Palace Costume: Inside Hollywood’s Best Kept Fashion Secret

Palace Costume is a behind-the-scenes glimpse into Palace Costume & Prop Co., an exclusive Los Angeles film-industry haven of dresses, gowns, garments, accessories, props, and jewelry featured in countless movies for more than fifty years.

Envisioned and curated by owner Melody Barnett, Palace Costume is a 30,000-square-foot treasure trove of over half a million pieces and a beloved and legendary collection exclusively for costumers, stylists, and designers. Barnett’s journey in retro clothing is movie-worthy itself. Her first boutique in Los Angeles in the early 1970s attracted the likes of Diana Ross and Joni Mitchell and many other legends from the era. This inspired her to transition the business into a to-the-trade-only rental service enabling her to hold onto and care for these vintage gems. Since then, hundreds of classic films have featured clothing from Palace over the years, including Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, and The Godfather, to name just a few.

Interviews by Mimi Haddon with more than a dozen Academy Award-winning costume designers are featured here with corresponding film stills that highlight the clothing and accessories they selected from Palace. Acclaimed designers such as Sandy Powell (Carol, The Aviator, Shakespeare in Love), Ruth E. Carter (Black Panther, Malcolm X, Frankie and Alice), Arianne Phillips (Once upon a Time in Hollywood, A Single Man, W.E.), Shirley Kurata (Everything Everywhere All at Once), and Mary Zophres (La La Land, Babylon, True Grit) and Mark Bridges (Boogie Nights, Licorice Pizza) each share insightful anecdotes about the importance of Palace Costume as their go-to creative resource, especially for historic period films.

Los Angeles-based photographer Mimi Haddon has been artfully photographing the vintage gems at Palace Costume for many years. Over 300 of her stunning, stylized, and saturated images are featured in this visually comprehensive and delightful celebration of this one-of-a-kind archive. This inspirational look-book is sure to delight a wide audience, including vintage-clothing enthusiasts, fashionistas, costume designers, stylists, and cinephiles.

Mimi Haddon is a Los Angeles-based photographer, fiber artist, professor of photography at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM), and art department chair at New Roads School. Her clients include Disney, Mattel, Getty Images, and the New Yorker. Her work has been featured in Communication Arts and the New York Times.