By Ed Avis
Christy Hutchinson clearly remembers the day she decided that costuming would be her life’s work.
“I grew up in an extremely small, rural town in Alberta,” says Hutchinson, owner of new NCA member Theatre Garage in Edmonton, Alberta. “We didn’t have a ton of arts outlets, but every Christmas break we would come up to Edmonton. During that trip when I was 9 or 10, we saw Phantom of the Opera. That changed my life. I said, ‘That’s it, that’s my life.’”
Christy Hutchinson
Christy Hutchinson
Hutchinson taught herself to sew, and when she was a little older, she got a job at local car museum that needed someone to create outfits for the volunteers. She solidified her skills at Red Deer College, where she majored in costume cutting and construction.
By 2009 she was working as a dresser for The Citadel Theatre in Edmonton and did some sewing on the side for a well-known local costume shop called Shirley Potter’s. But Hutchinson had another idea brewing: She and a fellow theater technician, Tessa Stamp, wanted to start a business to sell their costume and puppet creations. They envisioned getting a small storefront to work from.
That plan was taking shape when the situation suddenly changed: Shirley Potter’s, which had collection of costumes that had been growing since the 1960s, announced they were going out of business.
“We had zero money, but we were able to maneuver and convince a bunch of lawyers that we could take over the collection,” Hutchinson says. “I still don’t know how we did it, but we did. It was basically a big warehouse that had been left as quite a mess, but I knew the value there. Getting a good rental stock takes decades to build.”
That vast collection became the core of the new business, which Hutchinson and Stamp named Theatre Garage. The women, who both still had to work their regular jobs, spent every spare minute building the business. As it succeeded they moved to larger quarters, until about seven years ago they settled in their current location, which is large enough to accommodate costume rentals, makeup counters, wigs, hats and accessories. The space also is big enough to include a fabric and notion shop and a professional sewing space.
Today the store is a key player in the theatre scene in Edmonton. Not only does Theatre Garage supply costumes for large and small productions in the area, but it also provides employment for many technicians when they’re not working on shows.
“Pretty much all of my fulltime employees are from theater and film,” says Hutchinson, who became the sole owner of the business in 2015 when Stamp returned to fulltime work in theater. “They like it here because they get to do creative work but it’s stable. And then when we do a show, they get to hop over and be a tech. I’m able to let them do their thing.”
Because Theatre Garage employs skilled costume technicians and has a fabric store as part of the business, everything is created on-site. The collection that Hutchinson and Stamp acquired almost a dozen years ago continues to expand.
Innovative Programs
Theatre Garage supplements its revenue with several innovative programs. For example, around Halloween they offer a “Costume Zombification” program.
“People drop off a bag of clothing items and we make it into a theater-quality zombie costume,” Hutchinson says, explaining that the resulting zombie-wear can be washed and worn over and over, in case the zombie in question has more than one outing planned. “It’s been a pretty steady thing for us.”
Another revenue-enhancer for Theatre Garage is a series of workshops on theater skills ranging from make-up artistry to scenic painting to costume creation. Because Hutchinson is so well connected to the local theater scene, she is able to recruit top technicians as instructors.
“These are workshops for the average person, not master classes,” she says. “We charge for all of them and I pay my instructors quite well, because really a major attraction of the workshops is the high quality.”
The workshops have gone virtual due to Covid restrictions, and that has cut revenue in half. Some courses simply can’t be done well virtually, and Hutchinson does not want customers feeling dissatisfied.
“We can’t wait to get back to in-person and do them properly,” she says. “And also, after the workshops the students go into the store and shop. With the virtual workshops I give the students an online coupon, but that’s totally not the same as going into the store with the teacher after a workshop.”
How does Hutchinson envision the business post-Covid? “We’re constantly changing and evolving,” she says. “Right now we’re trying to change our policies to be more eco-friendly; we’re working hard on that. But fundamentally I just want to keep everyone employed. I’m always looking for new work and new projects and whatever is just around the corner.”