‘Wizard of Oz’ costume designs to go on sale nationally

PALMER — Next Halloween you’ll be able to costume the munchkins in your life in the same rich detail worn by Sam Allred when he was the Mayor of Munchkinland in a local production of “The Wizard of Oz” earlier this year.

You have Wasilla costume designer Roxann Benbow to thank for the privilege.

“Well, I am just in shock, personally,” she said. “Usually in order to get a pattern in a catalog like that you have to go to design school.”

She’s studied sewing, but never dreamed McCall’s Patterns would be interested in her work.

“I design all the time, but I’ve never even thought about approaching the pattern companies to buy my looks,” Benbow said.

That is, until her most recent stint as a costume designer for a local theater production. Benbow and a team of her sewing school students did the costuming for last season’s Valley Performing Arts production of “The Wizard of Oz.”

Two of the people she worked with to design the costumes — Cheri Trask and Claire German — have joined her in this pattern-selling venture. Of course, “venture” might be overselling it.

“My husband’s boss says, ‘Oh, are you going to retire now?’ And I start laughing. It’s not a big income thing,” she said.

Still, it’s a big deal for a seamstress.

“In next July’s book my patterns will be there,” she said. “It is incredibly awesome.”

Benbow said she’s inked a contract and needs to send McCall’s finished versions of the costumes it can put on a model and photograph for the catalog and the front cover of the pattern packaging.

In addition to the costume for the Mayor of Munchkinland, McCall’s will sell patterns for the Munchkinland town fathers and Munchkinland teachers.

Those weren’t even the costumes that were the most elaborate or complicated in the play. Benbow said she thought for sure the costumes for the flying monkeys or the Winky guards would get picked first.

“They’re not easy to make and they’re not easy to design,” Benbow said.

But the monkeys were too scary and the guards too … well, too accurate.

A McCall’s representative told Benbow, “They were spot-on to the movie and they were concerned about infringing on Warner Brothers’ copyrights.”

She said she’s thinking about changing the emblems and the colors and making the guard into something else, maybe a dragon slayer. She said she might submit a redesigned version to McCall’s and then probably some other pattern companies.

One she had in mind is a pattern she’s putting together for her granddaughter in Washington state.

“It’s a ninja princess costume,” Benbow said. “She sent me a picture and I am creating a pattern.”

A ninja princess? Why not?

“Let’s take it for a run and see how far we can go,” Benbow said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.