Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542297
When we're pulling on a period show, we have to go into Target and buy multiples of socks for something. So, we're paying aention to what the prices are. Supervisors rely on that, especially when there are a lot of these day players who don't know what it costs for specialty stuff, like a tuxedo and stuff, not everyone's purchasing tuxedos on a daily basis. Can you tell us how shopping for principals is different from shopping for background? KS: I think with principal shopping, a lot of times I get hired by the Designer. Sometimes I know the Supervisor, and they recommend me to a Designer, but a lot of times my relationship is with the Designer, so I get rehired by people frequently. They come to me because they know that they can trust me to have their eye in the costume house. They trust me with my knowledge base. They know that they don't have to worry about what I'm going to bring in. They know it's going to be what they want. It's like a really intimate relationship with the Designer because they have to trust me. They literally can't leave the office most of the time so they have to trust me to be their eye out there. I have to sit in design meetings with them and the ACD and they go over what the character is looking like, and what they want for them, all that kind of stuff. Then it's my job to take that information and go into the costume house and find it in that person's size. Sometimes that's really hard, and it's really a hunt. There's a huge amount of trust there between the design team and the principal Shopper. TR: With background, you're looking at a whole rack, and you're creating a mood that sets the tone for your principals. A lot of it is a color story, and you're creating the colors off of a rack. You're looking at the whole rack. You're not just looking at individual pieces for an individual character, you're looking at the whole storyboard at once, whereas with principals, you're going in, and you're hunting for very specific niches of each character, and you're not just doing the one episode at a time. You're pulling for multiple episodes. So a lot of times we're now geing into block shooting and we're pulling for five or six episodes. On The First Lady, we pulled for the block shooting per decade. You never know where you're going to go. What is the experience like working with Costume Designers as a Shopper? KS: One Designer that I work with repeatedly, they have very specific rules that they follow. With this Designer, I mostly only pull background because they really handle their principals. And on other shows, I only do principals. They can't find something; they can't get out and do it themselves. So, for instance, they'll instruct me not to pull white, not to pull black, 32 SPRING 2026 Above: Pulling for The Fabelmans at CRC. Left: Going through all of the men's loafers at Western Costume to find early 1960's ones to send to Germany for The Queen's Gambit. PHOTO (ABOVE, LEFT): CHRISTINE ORTH