Chows Emporium has designed and sold LARP, cosplay and Ren Faire costume since 1994.
It began as a market stall selling second-hand theatre costumes at medieval events, and grew into a costume label once players kept asking for kit they couldn’t find anywhere else.
The first piece Chow designed was a Viking shirt with patterned sleeves, sewn in small batches. The online shop followed around 2004, and the range built up from there.
Every Chows Emporium piece is designed by Chow and her family, then made by one trusted maker in small runs, with a good deal of the finishing done by hand.
The kit is built to be worn hard rather than just photographed. Shirt sleeves run longer so they don’t pull free over vambraces, armholes are cut wider so seams hold when you move and fight, and the trousers use a cotton-linen mix with double stitching that survives a weekend in a field. People are still wearing pieces they bought fifteen and twenty years ago.
The range covers cloaks and robes, coats and jackets, tunics, shirts and gambesons, hoods and mantles, trousers and leather armour, plus accessories. Outfit sets are put together to suit a range of characters rather than tying you to one, so a robe that works for a mage works just as well for a noble.
Collections span mages, necromancers, druids, alchemists, elven and nobles, rogues, warriors, barbarians, vikings, rangers and pirates.
The costume suits players across systems including Empire, Lorien Trust, Curious Pastimes, Bicolline, Drachenfest and ConQuest of Mythodea, and works equally for Renaissance faires and cosplay.
Chow has spent three decades in the LARP community, and Chows Emporium still trades at events through the season, in costume and happy to talk through what suits your character.
