‘I couldn’t pay the rent anymore’: One of Hollywood’s last costume shops is closing
On a warm summer morning, Ursula Boschet, the iconic Hollywood costume designer, made her way through racks of clothing, brimming from floor to ceiling in the Santa Monica store and workshop that bears her name.
Ursula’s Costumes is a 6,000-square-foot treasure trove filled with a warren of smaller rooms stuffed with petticoats, flapper dresses, pirate outfits, gangsters’ pinstripe suits, nuns’ habits, western wear and Roman legion uniforms. Carmen Miranda headdresses and various hats, military helmets and animal heads line shelves. There is an “animal room,” where their companion bodies reside, and a “period room” boasting historical costumes spanning from the 1100s to the 1700s.
One minute the diminutive 90-year-old — who comes to the shop five days a week from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. — is hoisting a hook-topped stick to pull a shark’s head off a shelf. The next, she produces an elaborately brocaded habit à la Française, the one she calls the “Amadeus,” for inspection, as if it were business as usual.
Sadly, it is not.
After nearly half a century outfitting stars in countless films and television shows as well as civilians for any number of events, Boschet is closing up shop. Earlier this year she began selling off her entire inventory.
For many, the news was another stark reminder that the Hollywood slowdown has claimed yet another institution.
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The city once hosted multiple costume shops but over time numerous challenges — runaway production, online shopping, the pandemic and the dual strikes last summer — have buffeted many of the once-flourishing crafts and small businesses that have long supported the industry.
While Western Costume, the century-old shop in North Hollywood, has long been the industry’s unrivaled wardrobe mecca, Boschet carved out her own distinct place in show business history. She has been on this spot on Wilshire Boulevard for 30 years and in Culver City for 18 years before that.
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But Boschet said the precarious state of the industry — as well as her age, ill health and the absence of someone to take over the business (Her children are uninterested. “My daughter is in her 70s,” she explained) — left her with little choice but to call it a day.
“There was no money coming in,” she said. “I couldn’t pay the rent anymore. And I have bills to pay.”
The British-born actor Kate Beckinsale has patronized Ursula’s Costumes since 2003, when she first walked in with her then 4-year-old daughter, Lily.
“I’m heartbroken,” she said, adding, “Ursula is one of my longest relationships in L.A., including my marriage.”
The shop made Marie Antoinette and Holly Golightly Halloween costumes for Lily. Beckinsale comes in about once a month to dress up and rent costumes for herself, friends and family.
“I’ve watched some things close that I think we’re worse off without,” said Beckinsale. “However, this one cuts the deepest for me. Because dressing up in costumes — that’s like magic from your childhood. And she’s provided that for a really long time.”
Struggling to live in postwar Germany
Born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1934, the daughter of a butcher and a homemaker, Boschet learned dressmaking and tailoring at 14. In 1952, at 18, she married her husband, a barber. With postwar Germany still largely in rubble, she said, the couple struggled to earn a living. “It was just too hard to exist,” she said.
In 1957, they immigrated to Canada. While there she worked at a large sock factory in Toronto. Her job was to close off the top of the socks. “That’s a very delicate procedure, because the machine runs all the time, and you have to get every loop.”
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Four and a half years later, Boschet and her husband decamped to Los Angeles, where she got a job working on various theater productions. She joined the Theatrical Wardrobe Union, which sent her around to the studios.
In 1973, she landed at Disney, which leased a space in what is now called the Culver Studios, primarily making costumes for Disney on Parade. Three years later, when the parade work ended, she decided to launch her own wardrobe and costume business.
Boschet quickly earned a reputation for her incandescent threads.
The walls of her store are covered in framed autographed photos of scores of actors such as Bruce Willis and Jamie Lee Curtis, all addressed to her.
In addition to her craftsmanship, Boschet insists one of her charms is that she never made a fuss over a star. “We treat them like customers.”
For nearly its entire seven-season run, Boschet worked on the 1980s television show “Cagney & Lacey.”
While working on the 1984 film “All of Me,” Boschet said that two of its stars, Steve Martin and Victoria Tennant, met in the wardrobe studio. They later married. “She was really nice, she always called me for her private stuff too.”
Creating hidden suit pockets for Steve Martin
Martin, she recalled, asked her to create hidden suit pockets where he could pull things out for one of his magic acts. In the early 1990s, he appeared as the Great Flydini, who retrieved items such as scarves, eggs and a telephone from the fly in his pants.
When Michael Keaton came to the shop with his little dog after starring in “Batman,” Boschet said she made a miniature Caped Crusader costume for the pooch.
Many of the late-night talk shows asked Boschet to make costumes for their sketch comedy bits. Displaying a Christmas card from Conan O’Brien and his costume team, she laughed about having made him a two-person horse outfit.
“I had to figure it all out myself,” she said. “You don’t have pictures of that stuff. Nobody was on top of me. I had to do all the patterns.”
Ursula’s Costumes became the kind of place where directors came or sent their assistants when they needed a period piece, or inspiration. Here they could source the perfect pair of cowboy chaps, or a medieval hat.
It also became a place where the community came to dress up.
“So many celebrities have come through these doors,” said Kathleen Uris, a costumer who has worked with Boschet for 21 years at the shop. “Arnold [Schwarzenegger] used to sit on the stairs and Maria Shriver was always talking to Ursula,” who made many costumes for their children.
Boschet pulled out a photograph with Michael Jackson and one of her former seamstresses, saying he used to come into the shop with his children. “But he only cared about the masks,” she said.
Over the years, Boschet estimates she’s made more than 100,000 costumes. While she admits that she sometimes becomes forgetful about names and dates, she never forgets a costume. For her, each piece of clothing has its own story.
Pointing to a purple “belly dancer” outfit with gold lamé detailing, Boschet recalled that Jennifer Aniston wore it during an episode of “Friends,” where she indulges Ross’ Princess Leia fantasy. It was inspired by the slave-girl scene with Jabba the Hutt in “Return of the Jedi,” she explained, careful to add, “It is not the same, that’s not allowed.”
“Coming to work with Ursula, I understand I’m coming to a master class. It’s a master class with a genius costumer,” said Uris.
Even as digital effects upended traditional crafts, Boschet said she had always been able to maintain her business.
For many years, during the month of October, the shop was open seven days a week to keep up with Halloween customers. “There would be a line around the block to get in. We had security and fire marshals came to control the in-store capacity,” Uris said.
In addition to film and TV work, Boschet catered to private customers, including a fanciful subset in the city: costume ballgoers.
For years, Boschet outfitted attendees at the annual Labyrinth Masquerade Ball, held at the Biltmore Hotel. First put on in 1997, it was inspired by the costume ball featured in the fantasy film “Labyrinth.”
In 2003, the shop had six seamstresses who worked in the sewing room upstairs.
Runaway production takes a toll
Just a few years later, however, business began falling off as production started moving to Canada and states like Georgia, lured by attractive tax incentives. By 2015, Boschet employed just two seamstresses.
Over time, she branched out, selling commercial premade Halloween costumes; the front of the store is completely stocked with such merchandise.
But, she said, even those sales have taken a dive with customers shopping online for costumes.
Her once-buzzing sewing room that long conjured up magic is now silent and the machines are mostly buried under bolts of fabric. Just one seamstress remains.
Boschet has weathered numerous personal woes: In 2009 her husband died; she survived breast cancer and is currently experiencing health troubles. But she says she never recovered from the COVID-19 shutdown.
She took out a $100,000 loan to keep the store afloat but says she has only been able to service the interest.
“The pandemic really did it. We closed and we opened up again, but there was nothing going on,” Boschet said.
By liquidating her inventory, she said, she hopes she can get out from under her debt.
For many longtime customers, it is inconceivable that one day soon this shop will be just another memory.
Since hearing about the closing, Beckinsale has bought up about 30 costumes.
On a recent afternoon she showed up with a friend and began rummaging through the racks, trying on a Beefeater costume, poodle skirts and tiger and showgirl costumes.
As Beckinsale perused the racks, joking that she planned to wear the Beefeater suit on her upcoming flight to London, Boschet fished out an extravagant Glinda the Good Witch costume.
A few minutes later she brought out Glinda’s oversized wand with a large, sequined star on top to give to Beckinsale.
But Beckinsale declined to take it, telling her, “You should have that, since you actually are Glinda.”
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