SmartShanghai | Halloween Costume Shopping in SH

Halloween Costume Shopping in SH

By Morgan Short, Oct 26th, 2011 | In Shopping

My friends, slim picking out there for Halloween costume shopping. If you just want to go some place and have all the work done for you, you’re in the wrong city. There’s basically two places in town dealing directly in Halloween:

Holiday House

With an inventory about half in party decorations and half in costumes and accessories, Holiday House is your best bet to find Halloween gear, both to drape yourself in and to drape your place in if you’re hosting a party. Problem is everyone knows it -- it’s been the only real venue for Halloween in town for the past several years -- and from right now throughout the rest of the week, it’s packed with people looking to throw something together for Halloween. Packed. It’s not the biggest store, so try to go during the morning when most people are at work. It’s also a better if you’ve got some idea if what you’re looking for as well… kind of a pain in the ass to browse in there.

That said Holiday House has your wigs, wings, fangs, plastic swords, masks, face paint, feather boas, chains, gloves, costumes (mainly in kids sizes), and whatever else. Lots of party gear.

Another thing: Holiday House closes at 6pm always. No exceptions. You’d think they’d be open later during the week before Halloween to cater to business but no… they’re open 9:30am to 6pm, daily (including Saturday and Sunday) and that’s it.

Drop Dead Sexy

Specializing in Western style kids and adult costumes, what you’re getting at Drop Dead
Sexy is typical off-the-rack adult-sized costumes that are the basic archetypal kind you get over the internet. See their webpage right here for what sorts of costumes they’ve got. Police man. School girl. Witch. Nurse. Pirate. Vampire.

We visited their shop in Yimei Fashion Plaza outlet today -- you might remember that as “Email Fashion Plaza”, out of exit five at Jingan Temple -- and it was pretty sparse. Apparently business was pretty good this week and there’s not a lot of selection left. Guess we shouldn’t have left this to the last minute… However, therein in a small, stall store space is a few masks, a few accessories, a bunch of thin one-piece costumes of the variety mentioned above. Prices are around 200rmb or so. And they don’t have much by way of accessories -- face paint, fangs, wigs, all that you have to go elsewhere … although there are a couple wig stores in that mall.

Drop Dead Sexy would work out if you want to do a variation on “Police man”, “Sexy Angel”, and you need a costume base to build off. I would suggest getting in contact with them before you make the trip down to see if they’ve still got. And you can try out their second location out in Minhang.

Keep Looking…

So basically, you’re going to be getting creative (read: panicking, throwing random shit together), and you might need to head to the following:

-Fabric Market: the famous one from all the guide books.

-Fabric Market II: the one that's less well-known.

-Fake Market: 'nuff said.

-Qipu Lu: They don't call it Cheap Poo Loo for nothin'.

-Ironic Sweater Market -- second hand clothes, pimp gear, assorted radness that’s good for Halloween and every other day of the year

-The Sex Mall -- accessories (!), but they also got a bunch of ghetto-ass “sexy” costumes -- nurse, school girl, etc. -- intended for fetish play but could also double as Halloween costumes. Like if you wanted to do “sexy nurse” but also want to communicate a certain je ne sais quoi of impoverishment as well.

-Taobao: Look up ‘Halloween’, look up ‘costumes’, look up ‘cosplay'. Then try "万圣节" and "服装道具". We've also set up some tags at this link right here: KA-POW! Good luck.

Look! Only 22rmb!

Online taobao stores tend to have their cell phone and QQ numbers on there as well, so you can contact direct to make sure your order gets to you in time…

ScCccaaAAARRY ShoooPPINGG!!!

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