Buyers go head over heels at HGO’s rummage sale
The rack of wedding dresses was raided first — $50 each.
Then the meticulously hand-stitched garments with sequins, capes and high bodices that could spice up outfits for Halloween or the Texas Renaissance Festival went.
Finally, the sneakers, button-down polyester shirts and run-of-the-mill trousers left the building for two quarters each.
Roughly 2,000 people sifted through decades of costumes and props during a spectacular warehouse rummage sale staged by the Houston Grand Opera on Saturday.
In the end, about 7,500 items were sold for an estimated profit of $50,000, according to Houston Grand Opera managing director Perryn Leech.
Still, the sell-off cleared less than onefourth of the company’s 120,000-square-foot warehouse in the East End.
“We basically ran out of space for costume storage. We have new shows coming in all the time, so this freed up some space and enables us to bring new stuff in,” Leech explained. “It’s been crazy, but it’s been great and we’ve managed to get rid of pretty much everything we need to get rid of.”
Since its founding in 1955, the Houston Grand Opera has grown from a regional arts organization to an internationally renowned company. Over the decades, there have been smaller liquidation sales, but nothing close to Saturday when the nonprofit flung open the warehouse doors to pieces of its performance history from the last 30 years.
Color-coded tables, boxes and racks priced most items from 50 cents to $5 each.
HGO staff had priority access, followed by invitees from other theater companies, schools and nonprofits. The general public was welcomed before the scheduled opening at noon because the queue was getting long,
Leech said.
Chrissie Cutler, theater director at Spring Woods High School, emerged from the dim cavern with clothes on hangers piled up on her left arm while 14-year-old daughter, Stormy Cutler, dangled several pairs of men’s shoes from their strings.
The grand total for their haul was $24.
“There’s a lot of schools and smaller theater companies and people that can’t afford to do their own costuming,” Chrissie Cutler said. “For them to be able to come here and get stuff that’s like really, really, professionally wellmade — that they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise — is just fantastic.”
Other thespians who scored items included Emma Singleton and Isabella Eleuterius, seniors at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Each paid $5.
“I’m a costume designer at our high school,” said Eleuterius, 17, who found shirts and a hat from the early 1980s and plans to study technical theater in college. “I wanted to see if there was any old period stuff I could find, but most of the stuff had been gone through.”
Singleton, 18, bought two shirts along with floral drawstring pants used in the Houston Grand Opera’s 1987 premier of “Nixon in China.” (The company will present a reinterpretation in January for the production’s 30th anniversary.)
“I just like weird clothes,” the actor said.
Vivian Williams of Austin was visiting the Bayou City and saw a news report about the sale. She expected to find something to wear to the Renaissance festival, but nothing she came across was her size. Still, she did not leave empty-handed.
“I am a shoe lover. I currently have 676 shoes now,” counting through to the three pairs of colored sneakers under her arm. “Fifty cents apiece.”
By early afternoon, the warehouse’s main costume room, which Leech described as “heaving, busted, completely full to the gills,” had cleared-out areas on some of its up-tothe-ceiling racks.
“We’ve managed to create some space,” he said, with a sigh of great professional relief.