BROADWAY COSTUMES HAVE A LOCAL TOUCH
Look closely at Broadway’s “Anastasia” to see Colorado costume shop Redthreaded
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Despite her painstaking work with Tony-winning designers on Broadway musicals, Cynthia Settje will never win a Tony award. And that’s just fine with her.
“I get a lot of people who say, ‘I can’t wait to see you win a Tony or an Oscar,’ “said Settje, 32. “But that’s for the costume designers, the architects of these shows. I’m the general contractor who oversees the construction, and my stitchers are like the carpenters.”
Settje owns and operates the costume
shop Redthreaded, which she founded in Lafayette after moving to Colorado from North Carolina in 2010. She and her team of five women spend their days sewing costumes and boutique corsets — some of which cost upwards of $5,000 apiece — that are then shipped to Broadway musicals, in New York City and on the road, or around the world to private buyers.
Denver audiences will have a chance to appreciate Redthreaded’s work when “Anastasia” arrives at the Buell Theatre Aug. 7-18. The rich period musical, based on the Oscar-winning, 1997 animated film, requires dozens of elaborate historical costumes that can only be produced by a nationwide team of sewing shops — including Redthreaded. But that’s not all the company does.
With a growing reputation for delivering the goods, on time and to exacting standards, Settje has established herself in a rapidly changing industry that measures success by the inch. We caught up with Settje in Lafayette before “Anastasia’s” Denver run. Q : How long have you been working out of here?
A: We’ve been here four years and just signed our fifth lease. Previously I
worked out of my basement and I thought, “Oh yeah, we’ll be down there for awhile. There’s plenty of space.” Within a year I was like, “Nope! We have to get out. Business is getting too big.” So we moved over here.
Q : Was there a particular job that prompted that?
A: It was the original Broadway production of the (musical comedy) “Something Rotten!” It’s an Elizabethan show, so it’s set in Shakespearean times. The costumes were enormous — big skirts, so much petticoat — and trying to cram them into a basement wasn’t working. Business was also getting to a point where I had to start hiring employees, and that doesn’t work so well in your own house.
Q : How do you f ind Broadway-quality seamstresses in Colorado?
A: If I wanted a shop of 50 people, that would be hard. But at our scale, I don’t have much trouble. There are enough people who have discovered that this is a career path, whether it’s clothes for theater or film, that I’ve been able to find really skilled workers. The University of Colorado in Boulder has a good costume program, and in the summer they have their Colorado Shakespeare Festival. I used to be their costume draper for five seasons and I was able to meet people through that, then hire them afterwards.
Q : When did you get into the industry?
A: In 2010, which wasn’t such a great time for entertainment. Costumers were getting laid off across the country and theaters were closing. So that’s my baseline. Everything past that has gotten better. Funding is coming back, and cosplay has become more mainstream, which has led to wide interest in costuming on the hobbyist side of things. About half of our business is theater and half is historical corsets that we retail to individuals. We’ve seen an incredible increase in sales year-overyear.
Q : Were you always into making costumes?
A: I started in living history in high school and was trying to come up with excuses to make cool dresses. I was volunteering at community theater, and I do go to costume conventions and other events, because that’s my target market. But I genuinely enjoy dressing up and doing elaborate historical hairstyles, so I’m kind of a weirdo in that respect.
Q : A very successful weirdo, it seems.
A: I’ve just learned as I’ve gone. I graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts, which has one of the top programs for costume technology. I didn’t want to design them. I wanted to be the person making the stuff or managing that part of it. When I graduated, I sent a resume and cover letter to about 50 theaters and heard back from none of them, so I was kind of forced to strike out on my own. I started listing stuff on Etsy and people started buying it. But I don’t have investors or anything. I don’t know who would want to invest in this.
Q : People who like money?
A: Well, then they’re in the wrong industry. There’s not a ton of money in costuming, but there’s enough to make the business work. And this is a business that I started in my dorm room, essentially. I came out to Colorado with a nine-week contract for the Shakespeare Festival.
Q : How did you start working for Broadway productions?
A: The first big contracts we had were “Something Rotten!” and “Tuck Everlasting,” both designed by Tony winner Gregg Barnes, who’s a delight. One of his assistants went to school with me, so when they were looking for someone to make some stuff she was like, “Hey, I know this girl out in Colorado.” He was able to see some of our petticoats at a big costume studio in New York, so we never had to provide a test piece to show our quality. And the rest has been word-of-mouth. That’s how small this world is. All of our contracts have come from that.
Q : Do you work directly with the costume designers?
A: Sometimes they’ll fly me out for fittings, but if it’s only for a couple of pieces that doesn’t make sense. For “Anastasia,” we made over 30 full looks for the tour, following the Broadway builds. I’m good friends with the associate costume designer, and “Anastasia’s” head costume designer is Linda Cho, who won a Tony for “Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.” She’s awesome, too.
Q : Is it intimidating working with these big names?
A: For any big Broadway show there are probably 15 to 20 shops like mine making certain sections of the show. We did a lot of chorus costumes for “Anastasia.” Even though we worked on “Anastasia” at breakneck speed, full-time for eight weeks, there were more than a dozen other shops doing the exact same thing.
Q : And they’re spread all across the country?
A: Broadway really struggled at the end of the last decade and fabric shops were going out of business in New York because of rising rents, so it’s starting to shift away from being New York-centric. But certain New York shops will always be there, because you’re not going to have Bette Midler go out to Pennsylvania for a fitting. You need people who can make the beautiful leading lady and leading man costumes right down the road from rehearsals.
Q : What does it feel like seeing your work come to life on stage?
A: It’s really cool. There’s something very rewarding about making good work with your hands, especially in 2019 when so many jobs are ephemeral. But our work — like the costumes for the “Rumor in St. Petersburg” number in the beginning of “Anastasia,” or the Russian military chorus costumes, or some of the kids’ costumes — isn’t going to end up in a museum exhibit. By the end of the run, they’re going to be rough shape, even with nightly repairs. It’s just satisfying to make something manually, which is why I think knitting and crafting have gotten so big. We like to think we’re so much more evolved than everyone who came before us, but in 200 years people will be looking at our T-shirts and jeans and saying, “Really?!”