Goblin? Witch? Power Ranger? Ziggy Stardust?

Find your new identity at the Costume Scene.

By: Scott Morgan

   The woman, not too tall and not too blonde, walked past the guns, swords and wigs, and confessed she needed some hats, though she didn’t say why. All she said was that she needed 10 of them, all of the wizard variety.
   While she waited for her hats, I couldn’t resist the urge to see what lay inside the giant pumpkin by the door…
   Spider webs.
   Of course.
   As the woman left, hats in hand, I weighed my options somewhere near the cast of Star Wars: Would I want to be one of the Village People or something a little more Wagnerian? It isn’t so easy to make up your mind.
   Mary Fanelli, owner of the Costume Scene in Trenton, has been through this kind of hedging before. A lot of over-30 juveniles come in here looking for all kinds of goofy stuff this time of year. Some know what they want, some know what they don’t. But if my own kid-on-Christmas-morning reaction is any type of guide, the indecision is the greatest thing about this place for everybody who visits. If you can’t make up your mind, you get to be all kinds of things.
   Ms. Fanelli has few such attacks of juvenilia these days. Being in business since 1980, she’s grown accustomed to being flanked by likes of Spider-Man and Austin Powers.

Staff photos by Mark Czajkowski

Store owner Mary Fanelli and friends (above, left). The Costume Scene’s window display invites the adventurous (above). It’s not just costumes you can find here — don’t forget the creatures to greet trick-or-treaters (below, left).

   "It’s kind of like being a chef in a restaurant," Ms. Fanelli says. "You get used to the food."
   But don’t think for a second that this woman, her hair alight in Ziggy Stardust red, is bored. Oh no. For one thing, she doesn’t have time to be bored. Despite the shop’s unassuming façade, nestled neatly into a largely residential-looking 1700 block of Liberty Street, this house of posh suits and Pikachu heads gets a little, well — crazy this time of year.
   "Halloween is my busiest season," she says. This is when the boys come in and want to look like Power Rangers, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or whatever is in boyish vogue this October. And it’s when the girls come in and want to look like everything else.
   "Girls are all over the place," says Ms. Fanelli, grinning and sighing. "They want to be princesses, they want to dress like the Seventies, they want to be divas…" She waves a hand over a wall bursting with samples of all these looks. I suddenly feel better about my own indecisiveness.
   As I quell my itch to try on rubber noses, I begin to wonder.
   "How do we survive?"
   "Right."
   "You have to work with the schools."
   In the back room, deep and densely packed, a befuddling array of fabrics and styles and colors and eras throws an eye-catching period at the end of that last sentence. This is where this little, unassuming place on Liberty Street comes alive (like every other thing) in springtime. School plays, no longer consigned to church basements and dingy auditoriums, are what have kept the Costume Scene afloat for 22 years, Ms Fanelli says. They are her bread and butter, and one of her primary marketing tools.
   They are also what keep her loving the game.

   "When the kids come in and see themselves in the mirror for the first time, they suddenly get into character," she says, her posture assuming theatrical flourish of its own. "That’s the best. I still love that."
   What has also kept her going all these years is the general good mood of her customers. After all, when people open her door, they’re ready to play dress-up, like little kids about to raid their parents’ closets. Or, perhaps more aptly stated, like little kids who’ve just found a trunk full of retro fashions.
   In case you missed them the first time, you can always visit the ’50s or ’60s or ’70s here. And, increasingly, you can visit the ’80s, though both of us wondered aloud why anyone would want to. To Ms. Fanelli, styles and trends from the ’80s do not amount to period costume. To tell the truth, she is greatly enamored with the Victorian Age.
   "It was very gentile," she says. "Very feminine."
   A lot of women, she says, seem to gravitate in the same direction. The men, however, are a little more Renaissance. They just don’t know it.
   But so long as they can carry arrows and swords, they’re willing to squeeze themselves into ruffles and tights.
   "Guys like to be Robin Hood or pirates," she says, and suddenly I understood why Halloween is her favorite time of year. When else does anyone get the chance to dress someone like Peter Pan and get away with it? And make a living doing it, to boot.
The Costume Scene is located at 1710 Liberty St., Trenton. Halloween season hours: Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Sun. noon-5 p.m. After Nov. 4: daily, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. For information, call (609) 394-7788.