Oregon Shakespeare Festival sells its’ old costumes to fans

Talent, Ore.- Today has been a big day for fans of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

It’s an event that happens every four years and it gives fans the opportunity to buy their favorite things that they’ve seen onstage. And after a season with 11 shows, every year for four years that’s a lot of pieces.

So how does this process work? For that you have to ask Bruce Walden, the Costume Department
Assistant. He helps to supervise the costumes that are housed in the OSF warehouse in Talent. It’s 72,000 square feet of fabric, stages, and sets.

“We have 11 shows during the season. Everything then comes to us in the warehouse where we process things and then we either decide that its going to be useable for rentals or it’s going into storage and then we’ll eventually sell it at a sale like this,” Walden says.

And even though the items may not be in tip top shape, Walden says that the used costumes still have purpose. Especially for Halloween!

The items are priced across the board from $5.00 to the most expensive at $200.00. And while those who run the festival wont know exactly how much they’ve made until Monday they do know
they had quite a bit for sale. Thousands and thousands of pieces according to Walden.

It appears the 2017 sale will be bringing in a lot of cash.

But for costume assistant Bruce Walden the best part isn’t how much they make, it’s seeing how the patrons react at the sale.

“It’s fun to watch people just clamor over things because they’re finding things possibly from one of their favorite actors from the stages and they get really excited.”

The few clothes and accessories that weren’t bought today will be donated to theaters and local schools. And the next Oregon Shakespeare Fesitval costume sale will be in 2021.

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