ABSTRACT
Sourcing is a crucial aspect of creating costumes. The fabrics and trims serve as the 'paint' that colors in the lines of the costume. Choosing the materials is as important a decision for costumes as choosing ingredients is for a chef: without the right flavors and quality, the whole product suffers. For a small production, the designer or assistant designer does the shopping. For larger venues, there is often a separate job of 'shopper'. A large production with hundreds of costumes needs several shoppers to source options for all of the pieces. They often divide by genre so no one person has to hold quite so much information in her head-perhaps one shops the men's fabrics, one the women's, and a third buys all of the nonbuilt pieces. This chapter talks about Sarah Bahr (assistant designer), Eduardo Madrid (manager and fabric buyer at B&J Fabrics) and Tim Blacker (purchasing Manager).
