NCIS: Hawai'i

Also Rome, Pittsburgh, San Francisco,Tokyo, Honolulu, Veracruz, Hong Kong, Quito, Milan, Salt Lake City, Lisbon, Porto, Toronto, Osaka, Belgrade, Vancouver, Reno, Beverly Hills and Albuquerque.

My move to Costume Design after a ten-year stint in the fashion wars of New York’s Seventh Avenue was a life changer, if not life saver.  Given sanctuary by a troika of designers at the legendary Costume Depot in Midtown Manhattan, I was happy to start over, straightening up fitting rooms and fetching coffee for the people who became my teachers, mentors and lifelong friends.  I was taught stagecraft, film craft and how to navigate the vagaries of an actor’s mood. 

Moving to Los Angeles enabled me to start designing my own projects. A fruitful collaboration with director Michael Ritchie resulted in eight projects together, among them the award winning Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Cheerleader Murdering Mom, for HBO and his passion project, a film version of the long running off-Broadway musical, The Fantasticks! at MGM.  After a dozen or so feature films I landed in the lap of Jerry Bruckheimer Television, working on long running shows, CSI Miami and Without a Trace. A rescue operation on an ABC series led to one of my favorite costume jobs, designing for Castle with its required side trips into steampunk, neo-burlesque, zombie-walk, magic shows, beauty pageants, 19th century dude ranches, film noir and 70’s disco. Returning to CBS as the lockdown of 2020 ended found me in Hawaii with the newest iteration of NCIS, certainly one of the most magical of all my filming locations.  It was here I hit the landmark moment of designing my 400th piece of filmed entertainment. This roller coaster of good fortune, steeped in the caprice of the entertainment industry, has been a delight and terror, balm and blessing and one for which I'm enormously grateful.  

And my dear, I’m still here.      

Luke Reichle, Joshua Tree, California.