Our Top 3 Shops in NYC’s Garment District!
We love designing custom costumes, it’s one of our most favorite parts of our job. The entire creative process from concepting to designing to shopping for fabric and then watching it all come together on stage is so exciting and rewarding!
In our Confetti Course – Fabric Shopping in NYC: A Complete Guide for Designing Custom Costumes – we go into great detail about our complete creative design process, how we work with our seamstresses, all considerations we take into account and, of course, exactly where we shop (and what we shop for) in NYC!
But, we thought we would give a little teaser by sharing with everyone some of our not-to-miss places that are included in the course! So, here are our top three go-to stores in the Garment District in NYC that we would suggest if you only had a few hours and wanted to see the best of the best!
1. Mood 225 W. 37th Street – If you’ve ever watched Project Runway, you already know about Mood and you can probably hear Tim Gunn’s voice in your head! We’re not trying to be cliché by putting Mood on our list. There’s a reason why the contestants shop there. It is three levels of an amazing selection of unique and high-quality fabrics. It can be very overwhelming, so it’s best to go there when you have an idea of what you are looking for both in terms of the type of fabric and of the concept/theme/color scheme you are going for. This will help you narrow down the literal thousands of choices that await you at Mood! Going there without any idea of where you’re headed might still offer you lots of inspiration, just be prepared to spend a little extra time as you roam aimlessly through rows and rows of textiles! One caveat: Mood is closed on weekends!
2. Hai Trim & Feathers 237 W. 37th Street – When you are ready to begin embellishing your costumes, look no further than Hai Trim & Feathers. Their selection of trim, appliqués, patches, feathers, and any other type of embellishment you can think of is amazing and inspirational. If you don’t have any ideas before walking into this store, you can certainly find inspiration just by walking around and looking at their amazing inventory. It also helps that the store is thoughtfully organized, well lit, and full of friendly staff willing to help you. Until this year, Hai Trim & Feathers was always our go-to for embellishments, but they have also opened a fabric store now! Hai Spandex & Fabrics is on 242 W. 38th Street, and it does not disappoint either, so we highly recommend both of these places!
3. Spandex World 253 W. 35th Street – Being that we are designing costumes for dancers, we obviously need to source a lot of stretch fabrics. There are plenty of stores in the Garment District that offer stretch fabrics, but Spandex World is our favorite. Not only do they have a huge selection of stretch fabrics, but we love the variety of pattern options that they offer! We can always find fun, unique styles for the costumes we’re designing, and they also have a great website we can order from if we need to add anything later after our trip!
If you want to know all our custom costume design and NYC fabric shopping secrets, you can download our online course from this link in our Confetti Shop: Fabric Shopping in NYC: A Complete Guide for Designing Custom Costumes. And, if you want an additional peak at the kind of content we’ve included, check out this podcast episode we hosted on Clint Salter’s Transform My Dance Studio called Costume-a-Palooza! In the episode, we share TWO MORE of our favorite stores in NYC!