Inside Universal's Costume House — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Hey guys, it's Lane. I am here this morning at the Universal Costume House. I am here with Poppy. Hi, I'm Poppy Cannon Reese. I manage the costume department on the Universal Studios

[00:15] lot and we're just showing you around here. Let's go. This used to be the tailor shop. They used to have ten tailors working in here at a time, but the trend now is to set up a workroom wherever

[00:28] you go to shoot, so we just needed the space for specialty costumes. We call it the Asian Medieval Room. It's got pirates and knights and samurai helmets hanging from the rafters.

[00:41] But this was all the fantasy football for the craft commercial that we did with all the stuff that we pulled in here. Harley wore this when we did the Epic Mealtime Pirate video. No buffet! No cruise ship! No cruise ship buffet in the state!

[00:57] I wear stuff out of these night costumes that I use. And they're plastic, as you can hear. And even chain metal things are plastic, so we're not having our actors run around in full-on metal.

[01:12] So these gray suits, they're from Oblivion. And, I mean, you can even see that there's still tags on them of, like, which actor wore them and which duplicate, which variation of how distressed it was. And they're matching jackets, and so we used one of those in season three.

[01:27] Sir, I can't solve this equation! Do you know the variable? So basically everything on display is for him. And people will be like, oh, that's a whole outfit.

[01:40] Yeah we don really buy any costumes because we get enough in like for example Jurassic World was released and the week after it was released like four truckloads of assets show up So we call them costume assets and they come in by the truckload

[01:55] usually from Universal Features. It's kind of like playing Tetris all day long. You're like, oh, here's a truckload. This is, like, for the Prada shoes and the higher-end stuff.

[02:07] And then this is the men's and the kids'. How far back does the stock go? Well, there are pieces here from the Victorian era that are original. There's a lot of stuff here from the 40s and 50s.

[02:19] There's really a lot from the 80s and 90s. But there's everything. There's range. Okay, now we're going to go into the main stock area. So this is 27 aisles. It starts with contemporary in the front and works its way back.

[02:31] Maybe you could explain the process of how you come in in the morning. You just have to have a game plan. You come in, you're like, I need shrubs. come back here and go to the scrub section and you search for your size. So if you don't have a list, you'll be walking around aimlessly.

[02:46] But for a costume designer, it's like knowing your own supermarket. You know where everything is, you know, and you get to know it more. And we're only open to costume professionals. We're not open to the public. So, you know, they know that pretty much everyone in here knows what they're doing.

[02:59] So when we get up into here, we're into the 70s. So everything is bought in chronological order by decades. 70s, 80s, 90s?

[03:11] Well, I've only been here for four years. It's changed quite a bit. We've basically reorganized everything. I was like, this needs to be in chronological order. So we basically have moved everything in the entire building since I've been here and reorganized it.

[03:24] It's changed a lot in the last four years. But it really needs to be functional because the faster content is created for less money the faster everybody has to work and it just helps to make it like a really stoppable experience So that was my goal was to take it to like

[03:40] a Bloomingdale shopping experience, where you go in, you know what you want, you can find it easily, and you're in and out. Here's Wendell's prom jacket, guys. Could you put this all in my pocket? So many memories.

[03:52] I miss these characters. Just kidding. I find the costume rental division to be a great asset to costume designers and anybody working in the costume field. It's really great to have this stuff available to rent.

[04:06] It makes it faster. It makes it cheaper. And you can find things you could never find for shopping and shopping. And most cities don't have this. You know, even in New York, there's not a warehouse of this size where you can go in the morning and rent what you need

[04:20] and be out of there in a day. But I think as a designer, you need to be crafty and creative, and you need to be able to put things together. And it's great to be able to provide all those parts and pieces so you can put together great outfits and be really creative.

[04:36] Because, you know, the object isn't to recreate what somebody's already done. It's to create a new look, whatever look we have available here. And we offer that. Yeah, and some of the best costumes that I've done is, you know, pieces from a costume house, pieces from a thrift store, pieces from Target.

[04:50] So it is. It's teaching all those things together and making it work for your show. So the more creative you are, I think the easier it is to get work and find jobs. You know, you have to make the connections. You have to constantly be looking for work.

[05:02] But the more creative you can be with sketching and building and selling and putting things together, you know, the easier it is to be continuously working as a designer. Yeah. And you've got to get real crafty sometimes with your budget, too.

[05:14] So some of my best work was when they changed the schedule and what I thought I had a month to make I have a weekend to make So like Johanna dress in season 3 that schedule changed and I had a weekend to construct

[05:26] that skirt. And it's one of my favorite ones now. I don't know if you guys remember this because it was a very quick scene, but when Freddie had his flash pack as the guitar hero in when he was doing his video will, he had this lovely

[05:39] shirt on. So. He wasn't a big fan of it because it, I guess, itches. He looked so good. It was Freddie and his Guitar Hero Glory days. Come on. What else did you put him in? For when people are ready to get their stuff written up for something,

[05:53] they come up here. It's barcoded. We have over 480,000 pieces in the warehouse. So about 80% of it's barcoded. The shoes and the hats, we can't barcode,

[06:05] so those are photographs as we go. So Joey, do you remember these? Yes. Joey had little snap-on ruffles for his prom costume in season three

[06:17] and he loved them oh my god and he kept there's so many they come in every color I still don't believe that these are button-on yeah I can't believe this has existed yep for people like you so

[06:29] yeah yeah gotta class it up a little bit slap on some ruffles yep aww look at yours thanks for coming over to the Universal Costume Hush you guys this was a lot of fun I hope you liked some stuff but I've got more

[06:41] shopping to do and then I've got to go do sitting for Freddy so I'll see you guys later. Bye!