“It”™s a little mess in here,” said Yon Yuh Zweibon, offering an apology for her office without walls and a cluttered scattering of chairs in her Beyond Costume shop in Yonkers.
“A little mess?” said an employee at a work table, laughing at her understating boss.
At Beyond Costumes, a 22,000-square-foot brick-warehouse spectacle of costumed fashions, from vintage Julius Caesar to vintage Marie Antoinette to vintage Elvis Presley, the phone has been ringing off the hook as Halloween approaches.
On a recent Monday, when Zweibon”™s shop on a former factory floor of the Alexander Smith Carpet Mills at 530 Nepperhan Ave. usually is closed, 24 calls piled up on the answering machine as the owner, tailor”™s tape measure draped around her neck, tended to a steady stream of retail customers putting together their Halloween outfits.
“Right now, there”™s lot of high-end activity from New York City,” said Zweibon, who has supplied costumes to ABC shows and props for the network”™s new series, “666 Park Avenue.” New York City”™s show producers and celebrities increasingly travel to Yonkers, or dispatch couriers, to rent from the slight-framed costumer since her purchase last summer of the Broadway-quality inventory of Creative Costume Co. in Manhattan.
With the sale of Creative Costume”™s stock, “There are no more professional New York City rental shops ”“ none,” said Zweibon, who over 12 years has built an inventory of 20,000 costumes. The Creative Costume acquisition added about 2,500 high-end pieces to her collection, she said.
“Ten trucks started coming in on Aug. 2” with the theatrical haul from Manhattan, Zweibon said. She has hired one full-time and one part-time employee from Creative Costume “because they know the stock.”
“We just sent something down to Ivanka Trump”™s husband,” said the native of South Korea and longtime Ardsley resident. “They”™re having a cape party. He”™s going to be Batman.”
“We”™re taking pictures and sending things to Rachel Ray too” as Halloween costume ideas for the cooking personality”™s television show.
Then there was the long, exasperating call from production staff for a late-night network talk show whose host resides in Westchester County.
“We found Mrs. Lincoln for a big guy” ”“ a Mrs. Lincoln costume, no small achievement, Zweibon said ”“ but the talk-show rep was not trusting the costumer”™s measuring skills. Over the phone she instructed Zweibon to lay a tape measure beside the costume and photograph it. The harried owner of Beyond Costumes abruptly ended the call.
“They”™ll call back today,” said the president of the largest privately owned costume shop in metropolitan New York. “The higher end it goes, it”™s definitely more demanding.”
Zweibon finds running a small “art business” more demanding than the business of real estate financing and accounting in which she formerly worked. A certified public accountant, she has a master”™s degree in finance from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. For several years she structured real estate deals for a developer of rehabilitated properties.
“This is almost more challenging than structuring $20 million deals,” said Zweibon, who was in the process of a divorce when she bought Westchester Costume rentals and left a job in residential real estate in 2002. She moved the business from its Yoho lofts space at 540 Nepperhan Ave. to its current location eight years ago.
“It just kind of started growing,” she said. “I really didn”™t know the retail business or the costuming business. It was a really hard financial struggle, but I made it.”
Zweibon said her company has picked up most Westchester schools as customers with large costuming needs for their musical theater productions. The busy show season usually runs from February through May, though Zweibon and her four employees this month are juggling Halloween retail business with a looming Nov. 2 deadline to deliver some 60 costumes for a “Guys and Dolls” production at Rye Middle School.
“We could have 100 costumes for one show,””™ Zweibon said. “Over a 10-year period, we”™ve gotten pretty strong at putting something like that together.”
Zweibon is directly engaged in all aspects of the business, from costume design to the more onerous bookkeeping. Recently she was awake at 3 a.m. completing a business tax return to meet an Oct. 15 deadline.
“I try not to advertise because it costs so much money,” she said. “It”™s an art business but I can make this thing grow because of all the things I do.”
With a collection that combines her recent acquisition with an already large costume inventory, Beyond Costumes has become “the shop” for independent filmmakers and show producers in Brooklyn and Manhattan, she said. Zweibon sees her small business as part of a “movement to get art businesses coming up” to open in Yonkers.
Altman Lighting, Sound Associates and Hudson Scenic Studio already are established in Yonkers. “We”™re not the boroughs, but I think there is a way to make us the next stop” for artists and arts entrepreneurs, she said.
