Most costumes used in a film

The largest number of costumes used for any one film was 32,000 for the 1951 film Quo Vadis? (USA), starring Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr. An estimated 52,000 yards of material went into the costumes, many of which were created specifically for the film’s 30,000 extras and included 15,000 hand-sewn sandals and 13,000 pieces of handmade jewellery.

Quo Vadis? was a historical epic on the scale of Gone with the Wind or Ben Hur. It took years to make and involved tens of thousands of people doing everything from sewing sandals to rebuilding sections of the original Appian Way. Costume designer Herschel McCoy oversaw a massive workforce which included designers, buyers and hundreds of locally recruited Italian seamstresses (the film was shot in and around Rome). After the film wrapped, around 15,000 of the custom-made costumes were sent to the wardrobe department at MGM Studios, and reused for films set in the ancient world for decades.