Decay Spans Ages : Ventura College’s Prized Collection of Costumes Coming Apart at the Seams

Ventura College’s extensive costume collection, which at 50,000 garments eclipses that of the prestigious drama school at Yale University, is slowly falling victim to moths, dust, age, neglect and a slashed theater budget, drama instructors say.

“It’s a valuable collection, but it’s in danger because there are no funds and personnel to look after it,” said Edward Barron, who heads the college’s performing arts department.

Marlene Reinhart, a part-time costumer hired by the college on a show-by-show basis, said “a lot of things need to be repaired.”

“Take a look at this,” she said, pulling out a man’s black silk faille waistcoat used for Restoration-era comedies. The once-princely coat is frayed at the collar, and its white lining hangs in shreds.

“I wouldn’t dare use it on the stage,” Reinhart lamented. “It would fall apart.”

Treasure-Trove of Clothes

Critics say the college is letting a treasure-trove of period clothes--one of the largest among California colleges--disintegrate. They say the school needs a full-time costumer to inventory the collection, mend the torn items and wash or dry-clean those coated in up to 20 years of dust and grime. The clothes then could be loaned or rented to other schools and community theaters to recoup losses, they say.

College administrators, however, say they’re hamstrung by the lack of funds.

“As far as going through the whole collection . . . there isn’t the time or money for it,” said Diane Moore, director of humanities at Ventura College. “If we have to pay for repairs, that comes out of our instruction and supply account. I don’t see that things are going to change because of the budget situation.”

So costume lovers fear it may be curtains for the older clothes, like the black voile, lace and satin floor-length dress made for “HMS Pinafore”; the hot pink, shamrock green and canary yellow-checked Pierrot suit; the majestic, purple velvet coat whipped up circa 1920 by the Joseph Horne Co. in Pittsburgh, and the dozens of frothy floral, ‘40s dresses that look like original Christian Lacroix designs, but predate the celebrity designer by almost half a century.

Nationwide, costume curators fight continuously to preserve vintage clothes through proper storage, temperature-controlled environments and ventilation.

Hollywood Costumes on Exhibit

“Nothing tells us more about the past or the people who lived in the past than their clothes,” said Edward Maeder, curator of costumes and textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which is in the midst of an exhibit of famous Hollywood costumes.

Los Angeles City College, whose costume collection is as large as Ventura’s thanks to movie-studio donations, boasts a costume maker who maintains the garments, plus two full-time costume design teachers.

At Ventura College, however, the last costumer retired in 1978 and wasn’t replaced. Costume classes, once a staple of the theater arts department, are nonexistent. So is most maintenance. Reinhart says she will occasionally spot an unusually dirty dress and take it home for special cleaning. But she can’t do much to repair the men’s worsted wool suits, many of which she says are perforated with moth holes.

Some observers suggest that school officials may be unaware of the size and importance of the collection. A number of costume professionals in other cities expressed surprise when informed that Ventura College has 50,000 garments.

“Wow, I would say that is significant, especially for a small school,” said Nancy Brennan, costume shop manager at Yale’s School of Drama and Repertory Theater, which has about 20,000 garments.

Removed From Back Lots

The Costume Collection in New York, a nonprofit group that restores and loans out period clothes, has an inventory of more than 50,000 items, but a spokesman says that’s considered a very large collection.

How did Ventura College amass such a remarkable collection?

Theater people credit a single-minded costumer named Virginia Wilkinson.

A graduate of Chicago’s Vogue School of Design, Wilkinson worked in costume design from 1939 until her retirement from Ventura College in 1978. She began on the East Coast but settled with her husband in the county about 1957.

Ventura College built its theater in 1964 and, shortly thereafter, Wilkinson, who “collected fashion books like mad,” began forging the college collection from sheer will, hard labor and whatever funds she could wheedle from school officials.

Old Sewing Machines

Costumes for the first show, the Christmas-themed “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” were constructed on her dining room table, recalls the 71-year-old Wilkinson. But she soon was teaching costuming classes at Ventura College, laboring with her students over old-fashioned sewing machines to design that season’s productions.

“Our aim was to build up a series of period things. We developed a good-sized wardrobe of Elizabethan, Shakespearean,” she said.

Wilkinson also was bullish on kimonos and fashioned a number of elaborately embroidered robes on vibrant silk fabric. Among her personal favorites were the costumes she created for the drama “Lady Precious Stream,” a Chinese play set in feudal days. She drew inspiration for the design from a book on Chinese opera--one of many that lined her study.

But life upstaged drama right before dress rehearsal when one of the female leads dropped out and later committed suicide, Wilkinson said. From then on, from time to time, students would claim to have seen a ghost of the Chinese character standing in the wings or flitting around the theater department.

Wilkinson herself was too busy to see ghosts, although she admits to seeing double sometimes after too many frenetic, 18-hour days bent over the sewing machine preparing for opening night.

‘Museum-Quality Stuff’

Often, elaborate musicals required that she design as many as 150 costumes. Donations brought in many more family heirloom clothes, items from the late 1800s and early 1900s that were “museum-quality stuff,” Wilkinson said. Others donated fox, beaver and mink furs. Thrift shops were raided for last-minute necessities.

Plus, “I was a pack rat; I saved everything,” Wilkinson said. She also led classes in making jewelry and hats, including pillboxes, broad-rims and netted, plumed, fruit-laden fantasies.

Today, Wilkinson, who lives on a hillside above Ventura College, is afraid to think about what has become of her once-proud collection, which she claims to have left in perfect, catalogued order when she retired.

Reinhart says that the inventory record has disappeared and that, when she first arrived about five years ago, silk dresses hung in puddles on the floor of the storage room and other outfits had to be junked because they fell apart to the touch.

As Reinhart recently put the finishing touches on costumes for the college’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” which is set in turn-of-the-century Sweden, she said she was harried and frustrated.

But no more so than Wilkinson, who says without much conviction:

“I hope somebody will move in with a knowledge of costuming and put it in order. A lot of money and a lot of years of study went into that collection.”