Just off the F train stop at 21st Street in Queens, in a nondescript building, is the home of one of Broadway’s longest-operating costume shops. Dozens of show posters line the entrance hallway — all productions for which the shop built the costumes. Then, around a corner, the corridor opens to a massive factory-like floor filled with beaders, weavers, fabric-painters, dyers, sewers and more, each fabricating pieces of costumes for Broadway’s “Aladdin,” “Hamilton” and “The Lion King” and a cruise-ship revue — and that’s just on the day this writer visited.
Since 1980, Parsons-Meares has been custom manufacturing the physical costumes for legendary Broadway, ballet, opera, television and film productions. “We were the shop that ‘Cats’ built,” said Sally Ann Parsons, who founded Parsons-Meares with her late husband, James Meares.
Indeed, Parsons-Meares built the creations for “Cats,” conceived by designer John Napier, who went on to win a Tony Award for his costume design of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. And the consistent replenishment “Cats” has required since (given 18 years of its original Main Stem run and multiple tours) gave a lot of juice to Parsons’ operation.
The company went on to build costumes for behemoths like “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Seussical” and “Starlight Express” and 46 other Main Stem shows. Pieces from “The Lion King” and “Spiderman - Turn Off the Dark” built by Parsons-Meares have been inducted into the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and, in 2016, Parsons was the first costume maker to receive a Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre. And these are only the theatrical accomplishments. Parsons-Meares has crafted costumes for Ringling Brothers and Siegfried & Roy, Marvel Studios and the Metropolitan Opera and special clients like Elton John and Bette Midler. The list goes on. The business’ creations in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” won an Oscar for costume design, conceived by designer Eiko Ishioka and realized by Parsons-Meares.
Yet, after the COVID-19 pandemic, around when Parsons turned 80, she intended to close.
“We were trying to talk [her] out of it,” said Kenneth Mooney, who started his career as a first hand assistant under Parsons and ascended in the costume world to a position with Feld Entertainment. “Feld is really dependent on Sally for a lot of very specific character stuff, [like]
‘Moana’’s Maui [for Disney on Ice], that particular character was built [at Parsons-Meares],” Mooney explained. “We didn’t want to lose that.” And, having begun his career with Parsons-Meares, it was personal. Then came a cold call from Jean François Rochefort, the owner of a costume-building studio in Montreal. He was looking to expand to the United States and Broadway, and Parsons-Meares caught his eye.
