“Mean Girls” taught girls that for Halloween, all we need is some lingerie and any form of animal ears to make a costume. Contrary to this popular belief, we do have wider options than that. Getting creative with your costume on Halloween can make dressing up even more fun and a lot classier.
Go vintage
Be sure to stay classy this Halloween. Above, people walk The Hill on Halloween 2011. (Robert R. Denton/CU Independent File)
Choose an old celebrity with an iconic look that is relatively simple to mimic, such as Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn. Marilyn’s look requires a flowing, white halter dress, curled blond hair and makeup to place her famous mole above your lip. To pull off Audrey, you need a black dress, long black gloves, pinned-up brown hair, a jeweled necklace and sunglasses. Most stereotypical styles from the ‘20s through the ‘80s are easy for people to recognize and fun to play around with. Flapper costumes can be very easy to put together, and so can classic pin-up girl styles. You get to keep some sex appeal in your costume and experiment with different hairstyles and outfits, all while keeping it extremely classy.
Mythological creatures
Fairies, vampires, mermaids and goddesses all scream Halloween and are usually cheap to make. Most of these just require one essential piece to the costume, and the rest you can improvise. For example, fairies need wings, vampires need fangs, mermaids need a tail and goddesses need a gold belt and glamorous jewels. The rest of the outfit can just stick to a basic color scheme. Fairies will most likely be wearing pastel colors and maybe some “pixie dust” to add to the character. Vampires will need to be wearing black and deep reds or purples, keeping a gothic look. For a goddess, you would just need a white or cream flowing dress. To finish off the mermaid look, you would need to stick an aquatic color pallet. These costumes can be extremely pretty, and you can make them as simple or as decorative as you would want.
Stick with the classics
Many girls have been a princess or a witch at least some point in their lives. Who says we’re too old to keep that tradition going? You can grab your go-to fancy dress and throw on a tiara, or slide into your little black dress and put on a fun witch’s hat. These outfits require little to no shopping but still look like you made an effort. Nothing gets you into the Halloween spirit more than getting nostalgic and putting an adult spin onto your old favorite costume ideas. Not only is it fun for you, but every Halloween lover appreciates a good witch or princess.
Get weird and funny
Another approach would be to find a comical outfit. They have plenty of full body costumes at Halloween stores, such as penguin suits, Sumo-wrestler gear, “Ted” outfits and a variety of Teletubbies. Although these are fun to dress up in, large costumes like those can get pretty expensive. If you want to avoid excessive spending, there are plenty of ways to make humorous outfits yourself. For example, you could dress as an old lady trying to be sexy or be a wad of gum stuck underneath a chair. Couple costumes can also be really amusing. The guy could be dressed up as a Swiffer, and you could be in all brown, as the Mud Lady. You could be Barbie and Ken with decorated cardboard boxes to look like you are still packaged. These costumes are memorable and steer clear of the potential of getting a little bit too risqué.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Taylor Dunn at Taylor.dunn@colorado.edu.
