Palace Intrigue: A Rare Look Inside Hollywood’s Legendary Costume House

Strolling through Palace Costume is a bit like stepping into a Tim Burton movie. Everywhere you turn, there’s a surreal riot of outrageous outfits, from over-the-top Beetlejuice -style attire to Ed Wood -ish 1950s dresses to paste jewelry in a rainbow of Pee-Wee tints.

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In fact, a lot of the costumes found in Burton’s movies were sourced from these very racks, along with outfits appearing in hundreds of other films. Forrest Gump , Once Upon a Time in Hollywood , Everything Everywhere All at Once , Austin Powers , The Big Lewbowski , Don’t Worry Darling — they all featured clothing that was pulled from Palace Costume, known among Hollywood stylists as “the Louvre of vintage.”

“It started 60 years ago,” says owner Melody Barnett, as she shuffles through room after room filled with fashion history. “I found a box of Victorian clothes at a swap meet and became a rabid collector.” Barnett opened one of L.A.’s earliest vintage shops during the late 1960s — the storied Crystal Palace on Melrose — then, in 1976, purchased the first of four buildings on Fairfax Avenue that eventually would become her sprawling sartorial empire.

Only costume designers and stylists are normally permitted entry to Palace Costume, and the clothes and accessories on display are solely available for rent by professionals. Fortunately, though, there’s finally a way the rest of us can glimpse inside Barnett’s magic castle: a just-published book, Palace Costume: Inside Hollywood’s Best Kept Fashion Secret , written and photographed by Mimi Haddon. “Palace Costume is a living, breathing entity,” says Haddon, who spent the better part of a decade working on the tome. “It’s a pulsating ode to the art of storytelling through attire.”

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More like an epic saga than an ode. “This floor is turn-of-the-century clothes,” Barnett says as she continues her tour through Palace’s jam-packed halls, where crates of shoes line the walls, purses dangle everywhere, all grouped by style, then period. “Here’s the evening gown room, the sports room, the stylists’ room, the children’s floor, the denim floor — denim changes every year!” she goes on. “It’s hard to believe, but I actually know where everything is.”

This story first appeared in the Sept. 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe .

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