Incredibly cheap fabric in an odd assortment of styles.  If you live far from a major metropolitan garment district or mill town with access to cheap bolt ends, this online store brings that kind of discount outlet price to your locale.

Silk Connection http://www.silkconnection.com

Large variety of (mostly undyed) silks at nearly wholesale price.  Sells truly obscure silk items like silk for use with ink-jet printers, Burn-out (Devore), and Solid Silk/Rayon Velvets with burnout supplies to make your own Devore patterns.

Dharma Trading Co. http://www.dharmatrading.com

Online source for every dye and fabric paint that can be bought in a bottle or packet.  Also cheap silk garments, yardage and dye/paint tools.

Clotilde http://www.clotilde.com

An online version of the famous catalog with every obscure sewing gadget known to man.

Hedgehog Handworks http://www.hedgehoghandworks.com

“Hard-to-find needlework and costuming supplies for needle workers, costumers, and historical re-enactors.” One of the cheapest sites for pre cut corset bones.

Lacis http://www.lacis.com/

A massive searchable selection of obscure costume, millinery, & needlework tools & supplies, corset parts, historic patterns, costume books, and even acid-free boxes & paper for storing antiques.

Milliner Supply & Feathers

 Victoria Louise, Mercers http://www.fred.net/stull/victoria.html

Milliner supply company, with trim, feathers, patterns, wire, and other supplies catering to Victorian reenactors who make their own costumes, and antique collectors doing restoration on hats.

American Feathers and Feather Products MOVED

Large wholesale and retail priced selection of all possible feather items for costuming. 

Vintage Feathers broken link

Vintage ready-made feather hat trims from the 1930’s-40’s.  Unusual stuff.

Fred’s Hat Blocks http://users.erols.com/fjraab

Custom order and ready-made hat blocks in an assortment of styles.

Patterns

Patterns of Time http://www.patternsoftime.com/   . Site is rather hard to navigate and ugly, but has a huge selection of period patterns, and other costume supplies.

 Harper House http://www.longago.com Another rather unattractively designed page, easier to navigate than the above, and having nearly (but not quite) as many patterns of all eras. 

Rusty Zipper Vintage Clothing http://rustyzipper.highspeedweb.net/index.cfm  Sells Vintage patterns and clothing, with particular strength in 1950’s-1970’s.  Searchable database of their patterns.

 The Renaissance Tailor http://www.vertetsable.com  Has free copies of several Late 16th & early 17th Century Tailor’s pattern books online, with instructions on how to translate the patterns to actual garments.

Shop Equipment

 Sean James Garment Racks MOVED

Heavy duty commercially built garment racks in all sizes.

Fabulous Fit Dress Forms http://www.fabulousfit.com/

Sells traditional costume shop dress forms as well as their own custom-fit discount model that can change size and shape with pads.

Cyberform Dress Forms http://www.cyberform.com

Dress forms with an assortment of design innovations.  Will make custom form shapes for you with a computer scan.

The Costume Computer Software Consortium http://www.costumerseye.com/ccsc.html

Sells several different costume related pieces of software, for patterning, inventory, and wardrobe management.

 Underwear & Corset Stuff  

Farthingale’s http://www.farthingales.on.ca/home.htm  

Has very hard to find fabric and notions, especially those needed in the construction of period corsets and hoops. Prices in Canadian dollars!

Custom Corset Pattern Generator  MOVED  Completely free online pattern generator that does an Elizabethan Corset pattern to your measurements.

Laughing Moon Mercantile http://www.lafnmoon.com A small pattern company that puts out only five patterns, all late Victorian.  However, their pattern for “Victorian Underwear” is the best offered by any company, and includes TWO corset patterns, a chemise and divided drawers, in all sizes 6-26 in a single $12 pattern.

Grannd Garb: Corset Notions Page  http://GranndGarb.com/page3.shtml  Lots of obscure corset notions, on a page on a larger Costume Supply site.

Weird Stuff  

Shadowalker’s Armor and Accoutrements MOVED

If it is made of chain mail.  These guys have it. 

Starr Fayrie Fae’s Wings http://www.fairywings.com/

Reasonably priced ready made insect style wings in a variety of sizes and patterns.

Wigs & Makeup 

Best Wig (aka European Wigs) http://www.bestwig.com

Low priced costume and street quality wigs, good selection, reasonable shipping costs.

Fun ‘n’ Folly Wig Index http://www.funfolly.com/h/indxwigs.htm#indxwigstop

Part of a general Halloween/party store with lots of very inexpensive costume wigs. 

Would You Believe? and AAA Costume: Ben Nye Catalog Online http://www.wyb.com/bn_intro.htm Has the complete line of Ben Nye makeup on sale, with pictures of all items from the catalog, so you are sure about what it is you are buying.

Graftobian Makeup http://www.graftobian.com Official site of The Graftobian line of makeup, which includes lots of unusual items and kits like pre made “Beast” foam latex face pieces, “Trauma Kits” for disaster training, neon colored hair gels, and five different types of stage blood.

“The Future of the World is in Kinky People!”: Next quarter’s column will be devoted to neat costume recourses that can now be found due to the expansion of fetish clothing suppliers and sites on the net. Learn where to get complete free instructions on making a Victorian corset, and where to buy thigh high black patent platform boots in a size 14 for $39.99.  In a future column I want to focus on clothing related to WWII, including clothes rationing, uniforms, nylon, Zoot Suits, and items relating to the Holocaust.  If you have good web links for any of these topics, or other topics related to costume, please e-mail me at Tara@costumes.org