Yesterday I went to the Original Sewing and Quilt Expo. Joe Vecchiarelli of Fashion Supplies, Inc., is one of the vendors and is selling custom-made dress forms. He's worked with a number of actors and singers to fit them for their costumes. He gave a talk about fitting performers for various TV shows, including DWTS where he is currently working.
He measures the performers and builds a dress form for each. Since the stars spend most of their time learning their dances and rehearsing, there isn’t a lot of time for them to spend in fitting so the costumes are fitted to the dress forms and then tweaked as needed. The stars tend to lose weight during the season (at least 2 or 3 lbs a week) so they “de-fluff” the dress forms as they go along.
He told us the stars don’t have a say in what they will wear for performing; the designer decides and a team make the costumes on a short deadline. He said there isn’t time to do a muslin model first; they just drape the fabric to the form and start cutting. Some of the fabric can cost as much as $3,000 a yard and, yes, they have made mistakes with expensive fabrics and had to start over. He said the beading on a costume can be quite heavy (one weighed 80 lbs. when finished), and they work with the dancers during rehearsals so they can practice with the extra weight before the show.
One of his hardest tasks is convincing a star that they aren’t the size they claim to be but are three sizes larger. He told us of one star who, at the beginning of the season when it came time for measuring, insisted she was a size 12 and didn’t need to be measured. When he measured her, she was actually a size 18. She lost weight during the show and went down to a size 14.
After the season is over, the costumes go into cold storage. They might be used again or they might be disassembled and parts used in another costume. It was an interesting talk.
Allison just announced that she and Twitch are expecting a baby.
Super nice to see Joey Fatone in the rave crowd supporting his competition from the 90s 
