costume Company. MOTIONPICTUREC O S T U M E R S .O R G 41