The Loyola costume shop has taken out their sewing kits to stitch together costumes perfect for the upcoming spooky season to be sold at their annual Bootique Sale on Oct. 27.
Psychology senior Adele Colson, who helped organize the event this year, said she is excited for the department’s creations that will be appearing this year and what the sale will do for the costume shop.
“We take a lot of old pieces we aren’t using or things donated by local theater companies and we upcycle them into costumes we can sell. And then all of that raises money for the costume shop, which is connected with the theater arts and dance department,” she said.
The Bootique sale consists of items that students who work in the shop have complete control over designing and creating.
“Unlike a show where you have to do something to a set standard, the Bootique sale is whatever we want. So we see a piece and then it’s just our vision of what we think we could do with that piece,” Colson said.
Theater arts senior and designer for the sale, Roger Bouche, said he enjoys the creativity allowed through designing for the sale.
“It’s very important because it gives us a lot of creative freedom more than we would usually get per se in production,” Bouche said.
Bouche said the sale will have a wide variety of costumes from the different designers’ imagination as they create new and unique concepts.
“We can turn (the costumes) into whatever we want so the concept is really completely up to us. I mean there’s some costumes that are based off of pop-culture references and then there’s some that we just make up,” Bouche said.
Unlike in previous years, Colson said that the upcoming sale will have more inclusive costume choices in order to expand the students they can reach.
“We have from extra small to two extra large. So we have a large range of sizes. That’s something we have been working on. In the past, there just hasn’t been enough size inclusivity,” Colson said. “I think clothing is something that is very expressive and unique and individual. We are trying to build a community that cultivates that.”
Grace Smith, senior theater arts major and a designer for the sale, said the costume shop will also be sticking to using sustainable materials.
“We’ve just been taking pre-existing pieces and using our imagination for what to create,” Smith said.
Both Smith and Bouche see the Loyno Costume Shop as an essential part of Loyola’s campus, and one definitely worth supporting through the sale.
Colson encouraged students to come to the sale. She said that the costumes will be available right in time for Halloween, she said.
“Students who come to the sale are gonna get handmade, beautiful costumes for fifty dollars and under,” Colson said.
by Kloe Witt