Trashy Lingerie has made some of pop culture’s most iconic looks, like the bunny suits for Reese Witherspoon in “Legally Blonde” and Renée Zellweger in “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”
These Los Angeles-based stores, museums, and galleries celebrate Halloween year-round with spooky antiques, oddities, costumes, horror decor, and more.The store has built its reputation on its high-quality, original products with rigorous customer service to match, making it a haven not just for VIPs but also for wardrobe stylists and costume designers.
Trashy has made some of pop culture’s most iconic looks, like the bunny suits for Reese Witherspoon in “Legally Blonde” and Renée Zellweger in “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” The store also has made looks for Pamela Anderson in “Barb Wire,” Emma Stone in “Easy A” and the Fembots in “Austin Powers,” as well as Madonna, Cher, Stevie Nicks, Ariana Grande and Teyana Taylor. Shopping for Halloween at Trashy is a rite of passage for many Angelenos. October can account for 60% of the year’s sales, with the majority coming in the 10 days leading up to the holiday. Trashy’s price point is summed up in one phrase: “If you know, you know,” said Randy Shrier, who runs the store these days. “And if you have to ask why it’s this price after trying it on, then you’ll never know.” In other words, it costs a lot of money to look thisPopular ready-to-wear getups like flappers, cowgirls, fairies and nurses can range from $250 to $1,500; the elaborate three-piece , a pièce de résistance made of brocade silk dripping with pearls and satin bows, costs $1,315. Custom Halloween costumes can fetch up to $4,000 and have to be ordered by July.“The sexy Halloween industry was based on all our stuff,” said Shrier, who took over after his parents retired. Mitchell and Tracy Shrier opened the storefront in 1973 as a shoe shop. They named it after one of Mitchell’s slingback designs, “the Trashy,” which was taken from a British slang term to mean fashionable or tart. Mitchell chose the location for two reasons: It was already a former shoe store, and the block had built-in foot traffic. A year in and the Shriers started fielding requests for hosiery to go with heels, so they hand-dyed stockings in vivid colorways. A Marie Antoinette costume, complete with brocade silk dripping with pearls and satin bows, and a matching masquerade mask.“When I was a little kid, our whole backyard was filled with nylon stockings blowing in the breeze in all the colors of a rainbow,” Shrier recalled. Customers needed garter belts to hold up the stockings, so they made those too, working their way up the body with underwear and bras until they had an entire lingerie line. By 1979, they had gotten rid of the shoe rack and taken over next door. They maintained a leg up by sticking with one location, paying skilled workers competitive wages and adapting to six generations of customers. With its good weather, showbiz bodies and bikini beaches, post-sexual revolution L.A. was the natural hotbed of the underwear-as-outerwear trend. A Trashy bustier worn by Madonna on her 1987 Who’s That Girl world tour sold for a record