Fun With Fabric and Fashion

Steve Propes
MARIA SAENZ Fashion and Costume Design

Think Arabian Nights. At Parkview Village, next door to Jack’s Shoe Repair, where nobody knows who Jack was or is. Look hard enough, you’ll spot the wooden store-front door for Maria Saenz Fashion and Costume Design. If it’s open, more than likely it’s not, her unmitigated devotion to fabric is instantly apparent. Entry is through a multi-ply tunnel of all conceivable textures, colors and lengths, an actual fabric trove of cloth, streamers, trimming and bric-a-brac. Not to mention the several sewing machines that tell you more than you need to know about why Maria Saenz has set up shop.

For Maria, it was either this small shop or a storage unit, and the storage unit isn’t half the fun. That’s right. Fun. That’s one reason Maria Saenz is here. So if your need for a seamstress omits the fun factor or the try-to-create-something she’s never tried before element, she just might not have the time.

Born in El Paso, Texas, after high school graduation, Saenz came here to attend design school. Nine months later, she graduated, then got married. Five years after that, she enrolled at the fashion design school at FIDM. “I took as many classes as I could take.”

Sped up the process. Took two year courses in a year and a half. Graduated in 1979.

Saenz already knew design, how to do clothes and make patterns, “but school helped me to be more confident.” For the past 20 years, she’s had a space at Parkview Village.

“My husband was going to give me a sewing room at home. I’d been sewing for dancers, on and off, it’s a hobby more than a business. I started doing costuming for students at Millikan if they did a play. My husband remodeled the house, but did not give me a sewing room.”

For eight years, she operated in office space over Bodell’s Shoe Store, then co-rented partial space behind Aunt Fannie’s antique store. After four additional years. Aunt Fannie’s closed, so she put her fabric into storage. Meanwhile, the center partitioned a space used by a closed restaurant next to Once Read Books. Half of that space went to expand the bookstore. Maria got the remaining space.

Her fabric comes from the Fabric District in Los Angeles, not far from the famed Fashion District. “I go to the mile-wide area near the Fashion District and the Flower Market known as the Fabric District,” said Maria. “There, you’re allowed to bargain. Most of the fabric I get is from jobbers who have large warehouses. Generally, they resell select fabrics not used by the manufacturers and to the public.

“Fabric is $5 a yard at a local store, retail. It’s a dollar to $1.50 a yard at jobbers. I used to go twice a week. I’d come back with 100 yards of fabric, sometimes at .50 cents a yard.”

There are thousands of fabrics that usually come in rolls. Currently, I’m buying 20 yards about twice a month.”

She avoids retail fabric stores. “At most of the fabric stores in L.A., they sell polyester,” which Maria avoids. “The most valuable exotic fabrics are embroidered with all sorts of things.” Also valuable are silks are very expensive as well as most of the natural fibers, which are more valuable than cotton or rayon.

Maria got a call from a male Spanish dancer asking for help with a costume. “He told some of his dancer friends at Alegria. The owner of Alegria asked me to do some costumes to give it a touch of Spanish flavor.”

She considers some jobs an adventure. Based on her work at Alegria, Tikal, a newly opened Mexican-Indian restaurant asked her to do costuming. Her historical costumes were based on the history of Tikal, a Mayan temple. “I did a lot of research, so many variations, did headpieces worn by Mayan Indians.” When Tikal closed, Maria said, “They had no control over the costumes, which were stolen by the people who worked there.”

“A lot of students know the best thing to do when you’re into dance is to make your own costumes. I end up giving them sewing classes to help them. I enjoy when someone likes to learn about sewing. With performing costumes, they have to last a long while.

“I can work with different materials, feathers, hemp, wooden and crystal beads. Little skirts that look like wraps Indians would wear. I like to interpret hieroglyphics. I like to research my costumes,” said Maria.

 “Most of the customers are people I’ve had for a long while. I like to do things I haven’t done before, something different. Lot of people who come in with problems with costumes. If I can do something better, I will go ahead and take the job.”

steve@beachcomber.news

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