A profile of Melody Barnett, owner of rental house Palace Costume

Every time a young Melody Barnett attended church, she was awestruck. Something about the congregation’s elegant headwear always caught her eye. The women would often wear these extravagant, floral hats or don a more subtle pillbox style. And Barnett, owner of Hollywood rental house Palace Costume, remembers being entirely entranced.

“I would sit and just look,” Barnett says. “That’s one of the few things I remember about church, just looking at all the hats.”

This fashion-leaning fascination, she says, is a part of her heritage. Coming from a lineage of collectors, the 83-year-old has dedicated her life to the clothes of the past. For nearly 50 years, Palace Costume, a space open exclusively by appointment to stylists and costume designers, has offered a wearable fashion archive dating back to the 1880s. It’s become a one-stop shop for striking inspiration and embracing a timeless sense of glamour.

Since Palace Costume’s inception, Barnett’s clothing has appeared in classic films such as “Chinatown,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “The Godfather,” and more recent Oscar winners like “La La Land” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Beyond the silver screen, Beyoncé wore heart-shaped, reflective underwear on the cover of “Texas Hold ‘Em,” Chappell Roan sported a sequined marching band leotard for the “Hot to Go!” music video, and dangly, yellow earrings completed Billie Eilish’s look in the “What Was I Made For?” video — all pieces pulled from Palace.

The Fairfax Avenue storefront is surrounded by a kind of mystical energy. Tucked between a modern apartment complex and a wellness center, it’s easy to drive by and never notice the atypical castle facade, complete with fairy tale-esque murals of animal-faced figures, sheet ghosts and stone walls.

Inside, the charm continues. Behind the front desk, pathways resembling that of a labyrinth lead shoppers throughout the store’s four floors. Depending on which way you turn, you may end up in the jewelry room, where brightly colored costume bangles, heavy metal silver chokers and gold chains are piled high inside of glass cases, or in the prom dress section where the aisles are suffocated by petticoats. With over half a million items in Barnett’s inventory, the collection appears to be endless. Around each twist and turn, there’s a room solely for holiday wear, a walk-in devoted to fur coats, and several hallways lined with laundry baskets of purses and dress shoes waiting to be picked through.

On an early July morning, camera lights, additional racks of designer clothing and a team of creatives squeezed into the organized but cluttered space to formulate Barnett’s own moment of glamour. Her kitchen space, complete with brightly colored dishware and ceramic food replicas, was swiftly transformed into a makeshift vanity space where she sat to get a full face of makeup and her hair braided. Barnett was hesitant, at first, in front of the camera — asking photographer Tyler Matthew Oyer where to put her hands and whether she should smile.

But as the day went on and she traded a leather Fendi trench coat for a multicolored Loewe one, Barnett’s eyes started to light up differently. The rolling ladders meant to reach the highest hanging garments became her stage. Lingering hats and sunglasses became impromptu props. She began to lean into her carefully curated emporium as the vivacious backdrop it is.

It also helped that Barnett was in the hands of those she trusted. Erik Ziemba, who’s been coming to Palace Costume for the last decade, styled the shoot. He calls the space “the ultimate glam dress-up room” and mentions the whispers he hears of major fashion houses stopping by Palace to gather inspiration.

“It’s the fashion library,” Ziemba says. “People [like Barnett and her business partner, Lee Ramstead], who really understand periods, silhouettes and fabrics, are true fashion historians and it’s extremely important that these people who are so well-versed in knowledge and costuming are involved in the process.”

Palace covers everything people have worn over 125 years and the collection continues to grow.

“I keep it up to date every year,” Barnett says. “It doesn’t have to be vintage. I have a whole section that dates from 2001 to 2025. I’m not stopping anytime soon. Sometimes it’s even easier to collect when people are still wearing it instead of waiting and it gets more expensive.”

Barnett credits her large family with helping her build out the stock, specifically the children’s section. As she walks between the floor-to-ceiling clothing racks, she points out her high school graduation dress (a strappy, red and white polka dot sundress), old coveralls she used to wear and some of her son’s clothing.

Every time Shelley Barnett, Melody’s daughter, comes to Palace, she’s taken back to her childhood. From a young age, she remembers her mother and grandmother both having “incredible senses of style.” They would often all dig through estate sales and antique stores, with Shelley helping pick out which vintage clothes to purchase. Nowadays, she gravitates most toward the children’s section, where her baby clothes and old Halloween costumes are available to rent.

“My mom is such a passionate person. Being able to watch her just build this business through the years and have it be what she loves means so much,” says Shelley, 56, who lives on a ranch in Wildomar where she boards horses. “We all look up to her so much. She’s very family-oriented — she’d never miss a party. But when she’s at Palace, she runs circles around us all. She doesn’t stop. That’s her element.”

Carousel horses and toy planes fill the children’s floor airspace. Each staircase is a maximalist’s dream as almost every inch of the wall is lined with displayed garments, framed memorabilia and an illustrated edition of “The Timeline of World Costume.” Inside of her Hawaii room, where Barnett boasts having some of the first-ever rayon Hawaiian shirts, there’s even a closet stockpiled with tiki souvenirs, photos of Elvis Presley and decorative masks.

“My whole focus is being eclectic. I like mixing things. I don’t want just one set look. I want to combine it,” says Barnett. “My mother and grandmother were more classic than I am. I’ve always been an eccentric person.”

Her favorite pieces are the ones she’s sourced from all over the world. As she flips through the racks, she remarks about a past romantic partner she traveled with and how most of these pieces will “never be made ever again.” Though her collection delves into the luxury end of fashion — with archival Moschino and Yves Saint Laurent at her fingertips — she says, “I don’t base anything off what it’s worth.”

She brings over a beaded, floral skirt she got as a teenager from Mexico in the 1950s. Next, she pulls down some of her favorite Eastern European dresses, with traditional embroidery, from countries such as Hungary and Poland. She also points out her extensive African section, which features heavy, hand-beaded neckpieces and Kente cloth dresses — some of which were worn in “Black Panther.”

Her grandmother, who ignited the family’s collector gene, had an array of antique Tiffany lamps and sophisticated coats, and ran a clothing shop of her own. Meanwhile, Barnett’s mother made her children’s clothes and worked in a military shop, where Barnett first found a love for thrifting.

The Palace Costume collection began sometime in her late 20s. She was living in Laguna Beach when she stumbled upon a box of Victorian dresses at a local swap meet. At the time, her neighbor Robert Becker owned an antique store in L.A. and had told Barnett that people in the city “were just beginning to sell vintage clothing.”

“We got into vintage, right when it began to be a big thing,” says Barnett, who shares that at the time, people weren’t looking to the past for inspiration just yet. The duo then set off to create one of the first vintage stores on Melrose Avenue, called the Crystal Palace, which stood where the Pacific Design Center does today.

Before settling into the current Fairfax storefront, they sold vintage at a few other locations on Melrose. Fortuitously, one of the spots was across the street from Wolfgang Puck’s career-launching restaurant, Ma Maison. With Barnett’s extravagant window displays, she lured the dining crowd over and began to build a celebrity clientele from there.

As costume designers made their rounds, shopping for period pieces, they continually told Barnett that she should be renting instead of selling.

“I thought that was a good idea. During filming, you aren’t wearing it every day. It’s just for a certain scene. I figured we could help restore and maintain the collection,” says Barnett. Then, in the late ‘70s, she bought the Fairfax location, and Ramstead, a fellow antiquarian, offered to help run the business.

To this day, Ramstead prides himself on doing everything and knowing everyone in the business. Commanding the front desk with a long, swinging ponytail and a belt buckle which reads “Lee,” he juggles the ringing phone, points confused customers in the right direction and helps manage the inventory.

“I have watched it grow. Now we’re bursting at the seams out of here,” says Ramstead as he checks out a costume designer shopping for the upcoming season of “Abbott Elementary.” “I mean, I’m 73. I could retire if I didn’t like my job. But I feel very protective of this place. Somebody has to watch over it.”

Image’s fashion director at large, Keyla Marquez, considers Ramstead to be the gatekeeper of the priceless collection. Whenever anyone calls to make an appointment at Palace, they are greeted with a comprehensive list of questions: What’s the project? Who will wear the clothes? Who do you work with, and have you worked with Palace before?

“This place is just so special, and the clothes are so important. Not everyone respects clothes the way that these clothes should be respected,” says Marquez. “If someone pulls something and they ruin it or don’t return it, that’s it. It’s lost for all of us. No one has the ability to pull it anymore.”

On one of the compounded building’s top floors, Barnett lives a portion of her week in a tightly packed apartment space (she splits the remainder of her week living at her different SoCal properties, which she hopes to turn into event spaces). Across from her waterbed, she has a research library, complete with a swiveling ladder, full of fashion books. Her living room walls are lined with old-timey lace-up heels that she says were only ever worn by Bette Midler, as she was the only actor with feet small enough to wear them.

Though the area is designated as her private quarters, there’s not a clear separation between her work and her life. There are clothing racks, filled with leather jackets and neon bras, in the middle of the room. Boxes and bags with items to be sorted designate a clear walking path, and the extra bedrooms are deemed the lingerie section, which dates back to the Victorian era.

Lynn McQuown, an employee who has worked with Palace since 1992, thinks of the collection as a living work of art.

“It’s one person’s life’s work. She’s an artist, not a corporation. She’s built it up entirely from a box of Victorian clothes. She worked 20-hour days for decades and decades,” McQuown says.

And Barnett shows no signs of slowing down. Whenever she’s at the shop, she’ll settle into a spot that needs organizing and work through the items herself. She browses estate sales and swap meets in search of hidden gems. She’s still brainstorming ways on how to improve Palace and expand the collection. She dreams of repatterning some of her oldest, most fragile pieces and reproducing them, giving them a new life.

“My family will continue the business and continue to hire competent people to run it. I have no plans to quit, because I enjoy it. I love it, especially the acquisition part,” Barnett says. “I intend to work till I’m 100.”