Burnham Wood

The best costume I've ever seen was the fellow at a dorm party who was dressed in green and carrying a twig. Said he was on his way to Dunsinane.

Halloween costumes i have loved

Over the years there have been a few costumes that I remember. These were get ups of imagination and not much cost.

There was a fellow dressed up as the 50's classic movie character "The Invisible Man". How did he do this? He wrapped his head and hands in strips of white cloth had and old suit on with a hat and sunglasses. Memorable!

Then there was the woman wearing a costume composed of half a dress and half a suit-joined and sewn down the middle. Costume obviously from "found" clothes. Quite a message!

My mom dressed me up as a saloon girl from the "old west" when I was around 9. The costume was made from her old clothes including a taffeta skirt-i can still remember the sound of the taffeta when i moved and I got to wear lipstick too.
I treasure the photo of that Halloween.

A few years ago I dressed up as a suffragette, copying my costume from a historical photo. I even had a banner across my chest proclaiming "votes for women". Anyways surprisingly and discouragingly, some folks didn't get it and asked me what a suffragette was.

Now i've heard the "most "popular" costume this Halloween is to dress up as Michael Jackson.
The factories are at full speed turning out cheap "Thriller" costumes and other throw away Halloween paraphernalia associated with Jackson.
Considering his recent death and tragic life-what does that say about us?

Thoughtful

What a thoughtful and interesting piece. Ms. Redmond never fails to intrigue, and her topics make you step back and think twice. Mid to late twentieth century Halloween was as she described: participatory democracy comes to mind. We made our own costumes, and enjoyed the sense of accomplishment. I've never purchased a prepackaged costume and it really is symptomatic of peak consumerism.
http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2009/04/09/notes-tainter/

The good news is that we're watching the very peak of consumerism and in all likelihood, several years from now it will be in tatters. Unfortunately, so will many other parts of our society as things unwind, so it won't be all warm and fuzzy.

Peak consumerism is matched perfectly with predictions by Joseph Tainter's prescient work Collapse of Complex Societies. Read it and weep.

Great coverage!

memorable

not mine, but I still chuckle when I think of the Halloween party with the woman carrying an umbrella in her pajamas... aka a 'wet dream.'

the new middle class

Must be nice to have money to waste.
Other people worry about how to feed their families!

Recycled Wolf Men Rampage!

Clever beats expensive, for sure.

And even if we do buy something from value village, why not re-use it?

I've got a two-year plan with a wolf-man mask and wolf-man hands:

Halloween '09: Wolf mask and hands with my friend's borrowed aikido outfit: Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I know he's a rat, but close enough)

Halloween '10: Wolf mask and hands with letterman jacket and 80's jeans: Michael J. Fox as Teen Wolf.

Can anybody suggest how I could reuse the wolf-man mask the year after?

A lot of the things we have

A lot of the things we have in our society are things that existed before the age of consumerism. Perhaps instead of wishing the past were different while condemning the present, we could endeavor more to rekindle the old school. Don't throw Halloween out with the briefly used bath water. DerekW: 2011 you could go as yourself turned wolf. mask, gloves, your clothes...eh?

The antitheses of conventionality?

"And [Halloween]'s too ironic to let it be killed by conventionality, when historically and currently, it's about celebrating the antithesis of that."

Careful, Vanessa, Halloween has a very ancient history that is anything but non-conventional, from the Celts who first "celebrated" it (i.e. warded off evil spirits) to the Roman Christians who adapted it to conform with Christianity. And I still have a hard time figuring out what, besides egging people's houses, is considered anti-conventional about the celebration in modern times, since everyone pretty much still follows the same rules as everyone else on October 31.

But you're totally right about how lame-ass all the pre-packaged, mass-consumed costumes are.

The coolest costume I saw last year was a unicorn. The wearer had made her own white body suit, hoof covers for her feet and hands, and a long white tail,and somehow made her own acrylic horn that was a good 15 inches long. The only thing she didn't make was her white wig.

Thanks Newphorik

Good suggestion Newphorik. I also thought of one more: One would be to have a red cape hanging from the mask's mouth and be the big bad wolf, OR have a little red riding doll and a grandma doll emerging from a gory hole in the wolf's stomach.

The other would be to stretch out an old nature T-shirt over my head, so I'm like those cheesy airbrushed wolf-head tshirts.

battered bride

The costume I remember was a sheet and two tablecloths, and a lot of liquid rouge on my face and neck. As the battered bride, I had a great time singing Doris Day songs like Que Sera Sera, and A guy is a guy, lifting my veil at appropriate moments. It was such fun, walking around in the early evening, waiting until people went all gooey about the bridal couple, and lifting my veil to them.

@ DerekW

Wolf mask, cotton-batting "hoodie" with ears, and pants with a wooly tail - wolf in sheep's clothing?

Duct Tape

My friends and I since high school have had a fascination with using duct tape in creative ways for DIY costumes.

Last year my friend was an astronaut with a painter's suit, coke bottle rockets on her back and duct tape accessories. The year before she went as a martian with duct tape antenna and skirt.

One year I was Padme Amidala from Star Wars with a duct tape utility belt and boots over top of a white body suit.

Last year I went as a lion tamer with a ripped safari shirt with fake blood and, of course, multi-strand whip made out of duct tape.

So much fun with such a simple material!

fruit of the loom guy

Once we rented a boat that sailed around the Vancouver harbor for halloween. My friend's boyfriend had dressed as the fruit of the loom guy, with a one piece long john suit and many grape colored ballons all tied together that slipped over his shoulders. We took a cab to the boat, he forgot the balloon piuece in the trunk of the cab and spent a good while fretting about it. The cab did eventually return and he got his balloon suit back. Another friend wore a lamp shade on his said and said he was the "life/light of the party". I dressed as an Arab with authentic head wraps from Tripoli and was disrespected a few times: faced racial slurs from certain jokesters. All in all a fun time, but revealing regarding how I personlaized these "joke" slurs, and this was in the early 1990s long before the "racialization of terrorism" perpetrated by the US government. I laugh at the Battered Bride costume, and awful realities are often well processed and displayed with humor!
Ironically, my child refuses costumes from the bottom of his heart. He screamed and went rigid in his car seat when I tried to dress him up when he was two and three. At four, he got into a wizard hat and cape but insisted he was a witch, not a wizard! We will see this year what happens.

Wolf ideas

Tacky tourist shirt, camera around neck, map in hand.

Where-Wolf?