Special Occasion Rentals

Our rental catalogue is large and varied, and a big reason why we took the plunge and moved to the double unit.  Gearing up for Baltimore Comic Con this weekend, we have been going through our rental catalogue looking for pieces to use along with our created pieces (and we are SO excited to share them with you... in two days!) and found some amazing pieces we forgot about or never knew existed.  After this weekend, we will begin showcasing some of our favorite pulled Halloween costumes from past Halloweens or parties, and some costumes that we put together ourselves to inspire.

What you may not know about our Closet is that we also do special occasion rentals for galas, themed parties, and other special to upscale events.  We can provide amazing and atypical gowns, alterations, and styling help for a fraction of the price of buying a gown off the rack that you may never wear again.  It's good for the environment, good for your wallet, and fun for everyone involved. Some of our favorite appointments have been for women who are going to parties and need a dress or accessories for the gown they already bought. 

We have current, vintage, and so-vintage-it's-current dresses and gowns from all fashions and periods.  We can provide style lines from every period to highlight your body's best features (I myself should have been born in the Romantic period... Empire waists and scoop necks are my jam.) Here we've highlighted some of the fantastic events our dresses, along with our beautiful clients (and sometimes ourselves!), have attended.

Our client Alyssa dressed up in Roaring 20s style for the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Gala. The hot pink sequined dress and black opera gloves came from our Closet and the fascinator was a custom-built-for-rental that now resides in the Closet. 

Photo credit: Woolly Mammoth 

Photo credit: Woolly Mammoth Theatre

Another client, Felicia, rented a lime green and orange with gold embroidery two piece sari-inspired gown that we just love for another woman to wear at the Annapolis Film Festival.  The Oscar costume was a custom costume we built for the event (and blogged about here), which now belongs to the Film Festival.  

  

Photo credit: Felicia Barlowe Clar

Photo credit: Annapolis Film Festival

Photo credit: Annapolis Film Festival

My bridal shower was an adorable late morning mimosas-and-crumpets affair (special thanks to my bridal party!), and Meghan wore a slate blue tea length dress from the Closet.  You can find it in the 40s section of our online catalogue.

  

Photo credit: personal collection

Photo credit: Kathleen Mansfield 

Photo credit: Kathleen Mansfield

I attended the wedding of one of my very good friends in June at Ceresville Mansion in Frederick. The ceremony was outdoors and the reception was inside, so I needed something that would be elegant but also breezy so I wouldn't melt in the late June swelter.  I found this amazing silk handkerchief dress in the 70s section of our Closet and fell in love!  

trying it on in the Studio! 

photo credit: personal collection

photo credit: personal collection

One of our lovely contractors, Sylvia, rented a dress from the 70s section of the Closet to attend this year's Helen Hayes Awards at Sidney Harmon Hall in downtown DC.  The rosy undertone perfectly compliments her fair skin and auburn hair. 

  

Photo credit: Sylvia Fuhrken

Photo credit: Sylvia Fuhrken

Photo credit: Sylvia Fuhrken

This year's overarching theme at the Laurel Museum is the Civil War, so it follows that the annual Laurel Museum Gala was also Civil War themed.  We have some beautiful Civil War era dresses that we got on our Gettysburg trip, but we ended up going with a dress we found in the 50s section and styling it with a white sash to give it that ultra-vintage feel.  Style lines often repeat themselves throughout the decades and centuries; it just takes a practiced eye to know the different iterations. 

Photo credit: Laurel Museum

Inventorying is FUN

If you've been following our Twitter (which if you haven't... well I don't know what you're waiting for) you've noticed we've been doing a LOT of inventorying lately. It's all part of our ambitious goal to get the lion's share of our Closet online and into the 21st century by fall of this year.  We reached our 1000th item last week (hooray!) and we're not even close to done (whaaat!).

It is so exciting, though, to intimately get to know our Closet, item by item.  So often we girls turn to Marilyn incredulously, saying things like "We have a SHARK costume??" and Marilyn calmly responds, "Why of course, and it has a hood."  So we take its picture, and move on.  It is amazing the kinds of brilliant gems that are hiding in our stacks; I have been working here almost three years, and every day holds some surprise.

It is a wonderful thing in this world, to love what you do, and we hope you love our work as much as we do.  I recently had a friend come by to check out our stacks with a themed party in mind, and her excitement was infectious; it revitalized us after a long day of dressing and re-dressing Susie Q, and filling out rows and rows and rows of our inventory spreadsheet (we're up to the Y column... only time will tell whether we'll expand into the double letters.)

That said, we encourage you to keep stopping by, keep checking the website.  New things are happening around here every day, even when sometimes those new things are old things we didn't know we had.

Flashback Friday: Themed Parties

Here at the Studio we get all kinds of interesting calls, and some of our favorites are for theme parties.  A few months ago we costumed an 85th birthday party, in which all the birthday matron's grandchildren dressed as her at different stations in her life and acted out a skit for her.  We have done princess parties and superhero parties for kids as well, and as our Closet is slowly but surely making its way online, we hope to costume many more in the future.  Today's Flashback Friday is a focus on the last two theme parties we costumed, which, coincidentally, were for friends of mine and Marilyn's, respectively.

I am a HUGE fan of theme parties, as anyone who has seen my Facebook feed can attest.  Luckily I am also friends with many amazing and wonderful people who share my love for themes, as well as my passion for our Studio!  When my friend Carrie decided to theme her New Years' Eve party in the style of a 1920s speakeasy (complete with 20s jazz from a gramophone.... image on her computer, and giant black and white speakeasy background for pictures), I started texting out pictures of sequined headbands and slinky beaded dresses.   By the end, we had had something to do with costumes on half the party.


1920s New Years Eve

All us girls who were costumed entirely by the Studio... dresses and headdresses alike :)
Photo by: Zoe Jouannelle

Everyone who got their finishing touches at the studio... hats, ties and ascots!
Photo by: Zoe Jouannelle

Just for fun... all the girls!
Photo by: Mary Green

Then in February we got a call from Felicia, a friend of Marilyn's.  She is with the Annapolis Film Festival, and they threw a big Oscars viewing party this year, complete with live-action Oscar!  He was a big hit, and we now have an Oscar costume available in the Closet.  We often create "custom" costumes for rental, so our client can get an amazing custom costume for the cost of a rental, and we can then send out this super cool costume again and again!

Oscars Viewing 2013

Photo by: Felicia Barlow Clar

Photo by: Felicia Barlow Clar