It is once again that special time of year where millions of Americans decide to dress up as either the characters from a particular Netflix show or any career professional with “sexy” tacked on the front of it. Every Spirit Halloween location lights up and the doors open to the masses searching for spooky masks or costume lingerie. The selection of costumes they offer cannot hold a green plastic candle to the ones that people come up with on their own. Spirit Halloween can dress you as a clown, a witch or a construction worker, but nothing is funnier than when someone decides to simply go as a traffic cone.
Of course everyone should dress up in whatever they like, but it should be impressive. It should have some pizzazz. Whether your makeup skills rival a drag queen’s or you can hardly operate an eyeliner pencil, you should feel proud of yourself for having some originality. Homemade costumes have a certain spice that store bought ones just do not capture. This is not to say you must build the entire thing from scratch, costumes can obviously come together in a number of ways.
It is true that sometimes people can take basic costumes like angels or devils and really show off, but even that has been overdone. It seems that everyone has a favorite cartoon or movie character but catches amnesia when it comes to deciding what to be, though that is understandable since we all are just doing our best. But think how much better it would be to appear as Beetlejuice against a sea of Purge masks. The original point of Halloween is to ward off evil spirits by dressing like them, and what spirit is going to take you and your fluffy wings seriously? Perhaps a few would; times have changed.
More frightening than any boogeyman is how dark the underbelly of fast fashion is, so you are better off upcycling clothes into costume pieces rather than supporting Spirit Halloween.
The sizing is not all that inclusive and most of the best stuff has been picked over by the time your schedule is cleared enough for a shopping trip. Not to mention that costuming as a college student has to be done on a budget, so it makes way more sense to use clothes you can wear again for your look. You also have to consider the biting Oswego temperatures, where you may have to be Batman dressed as a student instead of the other way around. The flimsy nurse outfit in the Spirit bag is not going to save you from a 47 degree windchill.
In sum, there are multiple reasons to forge your own path when it comes to dressing up this Halloween. As you wade through a thicket of Patrick Batemans and Eddies in the frat basement, take pride in how you can look better for cheap and feel good about doing so withoutsacrificing comfort or warmth.
