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If you want to buy some fake blood, you have come to the right place.
That’s the story at Manhattan Wardrobe Supply in Chelsea, where the shelves are stocked with many items that help make the magic happen in film, television and theater.
“We have a lot of crazy things. We have a lot of unique products,” store co-owner Tommy Boyer said. Perusing the aisles, there are prosthetic noses, ears and foreheads, fake tattoos and makeup to cover up real ones.
What You Need To Know
- Manhattan Wardrobe Supply is located on West 29th Street in Chelsea. The store offers wardrobe care and hair and makeup supplies, special effects makeup and other items for the film, television and theater industries
- The store was founded in 1998 by two wardrobe supervisors who wanted to create a one-stop shopping experience for others in their industry
- The store also offers items for cosplayers and sneaker painters and restorers
The store, located on the eighth floor of a building on West 29th Street, opened in 1998. Boyer and co-owner Cheryl Kilbourne-Kimpton were wardrobe supervisors for theater, movies and TV shows. They came up with the idea for the store during a late-night film shoot.
“We just started talking, we said, ‘Gosh, what else is there? Because we are getting too old for this, you know, all night long, night after night.’ So we decided to write a business plan, and we did in the back of the wardrobe truck,” Kilbourne-Kimpton said.
The plan was to open a store that provided one-stop shopping for their industry. That includes wardrobe care supplies, hair and makeup supplies, special effects makeup and wig supplies.
The longtime business partners are concerned that their hard work over the years may come to a screeching halt. The strike by film and television writers and actors has drastically impacted their business. They have lost about 60% of it. Plus, they rent a full floor — 6,000 square feet in a commercial building — which isn’t cheap.
(NY1/Roger Clark)
While they support the unions — they are both members of the Theatrical Wardrobe Union themselves — there is no doubt they are feeling the crunch of the strike. They are trying to pivot to make up for the lost business.
“We have many other different audiences, we have Fashion Week, which is big customer of ours, we have cosplayers, so we have Comic Con coming up in October, and we have a lot of cosplayers come here and make their own costumes, and we have Halloween,” Boyer said.
There’s also an area that caters to those into sneaker painting and restoration, which was added over the years. The question is, if all of that will be enough to keep them going, so the dream they hatched 25 years ago can go on for years to come.
Boyer and Kilbourne-Kimpton say many of their regular customers are also union members, working in wardrobe, hair and makeup for film and television, so without production, they are also out of work and struggling as the strike continues.
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