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.

Downstairs in this treasure chest of a shop you'll find high-quality accessories, like Italian Swarovski-encrusted masks and realistic looking flesh tattoos, and movie release licenced costumes that you can try before you buy. There's yet more upstairs and they even have a tailor on-hand to make minor alterations so that the costume you choose is perfect.

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.