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Complicated

A few days ago I was up at the studio and while taking a short break I started poking through my stashes. I have many stashes at the studio: A yarn stash, a quilting fabric stash, a button stash, a non-quilting fabric scraps stash and a trim stash - the latter two accumulated over the years when I used to sew and the years I used to work in theatre.

I ran across a length of rather ugly brown ribbon in my trim stash which was pinned to a note. The note (written in pencil) said:

(Some designer) would like a hair ribbon for (some actress) for (some play). Please talk to her about how she would like it made. I will check with Clayton about her hair. - Anne.

Now, you may have noticed that no less than FOUR PEOPLE are now involved in the making of what is essentially piece of ribbon tied onto some girl's head - a design assistant who wrote the note, the designer, Clayton, the wigmaker/hairdresser and me, the milliner. There might even be five people involved if you consider that perhaps someone needed to dye the ribbon to match a costume. There will possibly be a 15-minute fitting involved which will require the actress being there also, so there's six people. Then once we see what the ribbon has to look like, I have to cut it up into bits, sew it back together to look like it was hand tied, put special little thread loops on it so it can be bobby-pinned to her hair, or possibly even a wire comb, and the whole thing ends up costing maybe $100.

Now, seeing as 13 years later this ribbon is still intact in my trim box, it obviously never got turned into the desired object, so not recalling the outcome, I'm left to ponder the possibilities: a) the whole idea was abandoned, b) a different piece of ribbon got chosen/dyed (costing more time and effort) or c) someone, in a fit of sanity, decided they would just tie a fricking bow on her head when they dressed her hair for every performance.

But the whole thing just served to remind me why I don't work in theatre any more: this sort of thing drives me nuts!

Not that I don't often run across this sort of over-complication in my present line of work.

Filed under General, Mar 5, 2008
 

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