While most Montrealers are ready to get their Halloween get ups out, one of the city’s longest running costume stores is ready to pack them up for good. Malabar, where costumers have made and sold costumes for over 80 years, will close up for good after the spooky holiday. Owner Susan Cohene bought the business in 1993 and moved it to its current Parc Ave. location a year later. Now, she said it’s time to move on. “In the last couple of years, people would call and they would ask me for costumes that I never heard of,” she said. “I said, ‘Wow, that’s a sign that it’s just not for me anymore.’” The first Malabar opened in Winnipeg in the early 1900s and a Toronto location soon followed. The Montreal store opened in the 1930s. Cohene said much has changed over the decades and the pace of modern business has made it difficult to want to keep going. “Times have changed, people want everything tomorrow,” she said. “Everybody is in a hurry. This is a business at a little slower pace.” It takes time to make costumes by hand, as many in Malabar were. Sometimes, Cohene would call on her kids to help out, which her son Richard said sometimes had its perks. “I usually get disqualified from most costume contests when they found out my mom owns the business,” he said. Rather than renting as she usually does, Cohene is looking to clear out her stock by selling her pieces before Halloween. She also has plans to donate any leftovers to theatre schools or organizations. “It’s time to go. What can I say, my kids worked here, their friends worked here,” said Cohene.
