Halloween, when cosplays, costumes and creative house decor flood any and all social media pages. Often, the time when most go trick-or-treating, attend Halloween parties or embrace all things spooky and scary. The most often spoken-about part when Halloween is brought up is undeniably costumes: “What are you planning to go as?” “Wanna do a group costume?” “Wanna match?” All these questions constantly circulate among students at this time. Many times, students respond with something done before — and overdone.
“I think we’re sort of done with the fairies. I’m a little tired of seeing another pair of wings from Party City. I think we can all be done with the fairies,” Shrita Palla said. These costumes, namely fairies, are the type that are considered overdone, probably due to how common they are in media and how often the concept is reused. Especially because they are so easy and simple, they seem more convenient and therefore, well used.
What is the first thing people think of when they hear “Halloween costumes”? “Vampires or werewolves or zombies,” Aryaman Rao said. To be frank, these costumes are very basic — and very overdone. “Low-effort costumes that they buy at the store that they keep selling every year,” Aryaman said. Often these costumes are overdone due to their connection to Halloween, which is that they can be scary. Keyword: “can.” These costumes are often done as a last resort. With nothing prepared, one might turn to a T-shirt with printed-on fur and fake abs with a headband they got from Target two hours prior.
Some of these costumes can be done well, though, with planning and effort. These can also be done as group costumes that turn out to be amazing, but it does get old at some point. “I think scary costumes are only OK when they’re used for flash mobs,” Shrita said. Sometimes, these costumes done in groups are cool and fun and show connection as a group, but what other activity is there to do other than attempt to scare unsuspecting strangers? Instead, focusing on orchestrating a flash mob would not only be a better activity but also would be either very entertaining for the audience or very annoying.
Online, there was a lot of discourse about corset costumes, preaching the idea that they are overdone, boring, basic and bad. This is due to their common connection to wanting to make a costume and its wearer more attractive, and in many opinions this is boring and waters down the authenticity of a character. Well, in all honesty, “I think it’s cute to have a corset. I mean, I feel like corsets — aren’t they? — they’re pretty comfortable, I’m pretty sure. So if you look good in a corset and you like wearing corsets for Halloween, go get them,” Shrita said.
Costumes that are often not overdone and are quite creative are not hard to think of and create. Some “want to see some really creative couple costumes. I want to see costumes of that couple that got caught [at] the Coldplay concert,” Shrita said. But others want something like “putting an iPad on his front and his back so it would look like they could, like, see through him,” Aryaman said, referring to Mark Rober, a popular YouTuber who often makes videos centered on engineering. One of his videos showed him making creative costumes where people around him could see through him.
Halloween will never be a place to judge others on their costumes, but it is a place to impress others with costumes and dress up as something seen in media or literature. These costumes are very common and seen everywhere, but they become more fun due to their customizability. “Those kind of costumes that are really unique, they make my Halloween worth it, because the whole point of Halloween is, like, it’s the one day you get to dress up. So you might as well make it worthwhile with something unique,” Aryaman said. Halloween will always be a time to have fun, so do just that.
