Scaring up a great costume
[attach]7122[/attach]Mount Pleasant Road is home to two of Toronto’s most popular and well-known destinations for costumes. With Halloween just around the corner, the Town Crier set out to discover what sets these shops apart and how they measure up from the competition.
Kids Costumes is a place where both dreams and nightmares come alive. Girls can become fairy tale princesses and boys (or girls) can transform into blood-sucking vampires.
From the back of the shop near Belsize Drive, owner Denise Flys explains that a quality costume goes beyond Oct. 31 and becomes a toy children can use year round for dress-up and creative play.
“I have children of my own and when I think of what kept them busy longest it was that,” she says. “They bring their friends home, they play the part.
“Some kids even go to bed with them. Superheroes, they go to bed dressed as them.”
Flys, who previously worked on costumes for CBC programming, started her own doll-making company in 1979 before focusing solely on costumes for kids. In addition to offering a large selection of hundreds of costumes, the shop is unique because it also makes them in-house.
“We first of all like to think that we’re different and really try to be,” Flys says. “We buy and sell and we make some of our own costumes here.”
Animals, she says, are popular.
The furry outfits include that of a cat, lion, dog, cow, rabbit and mouse. The shop’s custom creations, which can be found displayed on two floors, also sustain the business during the rest of the year, when Flys creates costumes for school plays and presentations, and even for visits to historical places like Pioneer Village when students need to dress the part.
“People will come in too with their own pictures,” she notes. “They’ll say we’ve seen this, or we need this for school, and if it’s at all possible then we’ll do it for them.”
For Flys, the busiest day of the year, though, remains the Saturday before All Hallows’ Eve. Although some costumes are trendy, she reveals the most popular sellers in her shop are classics, like vampires, witches and Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy, as well as the princess gowns, since they are beautiful.
Along with Halloween in Toronto and playtime throughout the year, Flys says some of her costumes make it all the way to Israel for the Jewish holiday Purim.
Having been in the fantasy world for 30-plus years, Flys says she never tires of hearing kids say, “This is my favourite store.”
“That tells the whole story I think,” she says with a grin.
[attach]7123[/attach]Up the street, at Mount Pleasant Road and Soudan Avenue, Geoff Waszek and Beverley Quinn run Candy’s Costume Shop. The pair took over the business five years ago when the owner of Sugar’s Costume Shop, which had been around for roughly 20 years, retired.
“We wanted to keep it as sweet as Sugar’s, hence the name Candy’s,” Waszek explains from his shop, which caters to kids, adults and adult plus sizes. “We try to bring in better quality costumes and focus on more unique items that other bigger stores don’t think of.”
Selecting which costumes to carry in-store is a long process, Waszek says, admitting they begin the process in January by combing through catalogues. In addition to judging costumes by how well they did or didn’t sell in previous years, they also want to be current and bring in new stock every year. Often they turn to the entertainment industry for inspiration.
“Popular movies sell at Halloween, for example Iron Man and any of The Avengers,” he says. “Breaking Bad is very popular this year because of the series finale, so we’ve managed to find the yellow hazmat suits, which have been selling quite well.”
Although the season of trick-or-treating is the busiest time of year, Waszek says the shop remains a destination throughout the rest of the year.
Once Halloween wraps up, focus shifts to the Christmas spirit, with offerings of Santa Claus suits and elves, before going into masquerade masks and flapper outfits for New Year’s Eve. Then the store stocks up for all other major holidays and events, including St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Porum and Pride.
Gearing up for Halloween, Candy’s will have a makeup specialist on site to share tips about recommended use and safety of special effects like prosthetic scars and fake blood. As a safety precaution and for quality purposes, the store carries only professional makeup.
Although he’s had many great memories in store, Waszek says he recently discovered he’d helped a young customer clinch a best-costume contest at his school last year.
“He was a little stressed out because he wanted to win for best costume, so last year he came in and we spent an hour trying to figure out exactly what he wanted to do,” he recalls. “He didn’t like any of the costumes that we had — they were just too generic to win the competition — but then we found out that he could be an old man.”
The winning outfit included a cane, an old-man mask, an old-fashioned shirt and pants.
