Best Costume Shop

Franco Carretti did costume design for the Italian film director Sergio Leone and a raft of others, including John Huston, before moving to Miami in 1980. His collection of guises, vintage clothing, and meticulously rendered period pieces fills the upper stories of a four-story shop in the Design District. ABC caters to professionals. Designers from movies, television, and commercial shoots come here for Roaring Twenties gangster glam, Edwardian chic, Sixties hippie, and Seventies disco-mod. Seamstresses at ABC also sew original designs. A staff that builds those fantastic feathered headdresses and slinky showgirl outfits for the cruise-ship extravaganzas can handle most requests. No wonder amateurs like us line up around the block come Halloween to choose from the more than 20,000 outfits ABC has for rent. The selection runs the gamut of the alphabet -- from Adam and Eve and the Andrew Sisters to Zorro (called the Z-Bandit), albeit skipping a few letters here and there. In between A and Z there are Jane Fonda as Barbarella, the Beatles circa Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Jackie before she became O, as well as Batman, the Bride of Dracula, the Statue of Liberty, and an assortment of animals, including a frog, dog, chicken, cat, rabbit, parrot, pig, and rat. See ABC's Website for hours and a map.