Earlier this year, my husband and I were invited last minute to a weeklong celebration in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, complete with two themed nights: a pink party and a sparkle party.
A normal ski trip we could handle. But my husband doesn’t own anything pink. More importantly, we knew the type of guests flying in from New York and California to party in the richest county in the United States, inside a mountaintop home with a 360-degree view of the Tetons, would likely bring their fashion A game. Ordering a bunch of cheap pieces overnight from Amazon would be a major sartorial—and sustainability—mistake.
With two days to outfit ourselves, we messaged every person we knew, asking to raid their closet. Finally, someone directed us to Costume Closet, a Brooklyn-based styling business run by former actor Felicia D’Ascanio and her business partner and designer James Richwine. Open by appointment only, its raison d’être is to replace the panicked fast-fashion shopping sprees that typically happen when you’re invited to a themed party or festival.
That’s increasingly likely. Themed parties and galas have become a core part of the social scene in New York City, the Bay Area, and elsewhere. Other recent Costume Closet clients include the guests of themed weddings, festivalgoers, and bachelorette parties who want a killer outfit for House of Yes, the famous cabaret club in Bushwick, Brooklyn—located an eight-minute walk from Costume Closet.
We booked an hour-long styling session for the next day. Over a backdrop of thumping electronic music, D’Ascanio pulled a panoply of sparkly, sexy, creative pieces from the racks in her basement “dollhouse,” as she calls it. Petite with long, dark, wavy hair, pale skin, and big eyes she sets off with immaculate makeup, she looks like a doll herself and giggled with delight when I would look in the mirror and declare a piece a winner.
At the end of the hour, we each had two complete outfits that we rented for the week, and we could choose to keep any of the pieces we fell in love with. My husband returned all his pieces (again, he’s a black-and-gray type of guy), but I decided to keep the pink fur capelet, which was charged to my credit card.
The process saved us money and stress and reduced the environmental cost of getting boxes of stuff overnighted to our apartment only to find that most don’t look as cute as the picture. Rentals range from $5 for costume jewelry up to $360 for a custom-made designer headpiece that a September bride commissioned. D’Ascanio says that buying one of her full outfits, complete with a handmade headpiece by a local designer, could run over $4,000. Renting the same outfit for a week wouldn’t cost more than a few hundred dollars.
When I caught up with D’Ascanio in August on a video call, she was taking a quick break from a hectic day. Burning Man was just two weeks away, Costume Closet was booked solid with styling sessions, and she was working from 9 a.m. to midnight seven days a week.
Behind her was a selection of fantastical pieces: 3D-printed crowns by Kova by Sascha, witchy electroformed crystal jewelry by Wicked Heathens, and a foot-tall lacy headpiece by Written Image. “I got her pieces in this morning, and one sold immediately. She had to Uber over another one!” D’Ascanio said, holding up a piece that retails for $560—it looked like the crown for the fairy queen of the dragonflies, made from rare, vintage Italian fabrics.
Costume Closet has more than five thousand pieces in its database, from these handmade designs to thrifted apparel and thigh-high boots. But there are many more trinkets stuffed into every corner of the shop. Depending on how you fill out the intake form and your personal style, D’Ascanio might outfit you with upcycled Victorian-ish pieces from the costume designer Timothy Westbrook, dramatic cloaks from Edco Brand, or pieces from Aviatrix that evoke the starry performances of the roaring 1920s.
D’Ascanio moved to New York over a decade ago to work in theater but quickly soured on the scene. She went on to work in corporate consumer electronics for eight years. In 2019, she went to Burning Man for the first time “and my world exploded.” She started Costume Closet with her then romantic partner Richwine in 2021, as New York started opening back up after the pandemic. “I thought this was going to be another hobby I had on the side,” she says. “Right away, it took off. I realized that there wasn’t anything like this. Within two months, I quit my job and went full time, and we just hit two years.”
Earlier this summer Costume Closet styled a dozen people for a multiday wedding at a château in France. The bride was Toni Alejandria, an event producer and partner at Unanimous Capital, and the groom was Gil Rosen, president of Stanford Blockchain Accelerator. The exuberant wedding had four themed parties: Marie Antoinette (the bride’s real name, believe it or not), Embodying Art, 1920s Paris, and Moulin Rouge. Even the bride and groom, both longtime Burners with closets full of festival fashion, came to Costume Closet for help.
“Costume Closet and Felicia were a huge help to a lot of our NY community, ourselves included,” Rosen wrote by email. “She’s talented and warm and beyond easy to work with. Even before we arrived, she’d asked us what we were looking for and had prepared a number of pieces for us to peruse. She gave us a playful afternoon of dress-up, a welcome respite in the cacophony of wedding planning. After our visit, we immediately shared her information with friends.”
Costume Closet has now done three weddings, with another coming up, and also does costume booths for themed events, so people who come unprepared—say, the mothers of the bride and groom—can get outfitted and take part in the fun.
While D’Ascanio delights in putting together an outfit that will make your Instagram explode with likes, she prioritizes comfort for her clients, with lightweight headpieces and flattering looks that will last the night. “Since we’re also in the rental business, I associate really well with pieces that are quality and last a long time,” she says. But if something breaks, they’ll repair it or upcycle it into a new piece. They also occasionally take items in on consignment.
Sustainability is a core motivation for Costume Closet. “The original idea was to help the sustainability of events,” D’Ascanio says. “I like the idea of pieces that are usually onetime use living multiple lives, being reincarnated into multiple characters.”