Searching for the perfect pair of black satin gloves to finish off your Audrey Hepburn costume? Need a jewel encrusted mermaid tail so you can truly embody the Little Mermaid? Instead of searching online or finding the nearest Halloween pop-up store, a new D.C. costume rental offers unique costumes directly from amateur costume-makers and costume lovers.
Known as the “HallowQueen” of her friend group, Kelly Carnes launched Trove on August 29, following a preview at Awesome Con. The site allows users to buy costumes or list their own costumes for sale. Buyers can pick up the costume or have it shipped, and when they are finished, they drop it off or send it back. If items are damaged, Trove provides insurance for items covering up to four times the cost of rental.
Currently, the site has more than 300 items listed; around a hundred pieces come from Carnes’ own closet. Highlights from the collection include webbed water creature ears ($16), a custom leather and chainmail Viking costume ($400), and a Legend of Korra costume ($20). Each costume is individually priced and ranges from a $5 headband to a $750 Gothic Victorian gown.
With hundreds of thousands of people attending conventions across the U.S., there is bound to be a lot of fabric used and thrown away. “Typical costume practices come with waste,” Carnes says.
According to Carnes, a longtime cosplay fan, most people buy a cheap costume made with unsustainable fabric and packaged in plastic. Due to the low quality of the material, a cheap costume will fall apart quickly and people will throw it away. One goal of Trove is to share high quality costumes that people can rent and reuse to reduce this cycle of waste.
Trove is also about sharing a love for costume play. A costume that holds a special place in Carnes’ heart is a Poison Ivy costume she had commissioned from an Etsy shop. She loved the huge red wig and leafy bodysuit. “As soon as I put that on I felt invincible,” she says. The costume is available on Trove for $175.
From a young age, Carnes could be found in oversized shoes and tripping over long dresses, always raiding closets to play to dress up. Since then she never really stopped. She starting going to Renaissance Fairs around seven years ago, but her first time at the Dragon Convention in 2014 kickstarted her love for cosplay. Since then Carnes says she has attended too many conventions to count and worn a plethora of costumes: witches, vikings, ghouls, supervillians, you name it.
One thing, Carnes is really excited about is the potential Trove has to build relationships between people who love the same things. She described an instance where a buyer came to a seller’s house and they found out they were both going to the Renaissance Fair. Carnes looks forward to creating more moments from which friendships and relationships may bloom.
“It is easy to get bogged down in the cynicism of the timeline we live in, and this is an opportunity for people to have a positive experience,” she says.
For the future of Trove, Carnes says would like to connect with theater and drag communities in D.C. She also hopes to expand the kids collection.
This month, Carnes has a busy convention schedule attending New York Comic Con, the Maryland Renaissance Fair, and the Salem Witches’ Ball. Some of the costumes she plans to wear are “troved,” including a Sansa Stark costume and a dress to cosplay as Harry Potter’s Bellatrix Lestrange. And if you are out and about this Halloween, look out for the woman wearing a hoop skirt and a gown draped in 36 strands of lights all controlled by remotes, made by costume artist Andrew Blake.
This story has been updated to reflect that Carnes’ lights costume was made by Andrew Blake.
