It's crunch time for many Chicagoans, including Niyah and her six-year-old daughter Ny'omi.
"Usually she knows what she wants to be and I get the costume early, but I just had a baby, so I've been busy," Niyah said.
They came to Chicago Costume on Fullerton in Lincoln Park Thursday in hopes of finding something for Ny'omi for a Halloween party.
"I really wanted to be Michael Jackson," Ny'omi said. "But there's no size for me."
Niyah said that's been the case pretty much everywhere.
"It's been sold out online in her size, and I've been looking for stores and I saw the jacket here but it's not in her size," she said.
Carolina Garibay
Michael Jackson is one of this year's more popular costumes for the store, said Courtland Hickey, Chicago Costume General Manager. Other favorites this year include Pokémon, a yearly best seller, and Chicago icon, former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka, who died earlier this month. Hickey said they quickly sold out of Ditka's signature Bears sweater.
"That's been actually a popular costume for awhile but when he passed it just became meteoric," he said. "As far as a local, real Chicago thing, I would say the biggest surprise was how quickly all of that happened."
He said the store is constantly restocking but that it's not always easy to know what customers will want.
"It's really hard to predict sometimes what people are going to want or what we can fit on the walls," he said.
But he said being a local business allows them to restock as costumes sell out so customers don't walk into a store that's been mostly picked over, which he said is often the case at some of the bigger seasonal retailers.
"We want to make sure we have the things people actually want and are of quality so you don't feel like, 'I got the last head of lettuce at the grocery store,'" he said.
Carolina Garibay
Among some last minute shoppers were Isabel and Lanna, who say they were pleasantly surprised by the store.
"I just found this vintage Leg Avenue costume for $20, and if you know Leg Avenue, it's so expensive," Isabel said.
They said they were also impressed by how many different costume sections the store had and how many costumes were still available.
"I think they're going to have plenty of stuff we can use," Lanna said.
As for Niyah and Ny'omi, while they didn't find a Michael Jackson costume, they left the store with what they said was a pretty good second choice.
"We got the Angel Stitch costume. It's the pink one," Niyah said. "Do you like that one," she asked her daughter, who responded with an enthusiastic "Yes!"
"Then we're going to get it," Niyah said.
