Page 10 University Dally Kansan, October 15, 1981
Inside
Costume business really just a put-on
A mannequin wears one of Franczeska Frazier's handmade costumes.
BOB GREENSPAN/Kansan Staff
Franczeska Frazier mends a costume that will be rented for Halloween.
By DIANE MAKOVSKY Staff Reporter
With Halloween just two weeks away, people are beginning to think about costumes, but Franceska Frazier has been thinking of costumes all year, and for many years. Frazier is a costumer.
One of her most often- rented costumes is a gown she made for a dance held in the Kansas Union Ballroom.
"This one I made 40 years ago." Frazier said yesterday of the movie, which goes on to use a cat in the last time. "The plot is ridiculous."
She would have to mend it before she used it again, she said.
FRAZIER LAUGHED as she remembered that dance. Almost no one knew how to polka, she said, so when she and a professor began dancing, the entire dance floor cleared.
And as Frazier and the professor were circulating the floor, a woman in the rafter had made for herself flee and went gliding across the floor.
"In those days you didn't admit to wearing false hair any more than false teeth," she said.
But now, she has boxes of beards, wigs and wiglets.
"I just pick them up when uweener I see them," she said. Her collection includes an Afro wig she found in a parking lot. She washed it and placed it on a mannequin standing in her living room. She said she thought that someone from a clown trumpet she outfitted a few weeks ago might have wanted it, but no one used the costume.
It didn't matter, however. Someone would use it sometime, Frazier said. It was like the blue ballerina costume she had. A man from the clown group wanted it, so Frazier did some alterations. He must have been almost
A SHORTER customer with a rather large waistline was trying to him a costume from "The Rocky Harper Fancy Show."
"They are so delighted when they find something that they can fit into," she said.
However, for unusual sizes, Frazier may have to make special costumes and have the customer buy the
special costumes and have the customer buy the costume The charge for a costume is double what the material costs.
"You get much more wear out of costumes if you rent them," she said.
If there is money involved, people respect the articles they are using more, Frazier said. However, she is not in business to make a profit. Frazier, who is retired, said she must stay within IRS guidelines for retired people.
ago from Washington, where she had moved during World War II.
She moved back to Lawrence a little more than a year
FRAZIER SAID that her Washington apartment building was turned into condominiums and that once she was on the moving truck, where ever she got off, she would be a parent of three. She came back to Lawrence where her son and daughter lived.
Frazier's home at 1447 Massachusetts St., is her workshop. Costumes hang from the ceiling in one room; closets are full of accessories; boxes are full of material and many dresses dressed with current works throughout her place.
There was a black monk's robe for the Renaissance Festival on one mannequin. The man who used the costume was 6-foot-4, but he kept tripping on the hem, so Frazier was shortening it.
"And then the very first thing I hit was the Renaissance Festival," she said. "Actually, it was the second thing, the third."
Frazier was told when she was moving back here that there would be no need for any costumes for time periods before the colonial period, so she gave away five vans full of items, she said.
AND IN BETWEEN she broke her arm when she pulled a nail out of the wall and fell backward.
"Have you ever tried putting a bobbin in with your left band?" she asked.
Bobbins are a problem; Frazier has three sewing machines, so she won't have to change thread so often.
she doesn't have a lot of costumes for children, she said.
An exception was when she collected some size three,
gold cocktail dresses that she made into costumes for three
Then a little girl asked, "Why do all the wise people have to be men?"
So it ended up to be three kings and a queen
"What's that, an old flashlight?" Freakask asked, giggling. Frazier grew up around the Great Lakes area and attended the Chicago Art Institute, where she studied sculpting.
WITH CHILDREN to raise and working full time,
Frazier switched to watercolors because she could finish a picture in one sitting, she said.
"It hurts so bad to begin a piece of sculpture and never have the time to finish it." he said.
But now that Frazier has some time, she gardens and stays busy with her curtailing.
She said that she enjoys working with people who are involved with costumes. She called them "creative women."
She also likes being recognized for her craft.
Her cards say simvli. "Costumes by Franc."
KAW VALLEY DANCE THEATER
Kristin Benjamin Artistic Director
Central Ir High School Auditorium
Saturday Oct.17 8pm Sunday Oct.18 2pm
14th & Massachusetts Lawrence
Lawrence
Adults $3.00
Adults $3.00
Senior Citizens & Students $2.50
Children $2.00
this program is presented in part by the Kansas Arts Commission, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
a federal agency.
a non-profit organization
...