When costumes are nearly ready, the director and costume designer will view the actors in their costumes on stage under stage lighting in order to consider the effect of the color and intensity of the lighting. In his memoir More Lives Than One, the 1920s costumer Claude Bragdon recalled that "the dress parade was my most harrowing ordeal, for then each member of the cast appears in costume, to be passed upon as to its suitability, becomingness, style, fit, workmanship, down to the last shoestring, for all of which I was officially responsible" (1938, 202). The dress parade is often in tandem with the dress rehearsal, which occurs just before the official opening of the play when all elements are in place and the actors are fully dressed in costumes, wigs, and makeup. The dress rehearsal comes at the point when all of the technical elements are completed and allows the director and scene designer to perfect details and solve problems.
The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. James Fisher.