In my opinion, great dress up clothes are tantamount to a successful childhood.  Dress up clothes need not be, in fact should not be expensively made clothes from an upscale toy store.  They should primarily consist of things from the sale rack of the Salvation Army.  In general, the gaudier clothing is in real life, the more effective it is for dress up use.  Garments that are glittery, sequiny, metallic, sheer, fluffy, silky or leather-like are good examples.

Dress up clothes fuel the imagination and keep children out of your hair for hours on end. Both of these benefits are important, let’s be real.

What we have tried to establish is a selection of clothing that is versatile for all socio-economic classes and a variety of historical periods and fantastical settings.

For example, biblical fashion, predominantly tunics, were used for several centuries.  Tunic like wear is an excellent investment.  Sleeveless ladies dresses in dark colors can be cut off at any length or tied at the waist with a leather belt.  Leather belts are dirt cheap at used clothing stories, sometimes with garish big metal buckles which are always best, of course.

Large men's t-shirts in earth tones or black also make good tunics if they don't have stuff written on them.  If you can only find t shirts with stuff written on them, you can turn them inside out and  trim the loose threads.  They usually look more tunic like if you cut the sleeves off and sew the raw edge down.  But you don't have to, you can just cut the sleeves off neatly and not care about the raw edges.

For the purpose of make-believe, children can just make believe that the raw edges don’t exist. The beauty of the fictional world.

Plain black dresses have a variety of purposes.  The can be used for religious wear.  The can be used for the tunic.  They can be underdresses for the medieval period.  Or armour.  Or a black dress fitting for any formal occasions in almost any time period.

Large metal jewellery is a must to convey the upper classes for almost any era. Plastic beads are a definite no-no in terms of conveying wealth or status.   Plastic beads are plentiful but are limited only to conveying a cheap attempt at luxury or the 1960's era, which most children thankfully have no desire to emulate in their play.

Post Hallowe'en sales are an excellent resource for parents to purchase wings for a variety of dress up options including, but not limited to, fairies, birds, butterflies and unicorns.  Home made wings are possible, but in my experience have proved hazardous, frustrating, difficult and generally produce unsatisfactory results.

I can buy them for 4-8 $ per pair after Hallowe'en.
And sometimes even before. 

One long, long, long scarf.  At least one.  Really long.  Several shorter plain colored scarves and bandanas are useful and fun and serve a variety of purposes.  Cowboys.  Robbers.  Little girls.  Little old ladies.  Hats of various sorts are helpful.  If they are adult sized that you are trying to fit on a small child, then they can wear a toque underneath so it doesn't fall off.  toques makes their heads larger.

Because of the nature of dress up clothes, they are easy to store. A large laundry basket or two, hold an adequate amount of dress up clothes, and are easy to store and tidy up.

One of the best gifts I ever got my kids for Christmas was a basket full