PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Mummers parade is less than a week away. Dancing, music, and plenty of feathers will be back on Broad Street, after the official event was canceled by the city last year due to COVID-19 cases.
However, there were some challenges on the costume front.
For more than three decades, Al DelBuono has been bringing visions of costumes to life for the parade.
"There's a lot of beautiful things out there that we did. It's hard to say that there's one favorite. It's like saying you have a favorite child," he said.
Out of all of the suits he's made over the years, DelBuono said the supply chain issues trickled into giving him some trouble when making his customers' costumes for this year's parade. "We found ourselves using different products to do what we used to use another product for," he shared.
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His company, DelBuono's Costumes Inc., had to get creative with different types of material and how they made extra pieces, DelBuono said, like keeping shapes sturdy using foam and fabric.
"We had to improvise a lot this year but it all turned out good," he declared.
At this year's parade, DelBuono said, you'll see some of the string bands and fancy brigades in brand new costumes, and other reused or repurposed from years past.