There are many things that happen in the world of textiles and fashion that effect our ability to make costumes. Very few working costumers have the time to constantly cull the news reports to find out this information.

Costumers are dependant on resources available in the retail and wholesale market place. Fashion trends come and go. So do textiles, which also serve the fashion trends. The editor here has spent years watching the market and fashion trends and the government regulations and social trends on an international level in relation to how they effect our abilties to do our job.

There was the year back in the 1970's when the Japanese cornered the cotton market. The reports were that they had so many cotton bales in Japan that they were piled 2 stories high with plastic tarp over them on the docs. It was almost impossible to get muslin, let alone inexpensive muslin to use for costume making. The editor managed to track down a west coast source that was importing from Japan who had a fairly decent price. The ploy succeeded in driving the price ratio up. Muslin has never been a "disposable" since then.

In the mid 1980's the rayon manufacturers severly cut back on the maufacturing of rayon crepe chiffon (in the past, an affordable dance costume staple). The editor spent 3 weeks scrounging the US trying to find enough to make a set of dance costumes. (Finally found some pale green at Britex in San Francisco that could be dyed shades of grey.) The designer would have made a different choice of fabric had she known of the current scarcity. The manufacturers made no secret of the fact that they were deliberately withholding it from the market to drive the cost up. Coincidently, rayon crepe chiffon became a hot-high end fashion fabric within the next 2 years. The price has not come down since then.

Sooooooo........ The Costumer's Eye the News is an ongoing web publication to keep us all appraised of news of this type.