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Beloved owner of one of Hollywood's last costume shops dies at 90

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Beloved owner of one of Hollywood's last costume shops dies at 90

Ursula Boschet, the iconic Hollywood costume designer, whose shop draped celebrities and civilians for more than half a century, has died. She was 90.

Boschet died Monday afternoon of pancreatic cancer surrounded by family at her home in Chatsworth, a spokesperson for the family confirmed.

In a career that defied the frequent churn and vagaries associated with the entertainment industry, Ursula’s Costumes became a local institution. Over five decades she estimated that she made more than 100,000 costumes for television, films, plays and private customers.

Boschet garnered a reputation for her well-crafted, creative threads — and for not making a fuss over celebrities.

“She was special. She was a really big part of my family’s life. She had a passion for creativity and she will be missed,” said Jamie Lee Curtis, who began coming to Ursula’s Costumes over 30 years ago, in an interview with The Times.

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Kathleen Uris, a costumer who worked with Boschet for more than 20 years, described the experience as a “master class with a genius costumer.”

In addition to her entertainment work such as for the nearly seven-season duration of the 1980s television show “Cagney & Lacey,” Boschet was the go-to designer for a number of costume parties in Los Angeles, including the annual Labyrinth Masquerade Ball, held at the Biltmore Hotel.

For decades, people lined up around the block during the month of October, when the shop was open seven days a week to keep up with Halloween customers.

Many of her clients became like extended family members. The walls of her store are covered in framed autographed photos of scores of actors including Bruce Willis and Curtis, all addressed to her.

She made costumes for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver’s children. When Michael Keaton came to the shop with his little dog after starring in “Batman,” Boschet said she made a miniature Caped Crusader costume for the pooch.

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Steve Martin, whom she met while working on his 1984 film “All of Me,” asked her to create hidden suit pockets from which he could pull things out for one of his magic acts. In the early 1990s, he appeared as the Great Flydini, who retrieved items such as scarves, eggs and a telephone from the fly in his pants.

Curtis recalled visiting the shop each year as early as April to begin consulting with Boschet about her family’s Halloween costumes.

“We had long discussions about what this year’s costumes were going to be and the accouterments,” Curtis said. “She had such a breadth of knowledge and how to build something out of nothing.”

Later, when Curtis’ youngest daughter became involved in gaming and cosplay, Boschet became an invaluable ally.

“When I think of teachers and those who appreciated and saw my children’s gifts and made a difference, Ursula is one of them,” Curtis said. “She is someone who made an impact on our family life through her work with our daughter. She was special.”

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Despite a series of health troubles, up until recently, the diminutive nonagenarian continued to come to the store and workshop that bears her name in Santa Monica five days a week, working eight to 10 hours a day.

However, last summer Boschet announced that she planned to finally shut down following a storm of industry woes that included the pandemic and the labor strikes. She also cited her age and health, and the fact that she had no one to take over the business (her children were uninterested).

“There was no money coming in,” she told The Times. “I couldn’t pay the rent anymore. And I have bills to pay.”

The news left her legions of customers bereft. “I’m heartbroken,” Kate Beckinsale said last July, adding, “Ursula is one of my longest relationships in L.A., including my marriage.”

Kate Beckinsale, right, with Ursula Boschet at Ursula’s Costumes.

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(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Beckinsale came in about once a month to dress up and rent costumes for herself, friends and family.

Born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1934, the daughter of a butcher and a homemaker, Boschet learned dressmaking and tailoring at 14. In 1952, at 18, she married her husband, a barber.

With postwar Germany still largely in rubble, they found it difficult to earn a living and in 1957 they emigrated to Canada.

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For nearly five years in Toronto, Boschet worked at a large sock factory before the couple moved to Los Angeles, where she got a job working on various theater productions. She joined the Theatrical Wardrobe Union, which sent her around to the studios.

In 1973, she landed at Disney, which leased a space in what is now called the Culver Studios, primarily making costumes for Disney on Parade. Three years later, when the parade work ended, she decided to launch her own wardrobe and costume business.

After announcing the closure of Ursula’s Costumes last summer, Boschet began to sell off her inventory, which represented every possible period and type of costume and accessory. Many of her longtime customers made a pilgrimage to the shop to say goodbye and buy a piece of costume history.

The shop will close for good this Saturday.

Boschet is survived by her daughter, Ela Steere, and son, Richard Boschet; three grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

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Movie Reviews

‘Madhuvidhu’ movie review: A light-hearted film that squanders a promising conflict

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‘Madhuvidhu’ movie review: A light-hearted film that squanders a promising conflict

At the centre of Madhuvidhu directed by Vishnu Aravind is a house where only men reside, three generations of them living in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather, this is not a house where entry is banned to women, but just that women don’t choose to come here. For Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), the protagonist, 28 marriage proposals have already fallen through although he was not lacking in interest.

When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear about to change. But some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them, their different religions being one of them. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan do not seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. Only that they end up hitting further lower.

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Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, sets opening date and first exhibition

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Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, sets opening date and first exhibition

After more than two and a half years of research, planning and construction, Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, will open June 20.

Co-founded by new media artists Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, the museum anchors the $1-billion Frank Gehry-designed Grand LA complex across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Its first exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” created by Refik Anadol Studio, was inspired by a trip to the Amazon and uses vast data sets to immerse visitors in a machine-generated sensory experience of the natural world.

The architecture of the space, which Anadol calls “a living museum,” is used to reflect distant rainforest ecosystems, including changing temperature, light, smell and visuals. Anadol refers to these large-scale, shimmering tableaus as “digital sculptures.”

“This is such an important technology, and represents such an important transformation of humanity,” Anadol said in an interview. “And we found it so meaningful and purposeful to be sure that there is a place to talk about it, to create with it.”

The 35,000-square-foot privately funded museum devotes 25,000 square feet to public space, with the remaining 10,000 square feet holding the in-house technology that makes the space run. Dataland contains five immersive galleries and a 30-foot ceiling. An escalator by the entrance will transport guests to the experiences below. The museum declined to say how much Dataland, designed by architecture firm Gensler, cost to build.

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An isometric architectural rendering of Dataland. The 25,000-square-foot AI arts museum also contains an additional 10,000 square feet of non-public space that holds its operational technology.

(Refik Anadol Studio for Dataland)

Dataland will collect and preserve artificial intelligence art and is powered by an open-access AI model created by Anadol’s studio called the Large Nature Model. The model, which does not source without permission, culls mountains of data about the natural world from partners including the Smithsonian, London’s Natural History Museum and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This data, including up to half a billion images of nature, will form the basis for the creation of a variety of AI artworks, including “Machine Dreams.”

“AI art is a part of digital art, meaning a lineage that uses software, data and computers to create a form of art,” Anadol explained. “I know that many artists don’t want to disclose their technologies, but for me, AI means possibilities. And possibilities come with responsibilities. We have to disclose exactly where our data comes from.”

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Sustainability is another responsibility that Anadol takes seriously. For more than a decade, Anadol has devoted much thought to the massive carbon footprint associated with AI models. The Large Nature Model is hosted on Google Cloud servers in Oregon that use 87% carbon-free, renewable energy. Anadol says the energy used to support an individual visit to the museum is equivalent to what it takes to charge a single smartphone.

Anadol believes AI can form a powerful bridge to nature — serving as a means to access and preserve it — and that the swiftly evolving technology can be harnessed to illuminate essential truths about humanity’s relationship to an interconnected planet. During a time of great anxiety about the power of AI to disrupt lives and livelihoods, Anadol maintains it can be a revolutionary tool in service of a never-before-seen form of art.

“The works generate an emergent, living reality, a machine’s dream shaped by continuous streams of environmental and biological data. Within this evolving system, moments of recognition and interpretation emerge across different forms of knowledge,” a news release about the museum explains. “At the same time, the exhibition registers loss as part of this expanded field of perception, most notably in the Infinity Room, where visitors encounter the 1987 recording of the last known Kauaʻi ʻŌʻō, a now-extinct bird whose unanswered call becomes part of the work.”

“It’s very exciting to say that AI art is not image only,” Anadol said. “It’s a very multisensory, multimedium experience — meaning sound, image, video, text, smell, taste and touch. They are all together in conversation.”

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