The best costume shops in Sydney

You’ll feel like you’ve stepped into the dress up box of your dreams when you enter the Wardrobe. The store’s bright pink interiors are home to over 30,000 individual pieces of costuming. On site they have a tailoring room used to customise costumes and create one-off pieces for local theatre ensembles and school productions.

This space has a lot more room that the previous location – downstairs you’ll find costumes and accessories to purchase: fake blood, mardi gras beads, tiki cups, neon wigs and other costume embellishing knick-knacks. But upstairs is where Fancy That really shines. They have a comprehensive database of costumes, which you can browse through on one of five iPads in store (or online).

Its Waterloo location will serve anyone in the Inner West well – just make sure you arrive with plenty of time to try on all the different options. Downstairs you’ll find basic, for-purchase costumes. Upstairs you’ll find an extensive range of dress-ups organised mostly by period and style, from medieval outfits to ’50s frocks. 

Tucked away in a Surry Hills sidestreet is the little costume treasure chest known as Snog the Frog. After entering their garage door you are surrounded by a collection of ridiculous celebrity masks. Upstairs is a small retail area but the real winner here are the hire costumes – especially their celebrity and character costumes. 

This party shop has more balloons than we’ve ever seen in one spot before. They’ve also got copious sweets for candy bars, glow sticks galore and plenty of knick-knacks for themed parties. While the two-floor shop brings its A-game on the decorations front, the costume selection isn’t as comprehensive.

This bargain shop has a decent costume selection – but the price cut means a cut in quality. Here you’ll find your run-of-the-mill nun, dentist and army outfits alongside extensive wacky sunglasses, sequined hot pants and fake blood.

This sprawling costume shop has been peddling costumes since 1985 and has a big collection to show for it. Some of the outfits have seen better party days, but if you hunt through the collection or buy it brand-new you’ll be sure to find something that’ll work.

These guys also specialise in Book Week costumes, so they’ve got a great selection of characters from kids’ literature, from Dorothy to real dinosaurs.