For nearly half a century, Ursula Boschet has run a legendary costume shop in Los Angeles.

Enter its doors, and ghoulish masks of past presidents stare down at you from above a wall of wacky, colorful wigs. An impressive collection of stick-on mutton chops, mustaches and goatees — all made of real human hair — is neatly arranged underneath a glass counter. Signed headshots of Hollywood stars decorate the walls, a who’s who of the shop’s famous clientele.

Now, the shop will close its doors for good.

“It’s not like it used to be,” says Boschet, the 90-year-old owner and costume designer. Fewer customers come in to see the costumes in person, she says, because of online shopping. And she says rent and the cost of employees is too high for her to afford. Plus, she’s ready to retire — “I can’t wait ‘til I’m 100!” she jokes.

Boschet is closing shop after nearly half a century in business.

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Boschet has been designing clothing and costumes for as long as she can remember. “It’s just my thing,” she says. She became a tailor at 14 years old, in post-war Germany. She still has a thick, Stuttgart accent. “I learned everything in Europe. Everybody had a trade back then,” she says.

She and her late husband, Herman Boschet, both immigrated to the United States in 1962. Herman began a custom-framing business, and Ursula designed costumes for theater companies, Hollywood studios and even for Disney parades. In 1976, she opened her costume store in Culver City, before moving the business about 30 years ago to Santa Monica, where it still stands today.

There are still hundreds of handmade costumes in the back of the store, many designed and sewn by Boschet herself. The small, cramped section in the back used to be the rental department, but now, there are price tags on all the merchandise — everything is for sale. Boschet hopes to make it through one final Halloween. Although, as her website reads: “Every day is Halloween at Ursula’s Costumes.”

Racks of costumes stretch from floor to ceiling, adorned with velvety Renaissance dresses, chain-and-leather glam rocker getups and everything in between.

Boschet flips through a lookbook full of her custom designs.

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“We have belly dancers, genies … a little bit of everything,” she says. “We made all this over 48 years.” A neat row of massive animal heads lines the top of the wall, including bunnies, pandas, pigs and a giant goldfish head. “They’re all different, there is not one [costume that is] the same,” says Boschet.

The shop is a draw for everyday Angelenos, but lots of celebrities, too — Kate Beckinsale, Victoria Tennant and Steve Martin have frequented Boschet’s store over the decades. In fact, Boschet became so well known for her talents among the Hollywood crowd that she says she was tapped to play an extra in a few movies, including in the 1980 TV drama The Jayne Mansfield Story starring Loni Anderson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Her role? A tailor.

She grows nostalgic as she flips through the pages of a lookbook, many of which feature old photos of Herman and Ursula dressed as Cleopatra and Marc Antony, Morticia Addams, and Herman’s favorite: Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. “We did everything you could think of,” she says.

Ghoulish masks of famous political figures, ornately beaded headpieces and props hang from the walls and ceiling. Customers can come in and share their ideas with Boschet, and she helps them bring that vision to life.

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Even when Herman would protest wearing a costume to a party, Ursula says she would lay one out for him, and when he’d return home from work, “he didn’t say a word.” He would put on the costume “and he would have the most fun,” she laughs. “Because costumes are fun! You can be whatever you want.”

Despite vicious competition from online sellers, some customers still prefer the bespoke experience of creating custom costumes with Boschet. Actor Jamie Lee Curtis — who, fittingly, starred in the 1978 horror movie Halloween — has been patronizing Ursula’s Costumes for decades.

“We were devotees of Ursula’s in my house,” she told NPR. “We were starting to think about Halloween in February, like we were already starting to discuss ideas.” Curtis’ daughter Ruby is a cosplayer, so Ursula’s Costumes was a frequent stop for her. Ruby’s recent wedding was cosplay-themed, and Curtis says many guests purchased their costumes from Boschet’s shop. “[Ursula] loves a collaboration,” says Curtis. “When I would go in and present the picture of what it was we were trying to create, you could see her light up.”

Every costume is now for sale as Boschet prepares to say goodbye to her shop.

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When NPR spoke to Curtis for this story, it was the first she had heard of Ursula’s Costumes shuttering, and said she “wept” at the news. “I just want to say thank you to her for having a place to create magic and fantasy for people. It’s a service. And now, of course, there’s the internet,” says Curtis. “But it’s not the same as having someone use their creativity to help you express yours.”

Boschet, too, expresses deep gratitude for customers for having supported her shop over nearly half a century. Now, she looks forward to a long-needed vacation. She says she hopes to enjoy what L.A. has to offer, including the cinema. But she says she’ll be paying attention to the costumes, not the plot. “Of course! The story? Everyone knows that!”

Anne Lamott reflects on aging.

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Anne Lamott reflects on aging.

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Getting older has been a punchline for as long as anyone can remember. From Rodney Dangerfield describing the danger of blowing out his birthday candles to Phyllis Diller talking about her blood type getting discontinued.

There are plenty of jokes to be made about aging. But it can also have some negative implications, says Becca Levy, a professor and researcher at Yale School of Public Health, who studies the psychology of aging.

“Unfortunately, there still is quite a bit of ageism that we need to navigate in everyday life that we see on television and magazines and advertisements, social media. There’s a lot of negative messages there,” Levy told NPR.

She encourages older adults to keep in mind how they are affected by stereotypes and also by the structural aspects of age bias.

“It impacts everybody. So we all are aging, and we all have loved ones who are aging. And so I think it’s very much part of everybody’s existence.”

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Looking back on life

Writer Anne Lamott has been writing about her experience of aging, and how it’s made her see things differently.

“You know, we’ve got this weird judgy thing inside of us and age has softened that. And God, what a blessing. And with a new pair of glasses, I think you realize, for me in my mid-sixties, that there is grace in myopia, that there is grace in not being able to see everything so clearly with all of its faults and annoying tendencies,” Lamott told Consider This host Mary Louise Kelly.

Lamott says she has a story that she lives by, which goes like this:

“When my very best friend since high school was dying of breast cancer, and we went into a store, she was in a wheelchair, with a wig on, about a month before she died, and I was buying a cute, little dress for the current fixer-upper boyfriend. And I came out, and it was tighter than I’m used to. I usually dress like John Goodman. And I said to her, ‘Do you think this makes me look big in the thighs?’”

And she looked at me, and she said, ‘Annie, you don’t have that kind of time.’
And I think one of the great blessings of getting older is that you realize this. By my age, I’ve lost a lot of really precious and sometimes younger friends. And boy, is that a wake-up call to start making some smarter choices about how you’re going to spend this one precious and fleeting life.”

Empathy towards oneself

Lamott added that in her view, harboring gentleness and forgiveness towards oneself is the one of the most difficult challenges of life.

“When Bill Wilson was getting AA started in the ’30s, he had a priest friend who wasn’t actually an alcoholic. And the priest friend said to Bill, ‘Sometimes I think that heaven is just a new pair of glasses, and I have learned to put on those pair of glasses and to look at how touching people are and how hard everybody’s life has been – what rough edges life involves and how heroically they’ve tried to rise to the occasion.’

And for those who feel that aging is still so very far off in the distance?

“As they say, [aging] isn’t for wusses. And my body is not what it was. A lot of things hurt. And my mind – I have what I like to think of as age-appropriate cognitive decline, but I am spaced out. And some days, it does feel like there’s a sniper in the trees, picking off people I can’t live without,” she said.

“But by the same token, life just keeps on giving. And it’s such a beautiful thing to have been given a human life – aches and pains and spacing out and all – and you will be amazed by how much you love it if you put on those better pair of glasses and you start looking around for all that still works, no matter how much has been taken away.”

This episode was produced by Jordan-Marie Smith and Tyler Bartlam, with additional reporting by Andee Tagle