Alabama native Daniel Scheinert was the talk of Tinseltown on Sunday night when he and his co-creator, Daniel Kwan, won three Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture for their motion picture "Everything Everywhere All at Once."
As he celebrated the global recognition Sunday night surrounded by Hollywood's most glamorous and fashionable stars, Scheinert was dressed in a black tuxedo suit with a black tie and dark red dress shirt — a thrift outfit he bought from Unclaimed Baggage in Scottsboro, Alabama.
The recycled tux and tie were among the 7,000 items that come into Unclaimed Baggage every day from items pulled from suitcases that have been abandoned for at least 90 days by airline passengers around the country.
The thrift shop is less than a 30-minute drive from where Scheinert grew up in Guntersville, Alabama, and he came to buy the tuxedo to have a wardrobe for the award shows as he career developed.
"Daniel shopped here growing up," said Jennifer Kritner, vice president of retail and company culture for Unclaimed Baggage, in an article published Tuesday by Yahoo Life.
Beck Schneider, Daniel's mother, said she also visited Unclaimed Baggage looking for an outfit for the Oscars, although she couldn't find what she liked in the right size. But in an interview with WVTM-TV in Birmingham, Alabama, she said her son had bought an old tuxedo at Unclaimed Baggage as a prop.
"He found that the suit fit him perfectly — Daniel is tall and thin, but it was a perfect match," she said. "Daniel figured that he would wear it to the Oscars. Also, his shoes were made from a cobbler who gets his material from old tires."
The Unclaimed Baggage Center, which opened in 1970, is a 50,000-square-foot store that stretches an entire city block of downtown Scottsboro and contains thousands of practical, unusual and special items that airlines and other transportation industries have been unable to reunite with their former owners. Unclaimed Baggage bills itself as the nation's only merchant of unclaimed and lost baggage and its contents.
Sonni Hood, a spokesman for the store, said by phone Tuesday that the global publicity about the Oscar winner getting his clothes as Unclaimed Baggage is attracting global attention in the media and among potential customers.
"As we always say, you never know what you are going to find at Unclaimed Baggage," she said.
Hood said she loves that a Hollywood star from Alabama got his wardrobe at a nearby thrift shop.
"Southerners love seeing other Southerners succeed, especially when you are from a small town in Alabama," Hood said. "This has been such a fun time for all of us to be getting calls and internet attention from all over the world."
— Compiled by Dave Flessner
Staff Photo / A sign for the Unclaimed Baggage Center in downtown Scottsboro, Ala., is seen in 2013. Oscar winner Daniel Scheinert bought the tux he wore for Sunday night's awards show at Unclaimed Baggage.