Halloween Costumes
Posted By Ardellis on November 1, 2006
While I was on door-duty for the trick-or-treaters last night, I came to the sad conclusion that the commercially manufactured kiddie costumes marketed these days are just too good. Used to be, in order to have a decent costume for Halloween, you had to actually put it together yourself (or get your parents to). Otherwise, you were stuck with a thin plastic thing that you wore over your clothes and a cheesy mask that came with it in a bag. That made for some powerful motivation for me to come up with ideas, I can tell you. In the worst case, I fell back on hobos and clowns, which could be cobbled together pretty easily with old clothes and a bit of theatrical makeup. But, honestly, from the age of about 8 on, I’d have rather died than leave the house in a store-bought Halloween costume.
The whole night, I saw one handmade costume. Just one. And it was amazing. The kid was maybe 12, and he’d painted some cardboard tubing gunmetal grey, put on grey and black clothes, and chopped up an old scuba mask or somesuch to paint silver and red (it covered half his face). And he was one helluva good-looking Borg, dammit.
The rest of the kids who came to my door? Small furry animals (washable acrylic, of course). Scooby Doo. A handful of pirates. A couple of witches. One pretty cool rubber monster mask. And dozens of store-bought fairy princesses. Dozens. of. fairy. princesses. They came in pink and blue and purple and white. Some had tiaras and some had wands with sparkly stars. Every single one had diaphanous wings.
Yeah, the kids were having a ball. But I still think that putting a costume together is infinitely more fun than picking one out in a store. And more memorable. I hope that little Borg’s parents took pictures of that outfit, because it was a masterpiece of creativity. The fairy princesses? Eh. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all.
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