Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542297
would look like in the future. I thought, 'That's never going to happen,' but you just keep doing it every single day. It does happen. We own all those machines. We actually expanded during the strike. We took over the space next door to us and opened the wall between us. We gained a second bathroom. Now we have a whole specialty area where we can make a mess and we're looking to expand in the future as well." The workroom has a small core team with Gaini, Zuniga and Michelle McCuller as workroom head and Yesenia Solis as table person, but they have hired as many as 15 or so Custom Made Costumers to work on larger projects. Gaini hires strictly on recommendations. "The best people have been recommended by friends, and friends of friends. And I think that's how incremental growth is the best kind of growth. We've goen so many good recommendations from the LA Trade Tech team. They're doing an amazing job with their programs." She also adds that a lot of the people who have come to and have been hired by California Paerns have come from theater and opera. "I feel like people who work in theater are even more passionate than movie people, and because of that passion, they get enormously taken advantage of and honestly, it's also a selfish thing, because if you elevate the art of sewing, if you make everybody feel like they deserve respect and that they deserve a living wage for doing it, then everybody's going to start making more money." rom the beginning, Gaini decided that the company would be organized and that she create a pro-union workroom that would give opportunities for skilled garment workers to have access to union protections. "We named the company California Union Made Paerns because we were never not going to be union. It was kind of like a 'burn the ships' situation. We have it in the name, so we have to accomplish it. But I think that what being union means in this industry is that you're legit, you know what producers need, you know what directors need. You've been on the scene, and you have gathered that on-set experience, and you know that to work on the best and biggest projects, you have to be union. The best people will not accept custom-made jobs if it's not union. I thought from the very beginning, I don't care if I make a profit, I don't really want to make a profit— F Left to right: Janelle Monáe performs onstage at Outloud Music Festival, costume by California Patterns; Thu Tran wearing a California Patterns made costume for the film The Rainbow Bridge; Dunkin' Donuts Commercial; four photos from "Capcom Street Fight commercial." 48 SPRING 2026 PHOTO, CENTER: JOEL BARHAMAND