Stylish castoffs from the casts
MIKE CONNOR was laughing as he paid the checkout clerk. He’d just spent a ridiculously low $71 for nine shirts and a sweater--one of them Armani, two of them Hugo Boss, all of them barely, if ever, worn.
Connor, 33, is a regular shopper at It’s a Wrap, a clothing store in Burbank that inhabits a unique niche in the Hollywood market: It sells secondhand wardrobe items from television shows and movies.
“I can look really good for a tenth of the price,” said Connor, a singer and actor who goes there twice a month to find designer duds at bargain-basement prices.
Judging by the racks of cut-rate jackets and skirts on the sidewalk, It’s a Wrap looks like pretty much any other secondhand clothing store from the outside.
But step inside, and you’ll see rows and rows of today’s top fashions, all of them marked with coded tags indicating from which studio they came. Warner Bros., New Line Cinema, HBO, CBS, Disney. The list of production houses and their programs goes on and on, from “7th Heaven” and “General Hospital” to “Charmed” and “All My Children.”
“We don’t hide it from customers. They know what it is,” said Janet Dion, the store’s founder and owner. “It’s only the hot shows that we have to be careful with.”
“Friends,” for example, isn’t labeled with the show’s name, only the studio. That’s to prevent shoppers from reselling items on EBay for more money. After the holidays, Dion said, she’ll be selling wardrobe from “Austin Powers,” but New Line asked that she refrain from specifying that on the tags.
Because filming in the city is year-round, merchandise changes constantly. But unlike in regular stores, the clothes don’t always match the season. Pawing through the racks one afternoon, shoppers found cashmere sweaters and knit caps within arm’s reach of the miniskirts.
“They could go to Australia and make a surfing movie, and we’ll get [the swimsuits] in February,” said Dion, 66, modestly dressed except for her rhinestone-rimmed glasses.
Men’s sizes run the gamut, but because so many female actresses are slender and petite, women’s items can run small.
Still, larger sizes can be found -- on the racks of size 10 and 12 suits worn by talk show host Sally Jesse Raphael, for example, or among the sweaters and jackets.
Clothing from television shows is almost always in better condition than clothing that comes from movies, Dion said. “TV is just fashion shows galore. It’s the films. Sometimes we can’t sell anything if it’s very violent.”
If clothes come to her with bullet holes and bloodstains, she tosses them out. That’s only 10% to 15% of what she gets, however.
Most items are either gently used or were never worn, having been given to the studios by clothing manufacturers who want the free publicity. With “Baywatch,” Dion said, “you can’t imagine the bathing suits they had but never used. There were hundreds of them.”
All of the items Dion sells are on consignment from the studios, and Dion takes a percentage of the sale. Still, some pieces are not available to customers--the “Saturday Night Live” coneheads, for example, or the iconic red swimsuit that made Pamela Anderson a star. That’s displayed in a glass case on the wall, alongside Brad Pitt’s tie from “Seven” and Mel Gibson’s leather bomber jacket from “Forever Young.”
Why? “That’s a personal thing.”
Dion, who runs the shop with her daughter and son-in-law, founded the store in 1981. “I thought if we could find a way to sell wardrobe, it would be a nice thing because it wouldn’t be yucky old used clothes. It would be something that the middle-class girl could buy with dignity.”
Middle-class girls like Adrienne Gee, a 28-year-old from Burbank who was shopping with her daughter for “stuff to wear around the house.”
“I’m a mom, so I get a lot of stains and spots. I [got] this last time I was here,” she said, pulling on the strap of a sexy white tank top. “I could go to Mervyn’s and it’s $8 or $10, but with this I’m not worried about it. I paid a dollar.”
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It’s a Wrap
What: It’s a Wrap Production Wardrobe
Where: 3315 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank
When: 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Mondays-Fridays; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays.
Info: (818) 567-7366 or www.movieclothes.com
