Spooky: Halloween and Fashion

Boo!… Did I scare you?

It is the most creative time of year! Spooky Season! Where the costumes range from all forms or imaginative, horrorific, glamorous, and hilarious. Halloween has so much history to it, as well as such as huge cultural impact in recent years. cause as we all know, back in the day Halloween was the favorite holiday of the eccentric. Now it’s basically everyone’s favorite holiday and the way everyone prepares for it is so beautiful and fun. Where did all this fun start anyway? lets get into that shall we?

All Hallows Eve please

Yes, if you didnt know, Halloween was originally referred to as Hallows Eve before it got shortened to what we know it as today. The name itself comes from its roots in Christianity. The concept itself goes back to the Celtic festival Samhain where they would don animal skins to protect them from spirits. have you ever heard the phrase that during Halloween that “veil” between the world of the living and spirits was at its weakest? Well that probably comes from this. This eventually transformed as a concept as time went on.

As Christianity began to spread more across the world, the idea of “disguising” yourself from the spirits started to take on a different look. Christianity had its own concept of the Celtic festival called All Saints Day. Samhain and All Saints Day eventually became All Hallows Eve, but the general concept stayed the same. People would prance around the streets dressed as Saints, Angels and Demons. And you guessed it, this eventually became what we know of today as Halloween. As time went on, the costumes began to take on a life of their own… as did the Holiday itself.

Around the 19th century Ray Halloween costumes were generally being made by hand, at home. And as time went on the idea of trick or treating started to gain its own momentum, and now you have the holiday that we know and love today. By the 1930’s costumes were no longer being homemade, as companies started to mass produce them. In turn making them more accessible and overall making the holiday more popular.

Enter the 20th century and costumes and pop culture start to become intertwined. Due to being mass produced and more readily available, more diversity was possible. So costumes started to reflect concepts such as Superhero’s, fil and book characters, cartoon characters, and whatever else you can think of honestly. Now even with this, there are those of us who still want to be more on the creative side. As Social media began to rise so did the old school way of making your costume by hand.

Creativity and the Spooky Spirit

One major theme of this publication is to embrace fashion as an art form. What better time to start getting creative than with a good old costume? As you know costume departments in movies definitely never swayed away from going all out [looking at you Fifth element] so everyone else began to decide why shouldn’t they too? Especially with people making their costumes by hand again, they started to craft costumes that were exceptionally unique and even avant garde.

This brought around an entirely new approach to Halloween. Creativity began to reach an all time high, as we see more not only playful but incredibly intricate costume designs. We even began to see a rise in group Halloween costumes as social media started to come into play. It became a really big thing to showcase DIY costumes, where they were simple or more advanced, and not only with costumes but decorations too. Entire themes became a huge trend, so you had not only the group costumes but the entire theme of decorations too match.

Even Halloween parties increased in popularity. And also became a fashion show for the spooky, the kooky and everything in between. Going to a Halloween party meant seeing that one friend either make an exact replica of the Queen of Hearts costume from Alice in Wonderland or a white blanket with holes in it to symbolize a ghost. There is going to be a beautiful variety. The holiday grosses roughly $3 billion in just costumes alone, and with a new change in economy more people are taking the approach of sustainability. Upcycling costumes has also increased in popularity, with portrayals of simple cartoon characters like the cast of Family Guy which primarily consists of clothes that you may already have laying around in your closet that you can purpose for a costume.

Spooky Kooky Fashion Show

Celebrity Halloween costumes are almost as exciting as the yearly Met Gala. Many celebrities have made it a big thing to go all out for Halloween, and showcase either exuberant wealth or creativity… but usually both. The extravagantly wealthy have parties all the time, but none like their Halloween parties. Seeing the paparazzi photos of celebrities as they walk into or out of a party, is a thing of inspiration.

For example of of my personal favorites would be Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox going as Ryuk and Light Yagami from death Note. That might also just be my bias of loving anime and a good reference. But they really served honestly. Sometimes celebrities go as each other even. Which is always hilarious, to me personally. For example, Britney Spears is a very popular costume amongst everyone, including othe celebrities,

Tricks and Treats

Whether it’s a movie reference, celebrity reference, cartoon reference, or just an overall concept, the costume creativity is always abundant. Although the origins of Halloween are a bit bleak and simple, we’ve come a long way. From the typical demons, angels and witches to iconic movie and anime characters. Watching the holiday take a turn from homemade, to mass produced all the way back again, and everything in between. Halloween has always been a holiday full of creativity and inspiration within the realms of costumes. We cant wait to see what all of you put together for your own costumed.

Talk again soon!