
Gold Angel Wings Fancy Dress
(CNN) - For the accomplished 177 years, there's been one go-to London destination for costumes, whether it be a Halloween affair or a Hollywood blockbuster.
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Browse the balustrade of Angels Fancy Dress -- a Shaftesbury Avenue academy back 1840 -- and you could aces yourself up a knee-length apron covering beat in "Pirates of the Caribbean" or furs absolute from "Game of Thrones."
That's because not alone is this five-story boutique London's No.1 bazaar for aggregate spooktacular appear October 31, it's additionally the burghal centermost aperture for Angels Costumes, the world's oldest and bigger apparel house.
If you don't admit the name, you'll absolutely admit its work. A family-run business for seven generations, Angels has created apparel for aggregate from "Star Wars" to "Downton Abbey" to "Wonder Woman," and -- with a continued history in amphitheater -- its accomplished barter accommodate Charles Dickens and Queen Elizabeth II.
In the lead-up to Halloween, Angels Fancy Dress extends its aperture hours and takes on added staff, including aegis guards.
This anniversary will see curve of shoppers snake through the abundance and out into the street, abounding cat-and-mouse patiently for hours at a time.
The aboriginal three floors are off-the-peg costumes, accessories and decorations, with ready-to-wear apparel bartering for as little as $30.
The two high floors, however, are committed to the appoint service, which offers one-on-one administration with accomplished costumiers, with your attending tailored by the aforementioned bodies who dress the Hollywood stars.
["776"]"All apparel are alone pieces," explains abundance administrator Andy Andreou. "Everything can be acclimated from altered areas to actualize a look. Some of these apparel accept been activity annular the comminute for 100 years."
While best cine and TV apparel are stored in Angels' barn in Hendon, arctic London, abounding will additionally about-face up in the city-center store.
Labels sewn central the apparel will generally acknowledge an outfit's hidden history, whether it be a cast-off from a Bond cine or a showgirl accouterments from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."
In 2005, the blind beat by Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi in "Star Wars" angry up in the Hendon barn afterwards actuality absent for about three decades. In the meantime, it had been assassin out abounding times to biting party-goers.
And if you wondered how Orlando Bloom concluded up activity abounding aboveboard in those vacation snaps aftermost year, Angels ability aloof accept an account for his apparel malfunction.
"The added day we were activity through, we begin a brace of Orlando Bloom's trousers," says Andreou.
If the Shaftesbury Avenue abundance seems big, the 160,000-square-foot Hendon barn dwarfs it.
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Surely the world's bigger dressing-up box, it's home to added than one amateur items and eight afar of blind costumes.
In 1813, Frankfurt clothier Morris Angel accustomed in London and started out affairs buzz clothes from a wheelbarrow, assertive he'd begin a burghal area you can become whoever you appetite to be.
Seven ancestors later, his birth are still in the business of authoritative dreams appear to life. Angels is now headed up by Tim Angel and his accouchement Emma, Daniel and Jeremy.
It was in the 1880s that Daniel Angel began hiring apparel to jobbing actors for West End affected productions. When the blur industry was born, Angels already had its ball access in abode -- and the blow is history.
So far, Angels has supplied apparel for 37 films that accept won Oscars for Best Apparel Design, the best contempo actuality Colleen Atwood's assignment for "Fantastic Beasts and Area to Find Them."
Last year the apparel abode was awarded a BAFTA for Outstanding Contribution to Cinema.
The Hendon barn is an Aladdin's Cave of afar and afar of accouterment and accessories to actualize acted worlds for every book from aged times to the present, to alien amplitude and beyond.
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There are bogie wings and Santa apparel (including a dejected one already beat by UK Prime Minister Ted Heath), badge uniforms and monk's habits, and row aloft row of Scottish kilts of every association tartan.
The ecclesiastical section, says Jeremy Angel, "is a admirable abode area you can accept Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Christians all blind abutting to anniversary added actual happily" -- affidavit already again that Angels helps charm the apple again and a little better.
You can appearance the barn on their approved "Behind the Seams" accessible tours, which booty groups of up to 12 visitors on a two-hour cruise through the dressmaking apartment and abounding apartment of costumes.
They booty abode during the week, explains Jeremy, so that the accessible can see it "when it's a alive apparel abode and, hey, you may run into an actor. It's the luck of the draw."
Angels Fancy Dress, 119 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2H 8AE; 44 (0)20 7836 5678.
Angels Costumes, 1 Garrick Road, Hendon, London NW9 6AA; 44 (0)20 8202 2244. Tours are priced at £20 per being ($26.50) and run consistently throughout the year. Pre-booking is essential.
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