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“I first started going to Palace Costume about 20 years ago, through a stylist friend of mine, and it was obviously love at first sight,” says Mimi Haddon, the Los Angeles-based photographer, costume designer, educator, and author of Palace Costume: Inside Hollywood’s Best Kept Secret, out tomorrow.
What started out as a photographic passion project—Haddon would rent and photograph vintage swimwear (partly because “I could pay for out of my own pocket, but also because they told such a story in such a small compact space”)—morphed into a glossy book with interviews from the many luminous patrons of Palace Costume (Arianne Phillips, Ruth E. Carter, Sandy Powell, Mark Bridges).
Founded by Melody Barnett in the late 1960s on the corner of San Vicente and Melrose, it was then a shoppable emporium called Crystal Palace due to the fact it was located in a former chandelier shop. A few decades and a few relocations later, it’s now Palace Costume on West Hollywood’s Fairfax Avenue and caters exclusively to in-the-know Hollywood costumers and styling professionals via rental. It was a brilliant idea encouraged by Anthea Sylbert, who had purchased from Barnett while working on the cinematic masterpiece of Chinatown. Sylbert not only earned the 1975 Academy Award for Best Costume Design for her work on the film, but Barnett took her advice to heart and so began Palace Costume s rentals-only era. But “No Halloween Rentals!” as its website denotes.
For decades, Barnett and Palace Costume have operated as silently and behind the scenes, helping wardrobe departments story tell through the right kind of chiffon slip or the perfect period-appropriate hat. They ve been a part of some of our most cherished on-screen works, having helped fashion Margot Robbie’s Shannon Tate (in boyish baby tees) and Brad Pitt (in Hawaiian cabana shirts) in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. The petticoated party frocks Betty Draper (January Jones) wore throughout Mad Men, the Mexican-embroidered dresses Salma Hayek’s Frida layers in the film Frida, and parts of Halle Berry’s go-go girl getups in Frankie and Alice.
After building up a collection of these vintage bathing suit shots—jaunty-colored still-lifes, detail shots, and retro model shots—Haddon learned a friend’s husband who owned a print shop was looking to partner with someone on a promotional calendar, and Haddon thought of Palace Costume right away. “I pitched to Melody that we could turn my images into a promotional calendar for her, and she was completely on board. And then afterward, she said, ‘Well, I want you to keep on photographing!’’’
That was the beginning of Palace Costume: Inside Hollywood’s Best Kept Secret, from Chronicle Chroma. Flipping through its pages offers a taste of what a trip to the vintage emporium is like, where 30,000 square feet is filled—methodically and exactingly—from floor to ceiling, with more than 500,000 items. But beyond the museum collection-worthy designer wares are, perhaps more interestingly, pieces that, Academy Award Winning Best Costume Designer Mark Bridges calls “extraordinary ordinary”—for example, the 1920s men s A-shirts he used (and earned the Oscar for) in the black-and-white The Artist.
“You’re not walking into a one-dimensional space,” says Haddon. “I ve seen Melody come in, having just acquired some Jeremy Scott winged shoes; Tiger [Curran] describes her coming in from a trading post with a tiara made out of guitar picks…in addition to everyday vintage, and couture vintage, Melody just loves quirky, wacky character items.”
Below, a sneak peek at highlights from some of the book’s many Q and A interviews.
“We [first] called our shop the Crystal Palace. We sold vintage clothing, furs, hats, shoes, gloves, and jewelry. Everything was in perfect condition. Our repurposed articles were also really fun and trendy at this exciting time of generational change in fashion as well as lifestyle. Our customer base included the royalty of music, rock, film, and fashion. The clientele was amazing. Even before we opened we had people peeking in the windows and begging us to be let in day and night. Late one night, I was putting together one of the window platforms with a mannequin dressed in ’30s/’40s attire—a great rayon dress with arms full of Bakelite bracelets. I had a very large wicker basket upturned on the floor with literally hundreds of Bakelite bangles spilling onto the platform. I heard a tapping at the window and saw that it was Diana Ross. I let her in and she shopped happily.” - Melody Barnett
“There are designers we collect. Of course you collect Paul Smith, and of course you’d want something from Gucci, or you’d want something from YSL or LV. But what I think we should collect for our 2000 clothes is just strictly designer items. I don’t think we should be collecting all this fast-fashion crap. But that’s not my decision.” -Lee Ramstead, partner at Palace Costume
“There are pieces that I used on that film that are still there today that I see hanging. Like notable pieces that made camera on principles. And I love that the pieces can live on and live for other designers in other ways. I mean, at first, I remember thinking it was an awkward thing, like, “Oh, I used that dress on Courtney Love in The People vs. Larry Flynt,” and now someone else can wear it. But then, it’s like a warm and fuzzy old friend that you can see there.” -Arianne Phillips
“I don’t remember the exact project that I was on the first time I walked into Palace Costume, but I do remember some of the first projects that I came in here to work on. One was, What’s Love Got to Do with It, Tina Turner’s life story. I just remember this being a place, like a big crayon box.” -Ruth E. Carter
“Carol was definitely a Palace job. Carol was, of course, one of those incredibly very low-budget films for the scale of it. For what we had to achieve. We actually had a fairly small core group of extras, and it was the same people that we kept redressing to be different people in different scenes. And I do remember that we couldn’t have done that without Palace actually giving us an extraordinarily good deal.” - Sandy Powell
“When I was working on La La Land, I wanted it to have a vintage-inspired feeling to it. Early in the movie, there are a few pieces that she wore where I didn’t mind that it was obvious that they were vintage because I think someone who—I did it myself—when you don’t have a lot of money, I used to go to vintage clothing stores and thrift stores and style myself.” -Mary Zophres
“Palace has such a wide range of items, from the most fabulous evening coat, which I used on The Artist, or samples of men’s A-shirts, the tank undershirts from that period. So, of course, I just went there because I figured they have some early samples in different shapes. Whenever I want a prototype shape, I would probably go there first.
An A-shirt would be an example of “extraordinary ordinary clothes” because it’s really just a simple piece of underwear, but the width of the strap or the texture of the knit tells a story.” -Mark Bridges
