Sometimes a play proved so popular that its original costumes, outworn,
had to be renewed. Sometimes the public cried "Thumbs down!" at the
opening performance, and would have none of it thereafter. That meant
that costumes sometimes reached Josie Fifer while the wounds of the
dressmaker's needle still bled in them. And whether for a week or a year
fur on a Hahn & Lohman costume was real fur; its satin was silk-backed,
its lace real lace. No paste, or tinsel, or cardboard about H. & L.!
Josie Fifer could recall the scenes in a play, step by step from noting
with her keen eye the marks left on costume after costume by the ravages
of emotion. At the end of a play's run she would hold up a dress for
critical inspection, turning it this way and that.

"This is the dress she wore in her big scene at the end of the second
act where she crawls on her knees to her wronged husband and pounds on
the door and weeps. She certainly did give it some hard wear. When
Marriott crawls she crawls, and when she bawls she bawls. I'll say that
for her. From the looks of this front breadth she must have worn a
groove in the stage at the York."

No gently sentimental reason caused Hahn & Lohman to house these
hundreds of costumes, these tons of scenery, these forests of furniture.
Neither had Josie Fifer been hired to walk wistfully among them like a
spinster wandering in a dead rose garden. No, they were stored for a
much thriftier reason. They were stored, if you must know, for possible
future use. H. & L. were too clever not to use a last year's costume for
a this year's road show. They knew what a coat of enamel would do for a
bedroom set. It was Josie Fifer's duty not only to tabulate and care for
these relics, but to refurbish them when necessary. The sewing was done
by a little corps of assistants under Josie's direction.