The Usher’s Big Event

After four tours of duty as “uniform matron” for Academy Awards ceremonies at the Music Center, Annette Ensley can detect her charges’ arrival with her eyes closed. Here’s her perspective from the usher’s lounge on the enchanted evening: “You’ll just have an aroma with every kind of perfume down here.”

As chief clothing inspector, Ensley has witnessed a queue form in the women’s dressing room on Oscar night, with each usher applying a curling iron to the tresses of the colleague ahead of her. “They know they’re not going to get onstage,” Ensley says, “but they act and fix themselves up as if they’re going to.” For a more typical Music Center evening, say a performance of the “Titanic” musical, Ensley might gently admonish her mostly student ushers for a snag in a stocking, or for wearing white tube socks with black shoes or no socks at all. But such corrections will be rare tonight. “Because everyone wants to be shiny and wonderful, I don’t have to patrol them,” Ensley says. “They patrol themselves.”

For the Academy Awards, the ushers are primping within the narrow parameters of a standard Music Center uniform. For the men, there’s a blazer and gray slacks and clip-on gray tie with tiny black polka dots that is “90% polyester/10% silk.” The women wear short blue jackets, gray skirts, white blouses and bows.

Crisp, serviceable and as durable as a battleship, the maroon senior usher’s blazer that Juan Torres will wear tonight isn’t the most comfortable attire. “It’s polyester,” Torres says. “And I’m more of a cotton guy.”