one of my favorite scenes in the movie 'mean girls' is when regina george (rachel mcadams) is posing in her playboy bunny halloween costume for her mother's camcorder; her father looks on, distraught and close to tears. lohan's voice over explains that 'in girl-world, halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it. the hardcore girls just wear lingerie and some form of animal ears.” it’s sooo true. halloween IS a free pass to wear something you normally never would (or secretly want to), but instead of trying to find a new variation of the ‘sexy cat’ costume you've been rocking since twelfth grade, this year try to experiment and come up with a stylish and creative alternative. some ideas and shopping tips:
decades. while i hold the firm belief that a decade is NOT a costume, it is a good starting point. DC area vintage shops like glad rags in takoma park, junction and meeps in the district, and the remix in alexandria all specialize in decade-specific looks. you might spend a little bit of money, but you can probably find costume pieces you can work into your regular wardrobe. some stylish icons of each era include marianne faithfull, jean seberg and francoise hardy for the 60s; ziggy stardust-era david bowie and pam grier for the 70s. if you’re going to go 80s don’t even consider like-a-virgin madonna (or britney) - think lita ford, think joan jett, think about grabbing two more friends and paying tribute to the runaways.
pop culture. i’m convinced that thrift stores are a gift to the stylish-but-broke contingency, and even more so around halloween. pop culture costumes are good but there’s nothing worse than having to explain who you are all night because you’re just wearing some mixed up version of your own closet. guys can get cheap-looking suits for borat costumes, or get three and go with friends as stella. at this point all the fall and winter merchandise is out, so there are a ton of margot tenenbaum-worthy fur coats (real and faux) to choose from. or buy one of those crazy-elaborate wedding dresses they always seem to have, dye it in the bathtub, and go as marie antoinette. the thrift shopper is probably the best online resource for thrift stores, ever, in the history of the world.
my boyfriend has a theory that girls will just throw the word 'sexy' in front of anything and there's their costume. if you can’t resist using your free pass to show some skin at least try not to be generic about it - no mas kitty/bunny/nurse/devil costumes, please. and come to think of it, i do have a one-piece safari shorts suit i thrifted months ago and have been dying to wear…sexy jane goodall, anyone?


'marie antoinette' as interpreted by jessica olympia sheridan. photo: rory sheridan. makeup: allie maddox at kibana salon & spa in silver spring.