NT : Visitor Information : Costume & Props Hire : Costume Hire Store
Costume Hire Store
Information about the thousands of costumes available.
We hold thousands of costumes and accessories in our spacious premises in Kennington SW9. They are all conveniently located on one level and beautifully organised.
Our aim is to make customers feel welcome whether they are hiring for a school play, West End production or feature film. We have a small but dedicated team with an extensive knowledge of our stock who are always on hand to offer help or advise. We encourage customers to browse through the collection at their leisure as this allows them to select costumes for their productions in a much more creative manner. We offer on-site fitting facilities or customers may arrange to take costumes away to fit.
Watch our Dress-Up movie on this page to see just a few of the diverse characters that our costumes help to bring alive!
Quality
The costumes are all from past National Theatre productions and created by our highly skilled staff whose attention to detail and historical knowledge, ensures that they are of the highest quality. They are categorised by period for easy retrieval so customers can effortlessly achieve the unique look they require for their production.
Range
The costumes are well maintained and cover most periods and genres from Ancient through to Contemporary including a much-loved broken down peasant section – very useful for crowd scenes. We also have a Fantasy section that includes various wings, animal costumes, an ostrich, mermaids and many more.
In addition to period costumes we have a varied selection of armour and chainmail which is popular with re-enactment societies. We have a both period and modern military costumes and a good ecclesiastical and judicial section.
The Hire department uses a database which allows us to process your hires efficiently and to produce detailed itemised inventories – essential for making the dreaded task of returning hires much easier. Each costume has a unique barcode which allows us to track the movement of that item.
The collection is an ideal resource for professional theatre companies, amateur dramatic, operatic and re-enactment societies, schools and universities; advertising, video, television or films; photographic shoots and events organisers.
Cost
We offer competitive rates and educational discounts. Longer hires are charged on a sliding scale. Costumes may be reserved for up to six weeks prior to your collection date but we do ask that you try to confirm your hire a minimum of one week prior to collection.
Parking
We have customer parking bays and are situated only 2 minutes from Oval tube station. Please see our contact page for a map and more information on how to find us.