Licensing, gaming brands and the importance of adaptive costumes: Ed Avis, executive director of the NCA (National Costume Association) spoke to Tara Hefter, general manager of Disguise, about costume design and the importance of a core portfolio in 2020.
Ed: How does Disguise develop its costumes?
Tara: “About 95% of our costumes are licensed; we don’t pursue generic costumes. We get the licenses several ways. Sometimes the brand owner just goes with the incumbent – for example, we’ve been a Disney partner for 30 years. Sometimes it’s a bidding process. Sometimes it’s just who gets to the brand owner first.
Gaming is a focus of ours. We received the rights to Nintendo costumes in 2013 and it’s grown from there. We now have Pokemon, Minecraft, Halo and a lot of niche games, too. We’ll look at a game and ask, ‘Does this make sense for our portfolio?’ That has worked out well for us because gaming is significantly up, and Covid has increased it even more. When kids, and even adults, play a game they’re into that brand every day, whereas with a movie you’re not necessarily living it every day.”
Ed: How do you design the costumes?
Tara: “Some of them are very literal – we find the most popular and most iconic character and create the costume for that. Especially for the younger ages. For example, in Mario Brothers, Mario and Luigi and the key characters. Tweens and adults look for more unique character costumes, more obscure characters. They might look for different versions of the Mario character, so we might be able to extend the brand that way.
We start out with a sketch and fabric swatches and move on to a sample. If it’s an exclusive for a retailer we have to get approvals from them. It’s a back-and-forth process. Then we involve the pattern makers. We’ll probably start working on 2022 costumes in November.”
Ed: What’s been popular this year?
Tara: “In addition to Trolls, Frozen continues to be strong. On the gaming side, Nintendo and Minecraft are projected to do well. Power Rangers always hits – some brands always do well.
We worked closely with Disney on adaptive costumes this year, and that has gotten a lot of pick-up and response. The adaptive Incredibles Car and Cinderella Carriage are available now and we’ll continue to expand that line.”
