At dusk on Portland Avenue in Rochester, the windows of a one-story shop glow against gray October skies — illuminating a tiny-yet-expansive world of whimsy and make-believe.
Among the mannequins dressed in creature-like costumes and racks of regal capes, flashy jumpsuits, the Godzilla and Minion costumes, and colorful feather boas, Brandin Jones, 39, tries on half-faced masks. He's picking out the final piece to complete a costume for a masquerade.
“I don't want to be outshined, so I'm here trying to make sure my outfit’s on point,” Jones said.
He’s been coming to Arlene’s Costumes for about 15 years, and it’s the energy that keeps him coming back, he said.
“They will spend time with you when you come in here, which is really great, and help you find what you need, answer questions,” he said, as shelves stacked to the ceiling with cowboy hats and mascot heads loomed nearby. “They're not impatient, yeah, that's why I kind of come back.”
Arlene’s has been a beloved community staple for decades, a family business now five generations deep. But this year they’re marking a somber milestone.
It’s the first Halloween without two of its most prominent staff: Arlene Stephens, the shop’s namesake and co-founder, and her niece Cindy, the general manager. The two died a month apart.
“We've been in business now 69 years. Next year will be our platinum anniversary,” said Terry Sinopoli, Cindy’s daughter, Stephens' grand-niece, and the marketing and customer service manager. “We didn't expect to do it without them.”
Sinopoli walks under an archway with the words “Halloween Manor” as she heads to the costume rental racks. She pulls out two Revolutionary War replica uniforms, a blue coat and a red coat.
“These were made by my great grandmother and her sisters,” she said, touching the hand-sewn stitches — literal threads that still connect her to family who are now deceased.
Remembering the Queen
Sinopoli’s great aunt was known as the Queen of Halloween, but Arlene also believed costumes and dress up were meaningful fun any time of year, Sinopoli said.
“We used to do something where we would have, like, a trunk, and you could buy the trunk, and then you could kind of fill it with costumes and stuff to kind of keep kids really playing throughout their childhood,” Sinopoli said.
According to family lore, that love of dress up, costumes, and transformation goes way back.
“In one of our homes, Arlene had the attic full of a lot of costumes that weren't being used. ... We had every kid in the whole neighborhood that was one up there every day. ‘Can I play? Can I play in the attic?’" said Donna White, Arlene’s younger sister and the owner of the shop.
Stephens loved children, White said, and was patient with those who were timid.
"A lot of children are afraid, and she would try a hat on them and make friends with them with Mickey Mouse or whatever,” White said. “She got a lot of compliments from people that live with these kids and told how they changed their mind and they weren't afraid now. It was fun."
Sinopoli also has seen a kind of healing power in costumery, and as a way to process grief, too. Some years back, she recalled, a man and his niece came into one of their pop-up shops at Eastview Mall trying to find a Halloween costume for her.
“The gentleman said that, unfortunately, the girl's parents had passed away in a car accident and he was kind of strapped for cash and needed to figure out how to get her a Halloween costume,” Sinopoli said. “And all she wanted to be was a bird.”
Sinopoli took the lead, piecing together a costume out of whatever they could find for the girl, who seemed to be about 9 years old.
“We found her a green cape, and we found her a boa, a feather boa, and we found some feathers, and she was like, ‘Well, I have a bright-colored sweatsuit at home, and I can put that together,’” she said.
About a week or so later, at the mall’s trick-or-treat party, the full patchwork effect took flight, so to speak.
“All of a sudden I get, like, tackle-pounced by this little 9-year-old all dressed up as a bird,” she said. “And she's flapping her arms and running around and so excited, and her uncle's crying and I'm crying, and yeah. So, I got to make a little kid very, very happy by making her into a bird.”
Providing the means for someone’s metamorphosis is in the shop’s lifeblood, and perhaps in that way costumes are a bridge between worlds — between the real and the imaginary.
And at Arlenes, between life and spirit.
