For our latest installment of Coffee Talk, we’re celebrating Emily’s favorite holiday by sharing our most memorable costumes of all time, that go beyond the obvious.
Emily: As someone who’s certifiably obsessed with all things Halloween, this was pretty hard for me to narrow down. I’ve had a lot of favorite costumes—Alex, from A Clockwork Orange, Katy Perry, and “crazy cat lady” all come to mind—but it was probably Melanie Daniels, from Hitchcock’s The Birds, that I loved most. I’m a fan of costumes that are simple to throw together (i.e. that don’t require a trip to a party store) and are easily recognizable. This one was particularly fun since it required a vintage skirt suit that was balanced by crows affixed to different parts of my body. It felt sophisticated, but still eerie, and my cats were particularly fond of the birds that they managed to attack anytime I sat down.
Geoffrey: As a kid, I usually dressed up as the same thing every year: a homemade “ghoul”, which was essentially some torn sweatpants and a very bad makeup job using my mom’s drugstore mascara and lipstick. Needless to say, I didn’t put in a lot of effort, preferring the act of getting candy over the process of getting dressed up. That changed as I got older and as an adult, I’ve ventured into more detailed costumes, even if they haven’t been the most appropriate. My most memorable was from a couple years back, when I dressed up as the then-recently deceased Billy Mays, from the Oxiclean infomercials. I dyed my hair and beard jet black, bought a massive blue polo shirt and pleated khakis from Goodwill, and hung a bottle of the famed cleaner from a belt loop. I received a mixture of laughs and leers in my office, but you can’t please everyone.
Alina: My most memorable Halloween costume is definitely when I was Carrie just last year. I took the task incredibly seriously (which to me really just meant having the time of my life sourcing things as identical to the movie-things as possible). My favorite part was when I went to a fabric store and spent approximately two hours bonding with the seamstress as we hand-picked each item to make my corsage, sash, and big pink bow (for the bouquet of roses Carrie’s carrying when the pig’s blood gets dumped on her on stage). If you look at a movie image, it’s all pretty much identical. The most fun I had was embracing the fake blood. I put it all over. It was so sticky, by the end of the night, it was actually painful because the blood had hardened so much I was encased. Each movement was strained and I had to take a hot shower before bed, watching the fake blood pour down the drain Psycho-style. So proud of that costume.
Leslie: I wish I had a more interesting answer for this because I love Halloween but for me it was always more about the scary movie night and trick-or-treating (which I continued far beyond the recommended age) than it was about the costume. I was maybe 8-years-old when my mom super-glued fake flowers all over a huge tulle skirt for a fairy-garden princess costume and I got more miles out of that skirt than I have from most of my clothes. I wore it every single year through senior year of high school so I guess what I lacked in creativity, I made up for in consistency.
Do you have a memorable Halloween costume? Share it with us in the comments below!
