Nostalgia on Tuesday: Dressing to thrill

When wizard keyboard player Rick Wakeman fancies new outfits for TV or stage, he always contacts Neil Crossland.
Rick Wakeman measured at Stagewear.Rick Wakeman measured at Stagewear.
Rick Wakeman measured at Stagewear.

Neil does not have swanky premises in Savile Row or some other upmarket London street but a place in South Yorkshire’s Bolton-on-Dearne.

“Rick started coming to me in the late 1980s, by recommendation from a mutual friend. He bought around 60 wildly colourful jackets when appearing on Live at Jongleurs,” said Neil, who has made many more jackets for Rick as well as some very imaginative full-length cloaks.

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“When Rick was much thinner and playing several keyboards at once with arms flailing around he said he looked like a demented spider. So he came up with the idea of wearing a cloak to partly cover his arms. I’ve made quite a few, the last one, just over a year ago, when he performed his Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table at the O2 Arena in London”.

Opening of Stagewear in Goldthorpe.Opening of Stagewear in Goldthorpe.
Opening of Stagewear in Goldthorpe.

Neil Crossland’s Stagewear Unlimited company has splashed colour across the showbiz and pop world for more than 40 years. From Michael Jackson to Compo, Rick Wakeman to Norman Wisdom and from a grizzly bear to a stripper’s snake, he’s kitted them all out with, imaginative custom-made costumes. Always with a tape measure draped around his neck and scissors in hand, Neil, quite remarkably, reached 30 before launching the company.

Born in Barnsley during 1946 to a well-known accomplished accordion player, teacher and music shop owner, Neil passed his 11-plus to attend Longcar Central School. He was not academically inclined but competent at woodwork and on leaving school one teacher quipped to his parents: “He will always make a living with his hands”. How right that was to be. After spending two years as a driver’s mate at Redfearn Brothers’ Glass Works he joined the family-run music shop in Barnsley around 1963. This was at a time when the so-called British Beat Boom was gathering pace.

When working in the shop he found time to learn to play guitar and eventually join several bands, including the Bryan Jones Combo and Musical Ride. They worked seven days a week being attached to the Johnny Peller agency. Neil was often out seven nights a week until the early hours and then back at work in the morning to put in a shift at his dad’s shop.

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Wanting to perform on stage in yellow jackets, Neil and his bandmates quickly discovered that they were difficult to obtain. By 1972, trade was slowing down in the Barnsley music shop and Neil’s father was ready for retirement and suffering from ill health. The business was taken over by Kitchens of Leeds who also had other stores in northern parts of the country.

To put it tactfully, Neil’s sales techniques were quickly at odds with the new company’s policies. On leaving, he worked in Doncaster at Tommy Fever’s Professional Music Centre. By this time Neil was managing bands instead of playing in them. Neil’s bands found, as he had done earlier, sourcing stage gear was extremely difficult. This prompted him, in 1974 to establish Stagewear Unlimited in a shop in Goldthorpe High Street. For the opening ceremony he persuaded Sid Little and Eddie Large to appear dressed as Laurel and Hardy.

Initially, Neil drove around and bought a selection of cheap garments off the peg but quickly found that bands and individuals wanted made-to-measure outfits and to their own designs. While Neil found a team of about 10 eager local female outworkers to make up the clothes, they shied away when it came to cutting out material for the creations.

“Everyone was frightened to make a mistake, so I had a go myself. First I pulled apart one of my own shirts and made a template, then one of my dad’s and brother’s. I quickly got the hang of it and made templates for other sizes by buying up shirts from Oxfam!”

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One of Neil’s first customers at Goldthorpe was Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers fame. Neil only ever advertised once and that was in his first year in business. After that, trade grew steadily and included making outfits for club acts, male voice choirs and many, many celebrities. They included the Grumbleweeds, 1960s singers The Bachelors and Craig Douglas and comics Jimmy Cricket, Duggie Brown and Charlie Williams.

As business boomed Neil needed to move and eventually settled in an ex-undertaker’s premises in Bolton-on-Dearne during 1985. Highlights of the ensuing years were making five jackets for Michael Jackson, dressing Boyzone, creating outfits for the cast of Last of the Summer Wine, Emmerdale and Heartbeat as well as costumes for cruise ship shows and West End theatres. Although he did not often make women’s costumes, Jo Brand was an exception and she was provided with a policewoman’s uniform for a pantomime.

Sometimes Neil has to supply a costume from his house. “I made a costume for Jimmy Osmond which he said he would pick up whilst travelling from a night show in Liverpool to one in Skegness the following day. Being held up by snow whilst crossing the Pennines he arrived at my house at a quarter to two in the morning”.

Neil was proud to make costumes for Norman Wisdom, one of his boyhood heroes. “It gave me a real buzz meeting Norman, being invited to his home and having a meal with him,” said Neil. He also pays tribute to wife Maureen who has always kept ‘the books’ up-to-date for him.

In spite three cancer scares, a heart attack, one heart bypass and a smashed leg in a motorway accident Neil has no thoughts of retirement. He uses an old showbiz cliche: “The show must go on.”