While you may have never heard of John Kristiansen New York, you’ve definitely heard of the Broadway musicals they’ve costumed: Cats, Frozen, and the new musical Six, which was scheduled to open on March 12th, 2020, the day Broadway shut down.
"We were getting ready for opening night," Kristiansen said. "Every machine was filled, every table was filled, people were doubled up. It was very busy."
Then Gov. Andrew Cuomo made his PAUSE announcement, and like that, they were closed.
John Kristiansen is one of the largest costume builders in the city — housed in the Garment District’s Cinderella building, it’s fittingly an airy wonderland of treasures, with natural light streaming through the large windows and silky fabrics draped alongside sequined cloth. Broadway show posters are everywhere. Normally, there are 52 employees crowded together, but the company had to lay them all off in March. At first, like everyone, they thought it was only for a few weeks. But then, another announcement came, and another: Broadway wouldn’t reopen until well into 2021, at the earliest.
“It was really a moment of, what are we going to do? Are we going to close? We put everything in storage. Do we walk away?” said Brian Blythe — Kristiansen’s life partner and the business manager of John Kristiansen New York.
They didn’t walk away, and they realized they were not alone. All through the city, small businesses dependent on Broadway and the theater industry were trying to figure out how they would stay afloat. Together, they’re part of a very specialized ecosystem, where, say, one company paints fabric, and another puts pleats in that fabric, and another creates the flowers that get stitched on to that fabric, before finally going to a costume builder, which engineers the costumes from a designer sketch.
The artisans who build costumes are making them specialized for specific actors, designed for performers to dance and sweat in them eight times a week. They need to be fit for this job, and must be able to be taken on and off quickly, while still looking astonishing from the balcony. Blythe and Kristiansen say that if they lose their artisans, because they find jobs in another industry or because they move out of state, then they’ll be hard to replace without significant training.
So the two men joined with 54 other small businesses to found the Costume Industry Coalition. They are clear about what they need: money. Blythe wants a bailout from the government — $3 million to erase the debt of these small shops.
Kevin McCollum, one of the producers for Six and now a consulting member of the coalition, says the new Save Our Stages Act is crucial because it provides about $15 billion in relief for theaters and other entertainment venues across the country. But it doesn’t help the costume industry shops, or those that make prosthetics for actors, or build sets or props.
“These are true artists. And they are the most vulnerable,” McCullum said. “Sure, I guess you could say, let's move everyone out of the city... but I think we want the artists to be able to afford and work and live in New York City.”
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis says that in 2017 (the latest figures they have available) the arts and culture sector was contributing about $877 billion dollars to the GDP, around 4.5 percent. In New York State, the sector contributes over 7 percent of the GDP.
“We have to, I think in this country, stop talking about arts and culture as something that is warm, fuzzy and wonderful for the human soul,” Blythe said, ”and start talking about it as the economic driver that it actually is.”
So far, John Kristiansen New York has a landlord who’s working with them, to try to keep them from closing, but some have already given up, and theaters likely won’t reopen until late 2021. That’s a long time for these small shops to stay afloat, and many are struggling.
A few avenues over is another costume business that’s barely hanging on. At Vogue Too, Gigi Clark wended her way through aisles crowded with vintage sewing and embroidery machines, which they cannibalize for parts. Here, they do pleating, embroidery, and other specialty work, and Clark said that business was doing well before COVID, but once the pandemic hit, they laid off six employees; the rest sometimes only work half days.
“It’s a matter of survival,” she said.
She looked around at the racks of cloth, at the handful of men at machines. “Broadway is an institution, Broadway is the lifeblood of the city in many, many ways and you're not just talking about the people on the stage — it’s the craftsmen behind it, the lighting, the techs, the people that build the sets. There's a huge, huge community that's involved with that and to have them like this, out of business...” she trailed off. “I’m tearing up. It’s really very, very disheartening, it’s very hard.”
