What's believed to be the last remaining costume hire shop in Newcastle has officially closed its doors.
Partywear institution Alice's Wonderland and Adamstown shut its doors on Wednesday after decades of providing fancy dress outfits to local partygoers.
Roslynn Wooding, who co-owned the store with her sister Wendy Dare for the past 16 years, said they were both ready to retire and tried to sell the business, but couldn't find a buyer.
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"It's bittersweet," Ms Wooding said. "It would have been good to get some new blood in there. It was a great job, because everyone was always in party mood."
The business, which relocated from Glebe Road to Garden Grove Parade in 2017, took a hit with the advent of eBay, Ms Wooding said.
But they were able to survive with a good base of regulars.
"We've had our loyal customers over the years who kept coming back to us," Ms Wooding said.
Ms Wooding said the business was a lot of work - between dry-cleaning, running the store and making sure they had costumes of the latest characters.
"It was a matter of keeping on top of the new movies," she said. "Jack Sparrow was popular at the time, and Shrek too."
When the sisters decided to finish up, they began selling the costumes. Now the shop is gone, they'll continue to do so through Facebook from Wendy's residence.
"We counted all the pieces up when we were going to sell them and there were 5000," Ms Wooding said. "We called the costumes our babies."
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