Dear Constant Reader,
Happy Friday and happy October!
Today’s tip comes from Scratch. We’re about to open a big show with a lot of costume changes (that would be The Wrathskellar — do you have tickets yet?) and we needed a way for our Wardrobe Mistresses to keep track of all the costumes and get every costume piece reunited properly when they are cleaned up after the act.
Put a tag on a hanger listing all the costume pieces for an act.
Each act got an index card. The performer wrote on it their character name, the act name, and listed each costume element that went on the hanger. Things like shoes and pasties don’t live on a hanger, so they didn’t have to get written down.
After reinforcing the corner of the card with a piece of tape, we punched a hole in it and threaded a rubber band through. The rubber band went over the hook of the hanger. Any small items, like gloves or panties, were attached to the hanger with binder clips.
Once we get to the theatre (Sunday!), we’ll hang everything up in run order and it should be super-simple to maintain all the costumes.
You can do this for storing your costumes as well, if you’re lucky enough to have enough space to hang them all up. The costume closet in my atelier is too small, alas.
Oh, The Glamourous Life! 
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