Behind the Seams

My friend Shelby emailed me from Los Angeles days before the opening of Cher's new tour. He had an interesting behind-the-scenes story as follows:

The building next to my apartment building makes costumes for TV, film and stage. Normally they work M-F 8-5pm. Yet, you know when they have a BIG deadline when the workers are coming in on Saturday & Sunday and work late into ALL evenings.

Which has been happening the past 2-3 weeks. And this time around…there have been A LOT of limos, chauffeured SUVs. Just parked in front of our building for hours. Hours. I knew they had to be working on someone HUGE. My bedroom window [left] looks right on to their parking lot. [Her small sons], Sawyer and Blake have spent quite some time watching the people come and go and the limos just sit there. We all get bored with it all because we never see any “important” people get in or out.

Yet, I knew I was going to find out who the client was because one of the employees has a son Sawyer’s age and we go to the same daycare, are actually in the same class. I saw her this morning and asked, “So who is the big client you are working on now?”  She replied, “Cher.” My face froze.  I was not expecting that. At all. Cher. Wow. She said Cher has been in and out several times. I asked what she was like, “small?  Nice?” She said, “She is average sized and she is whishy-washy on what she wants.” And that is a problem when you are making costumes for tour that starts next week.

On Tuesday they had a last fitting of the costumes that got bungled. For some reason they flew the costumes and fitters on a commercial airline and not together…so [US Airport Security] TSA held back the costumes. The fitters got to Phoenix at 12pm. The costumes got there at 5pm. 

That will not happen again…so the costumes are leaving TODAY at 3pm on a  chartered flight.

This is all very interesting in light of the comments Cher made opening night, that she had a meltdown crying jag before the show and nothing fit.