Best Places For Halloween Costumes In Chicago

Whether you ache to be dressed up as the Ice Bucket Challenge or a zombie cheerleader played by a Kardashian of your choice, you'll need a costume or, at the very least, some accessories to complete your Halloween 2014 outfit. If your wallet's on the thinner side this year, check out "How to Get Your Halloween Costume on a Budget In Chicago."

Hollywood Mirror
812 W Belmont Ave.
Chicago, IL 60657
(773) 404-2044
www.shop.hollywoodmirror.com

This Lakeview shop is the place to find random pieces of accessories and clothing to put together your next costume and its range of merchandise begs for you to exercise your creativity. You'll find tribal dresses, crop tops, hot pink fuzzy pom earrings, shoelaces with lips, knit masks and hilarious medical masks printed with various images and cheesy colored wigs that would set Katy Perry's heart aflutter. If you have no idea what to do for Halloween, a trip to Hollywood Mirror should get you on your way to an innovative costume.

Now in new and larger digs, Costume & Magic Outlet is open year round so you don't have to rely on disinterested teenagers barely waiting on you at those pop-up Halloween shops. You'll find fantastic professional make-up lines (Ben Nye, Mehron, Graftobian, Snazzaroo), vintage clothing, sparkling new costumes, wigs, knee-slapping novelty items and, if you get there early enough, catalogs of countless costumes that the shop will order for you.

Fantasy Costumes
4065 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Chicago, IL 60641
(773) 777-0222
www.fantasycostumes.com

The piece de resistance of Halloween accoutrements for decades, Fantasy Costumes is the arbiter of dress-up bliss in a building that's a city block long. Expect intricate historical frocks, creepy detailed masks, a professional line of make-up and more wigs than Cher and RuPaul combined. Fantasy Costumes is the shop closest to Hollywood-level accessories to make a real mark at your Halloween affair. The staff at the Portage Park store is brilliant at helping customers put together a particular look or character.

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Halloween Hallway
900 S. State St.
Chicago, IL 60605
(773) 432-7008
www.halloweenhallway.com

Halloween Hallway began in 2007 as a small Chicago costume store and online retailer and now aims to offer the largest costume selection at reasonable prices. Halloween Hallway's specialty retail stores offer everything you might imagine for Halloween, plus a little extra. For example, need a scythe? There's a bucketful in various lengths for Grim Reapers short and tall. In addition to the superstore in the South Loop, there are outlets in Wicker Park, Lincoln Park, Union Station, the Loop, River North and Lakeview.

Fantasy Festival
901 Cary Road
Algonquin, IL 60102
(847) 658-2000
www.fantasyfestival.com

Fantasy Festival is open year round so expect an extensive selection of costumes and accessories in-store or even at its website. Be a gladiator or a half-eaten ghoul or hey, why not a half-eaten-by-a-lion gladiator? Find great capes, a Cleopatra caftan, an ethereal dress to be a delicate Greek goddess or go prehistoric as in a rumpled Barney Rubble. Fantasy Festival also stocks a deep roster of magician supplies.

Related: Best Haunted Places In Chicago

Jacky Runice has been a columnist with the Daily Herald Chicago since grunge music and flannel was the new black. Her fingers and gray matter have been busy as travel editor of Reunions Magazine; penning a column that was syndicated around the nation via Tribune Media Services. Her work can be found at Examiner.com.