Costume business is one of a kind

Employees jumped up and down and ran through the room cheering. In less than a minute, they were back to work.

The celebration was brief because it marked one of what will be many small milestones for the new company, which has an inventory estimated at between 50,000 and 100,000 pieces. Cataloging that inventory will take years.

Duluthian Doug Moen spent four decades building this collection of vintage clothing, which he sold in 2006 to the A. H. Zeppa Family Foundation, a charitable organization with a mission to improve the arts community in the region. The costume warehouse will function as an operating subsidiary of the foundation, according to Keir Johnson, the foundation’s executive director.

Sensing an opportunity to help outfit theater groups, the foundation’s trustee, Alan Zeppa — based on the advice of Johnson — agreed to buy Moen’s collection without meeting him or even seeing the clothing.

“Doug’s collection has a reputation,” said Micheal Barbee, Northern Theatrical Costume’s conservator. “There is no other collection like this. We are building a business that is unique in the world.”

Most of the collection is from the early 20th Century; some is older, some newer. There are dresses and men’s suits galore, fur coats, sweaters, band uniforms, thousands of shoes and everything down to bracelets, necklaces, cufflinks and rings. Barbee thinks it will take until the end of 2009 to have it all cataloged and ready to market worldwide.

Local theater groups, however, should be able to rent costumes as soon as this fall. “Our goal is to offer staggered-scale, low-cost pulls for high schools and other struggling theater groups,” Barbee said.

Individuals looking to buy or rent costumes for events like Halloween are out of luck. “We will absolutely not rent to individuals,” said Tyra Adams, operations manager. “It’s theater and film rental only. We are not open to the public.”

Adams said the wear and tear on vintage pieces during parties would be too much, with all the eating, drinking and smoking potentially going on.

The first commercial theater group to use Northern Theatrical Costume will be the Duluth Festival Opera. Barbee is the costume designer for “The Barber of Seville,” which will be staged July 19-21 in the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center Auditorium. He’s pulling some items from the new costume shop, building others, and buying 16 police uniforms from a company in New York. The newly built and purchased costumes will be added to Northern Theatrical’s inventory, a process that will keep the collection growing.

Craig Fields, president and artistic director of Duluth Festival Opera, said he likes to keep his productions local, although he hires singers from all over the country.

“We like to use local designers and local craftspeople,” he said. “If this works out, it will be a wonderful partnership that we can continue over the years. It’s really good timing for us.”

Fields said it’s unusual for a city like Superior to have such a vast collection of costumes available, adding it will be particularly useful for operas.

“Opera generally requires very heavy costuming,” he said. “It’s often more ornate and more demanding than it is for straight theater or certainly ballet.”

“The Barber of Seville” usually is set in Spain during the 17th century Baroque period. Instead, Fields has chosen Duluth in the early 1900s, with a set designed after Glensheen Mansion. The opera will be performed in Italian, however.

Northern Theatrical Costume employs about a dozen people, many of them students working part time. Barbee said they enjoy working with costumes, but a lot of the work is repetitive and unglamorous.

“They do a lot of drudgery,” he said. “It’s physically hard work.”

Washing clothes is one of the biggest jobs. An on-site laundry room operates nearly non-stop; fragile garments are hand washed; and truckloads more are sent to local dry cleaners.

Some items have been damaged beyond repair, but are held in a “museum” room where they can be preserved until patterns can be drawn to recreate them.

The business has occupied space at Mariner Mall since December and started receiving truckloads of Moen’s costumes in January. Barbee estimates there are roughly 25,000 pieces in the warehouse now, mostly from Moen’s former costume rental shop on Tower Avenue.

“The stuff from Tower Avenue was somewhat organized,” Barbee said, noting about 15,000 pieces are already roughly sorted. “From this point on it’s random cartons.”

How many items are still on the way from Bayside Warehouse in Superior, and other locations in Duluth and Virginia, is unclear. For many years Moen’s collection has been reported to be around 100,000 pieces.

“If you count all the bowties and scarves, I suppose it’s up there,” Moen said. But figuring about half of the collection already has been delivered, and much of what remains are less-attractive items that may have been damaged while in storage, Moen said 100,000 may be an exaggeration.

The large collection has kept Barbee reeling for months. “I had to create a system for storing unknown quantities of this stuff,” he said. “It was a head scratcher.”

Barbee said the largest costumer he could find online was in California and had about 20,000 pieces.

“We have no competition,” he said. “The sheer availability and level of searchability we’ll have will not be able to be matched.”

Most of Northern Theatrical’s merchandise is not traditional theater costumes. “It’s a vintage collection,” Adams said. “It wasn’t built for theater.”

The company’s warehouse is about 11,000 square feet. Barbee said about 8,300 square feet is in use, with some rack space still unused. A separate 2,520-square-foot room is available to expand.

Since moving in, Barbee said a lot has been done to “humanize” the space, like hanging paintings on open walls. “Psychologically, it’s hard to work in a warehouse,” he said. “When we first came in, it looked like an aircraft hanger in here.”

Adams and Barbee haven’t addressed how they will market the clothing collection once it’s cataloged, but they know the Internet will be a driving force. The planned Web site will be at www.northeco.com.

Barbee thinks the business could be profitable within two years of fully launching its operations. The plan is to have items checked out, packaged and shipped within hours after an order.

“In time, this will make a lot of money,” Barbee said.

Johnson, the foundation’s executive director, also thinks the costume business could produce a solid return. “But that’s not the driving force,” he said. “This is really in the support of local theater.”

“It won’t be long before the things you see on these racks will be showing up on movie screens,” Adams said, noting that some outfits in the inventory already have made it into motion pictures. “I watched Iron Will recently and recognized a few things from our racks,” she said.

Costume collector keeps on collecting

Even after selling the vast collection of vintage clothing it took him 40 years to assemble, Doug Moen is shopping for more.

“I’m still collecting,” Moen said. “I’m antiquing when I can, and that includes vintage clothing. It’s kind of hard to stop after all these years.”

Moen sold his massive collection in 2006 to the A. H. Zeppa Family Foundation, which has opened a costume warehouse in Superior’s Mariner Mall called Northern Theatrical Costume to service theater and film interests.

“I’m glad they came and got the business,” Moen said. “I was struggling for some years, working another job to support it, and I don’t want to die underneath this big pile of stuff.”

Moen began collecting vintage clothing in 1967 and opened his first costume shop, Rags to Riches, in 1972 in the back of an antique store he owned in Superior. In 1977 he opened the Second Act Costume Shop in Duluth, but ended up moving his operation numerous times during the 1980s, frequently changing its name.

In 1990, he finally settled into the space at 1226 1/2 Tower Ave., in Superior, above Vintage Italian Pizza. Doug Moen’s Clothing and Vintage Costume Rental held on until Halloween of 2005. Moen said he continued to open his shop to high school theater groups into 2006, until he sold the collection.

“I feel pretty good that it’s in their hands,” Moen said of the Zeppa Foundation and its Northern Theatrical Costume subsidiary. “They’re very competent people. I think they’ll take care of it a lot better than I ever could have. I’m 60 now. I’m really tired. I don’t have the stamina I used to have.”

Moen said he stayed up many nights until midnight working on his costume shop, putting in long hours after he’d already put in a full day’s work doing rental property maintenance for Duluth landlord and emergency room physician Eric Ringsred, M.D.

Moen said the costume business never quit paid its bills, relying heavily on Halloween rentals to support it year-round. Theater groups, theme parties and historical recreations were never enough to make the shop profitable, he said.

Moen did catch a few breaks when major motion picture companies needed his costumes. He said the 1995 movie "Dead Man," starring Johnny Depp, needed long underwear, lumberjack clothes and fur and wool coats.

“I had it and they didn’t,” he said.

Among other films that used Moen’s costumes are "Far North," "Iron Will," "North Country" and "A Prairie Home Companion."

Because he couldn’t afford a good warehouse, Moen scattered items in numerous basements, wherever he could find space. He eventually began to fear the collection would be lost forever if he didn’t unload it.

“I sent out distress signals into this area for three years, but nobody seemed to be interested. I was ready to contact Hollywood — or Hollywood’s competition especially — and just see who would want to take over this collection. I bought this stuff mostly from this area. People had me in mind when they were unloading this stuff. I think it would have been kind of a letdown had I gone to other markets and just shipped it out.”

Tyra Adams, operations manager for Northern Theatrical Costume, said Moen has made a huge contribution to the local theater community.

“The man did amass quite a collection,” she said. “We want him to know that he really has done something for the theater and film world. He’s done a great thing by being willing to part with his fabulous collection. He’s making available to theater and film some wonderful pieces that otherwise might be very difficult to find.”

Moen hopes to create a new use for his former costume shop location, and continue renting it. Owned by John Dandrea, the space is the former Italian-American Club, and has a restored 1930s bar-area to which Moen has devoted much work.

“I think I’m going to take the old space and try to open up some kind of small video production studio,” he said. “I’d like to open it up as a lease space for novice photographers by setting up a video and mini-stage production area.

“Of course, if it doesn’t work, I’ll have to bow out and then fade into the woodwork of Duluth and Superior . . . which is a wonderful thing to do, by the way,” he said.