#boatcostume | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

simplesouthern · 12 years ago

Photo

Making a Halloween costume, for me, has always been more fun than actually wearing it to a party (except wearing it to a party and then having people comment on it and telling them I made it is probably the most fun of all). Since 2008, I've been making my own costumes and the process always involves a glue gun (damn, I love those things).

In 2008 I went as a fox. I spent 2 hours one day scouring the mega-fabric stores southwest of Midtown to find a fake fur of just the right hue to match the little (real) fur cape I was wearing. It was $50 but I've been able to repurpose it as a scarf and the rest of the costume was free. A friend got the cape at a vintage store and was about to donate it to Goodwill when she moved out of her college dorm, but I would have none of it. So it became the (free!) inspiration for the fox costume, although I never wore it except for that costume. I wore a pair of leggings, boots and russet-hued sweater I already had and trimmed some of the faux fur tail to cover the cardboard ears I glued to a headband. The leggings and boots and serious shoulders of the cape made it all very flashdance fox. But that Halloween was just awful; I ended up subwaying from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back and having a huge fight with my then boyfriend which culminated in him running from the West to the East village of Manhattan to see me and some yelling in the street.

The next year was perhaps worse. I dressed as a wild thing from the movie "Where the Wild Things Are" using a huge furry Russian hat my broher bought me from Saint Petersburg as inspiration. A friend lent me a faux fur short jacket, I found some gray/black fake fur as a tail, and I used the same leggings and headband (which I made horns for). Again, with the subways between Brooklyn and Manhattan, except this time it was raining, I had no boyfriend to fight with, and they had shut the subways down from 14th street to Midtown. Crowds were shouting in the street and it seemed like there would be violence. I managed to catch a cab and make it home crying to a friend in LA on the phone.

2010 was more fun costume. The inspiration came from a boy I went on some dates with. He was kind of a turd, but he told me that my short hair reminded him of Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell in Hook. Hook is one of my all-time favorite movies and I hate those slutty Tinkerbell costume girls always wear so I was keen to do one with a tomboy twist. I went to Prospect Park to collect fall leaves, and then I ironed then flat between wax paper, painted them with gloss, hairdryed them and glued them to a shirt an old roommate had discarded (free again!). I found a weird pair of shorts at a thrift store in my Park Slope hood (on 5th Ave) which I trimmed to be shorter and used the scraps of to sew through the neck of the tshirt (like it was laced up or something). Minnetonka moccasins finished the look and it was warm enough that night and we were going just across the street to one of my favorite dance parties (Southpaw's "The Rub") that I didn't even need a jacket. I strapped a cowrie shell belt I'd bought in Kenya to my waist and attached a drawstring bag to it where I put my phone, money and IDs. The dance party was not so much fun. There was an issue (as there always is) about some boy who was supposed to show but never did. The leaves would break off in the crowd or when I moved and my wings (made from wire hangers and tights, just were not working out).

I re-used that costume for a party last year. This time I had a pair of wings lying around the house and I found some new leaves to glue on. The boy drama was minimal. My boyfriend met up with me at a friend's party, laughed at my dancing, and drove me home while I sang "Under Your Spell" and thought about how much he was Ryan Gosling in "Drive" with his work boots, jean jacket, levis, and perennial toothpick (this was not even a Halloween costume; it's his usual look).

For another party that year I got together with some classmates in my study group to plan a group costume. It was inspired by a particularly unproductive study session in which we joked about how weird all the legal mentions of admiralty law were and came up with the idea to be nautical representations of all the possible civil suits on a ship (this is what happens when law students get stuck in a small room for hours on end). We were set to win the contest and should have but there was undoubtedly some favoritism with the voting and we didn't. In the end, though, we were all winners. One guy already had all the trappings of a pirate costume, another was an admiral, complete with women's jacket and fluffy blouse as found at the Goodwill Outlet (where clothes are by the pound). Another was a galley slave; again Goodwill provided the booty shorts, bandana, and striped shirt. My pantry provided cocoa to smear across his face like dirt. But the two best costumes were me and the other girl. I went as a boat and I made the entire thing from a single cardboard box and lots of glue. I used leftovers from my clothes line to sling it over my body and pencil to be the flagpole of my crow's nest hat. Dancing in it was so fun. My friend had hand's down the most amazing costume; a parrot. A hideous red turtle neck and pair of pants were the foundation. She then made wings out of a combination of feathers and foam and her beak was felt glued on a red hat. The wings kept coming apart at the dance and I would try to repair them with tape, but to no avail. It was truly an amazing Halloween and made me realize that the fun was in the weeks of collective planning that led up to it, the weird genesis of the idea, the trips to Goodwill and the costume store, getting together before the party to put our costumes together.

Halloween is consistently one of the most disappointing holidays ever (my birthday and New Year's are actually less disappointing), but I think it's because all the anticipation makes you think it should be great and you're always disappointed by the parties. It's much more fun if you get lost in the creative process leading up to it. As I get older I get more and more into that crafty part of it and the parties don't matter anymore. Maybe it's because I've had my fair share of parties, and now I'm just happy to be spread out on the floor with a glue gun and a pile of leaves or cardboard or whatever else I find, pretending I'm a kid again.

#halloweencostumes #tinkerbell #parrot #pirateship #boatcostume

0 notes