Halloween is, medicine without a doubt, my favorite holiday. I consider it its own season and the whole month of October is dedicated to the creepy and weird for me. I try to watch as many horror movies as I can and go to haunted houses or Edgar Allan Poe readings or whatever creepshows are available to me. It’s way more meaningful to me than Christmas, perhaps because the ideas of transformation, facing our mortality, and honoring the dead resonate more with me than materialism. Or love and joy. I don’t know what that says about me.

And yes, I really love dressing up.

This year I was invited to an array of parties, and for the first time ever had the problem of too many events and not enough costumes. In some cases I had to improvise.

For my boss’s Halloween party, I just repeated the slutty dinosaur costume I comissioned from Etsy in 2008:

 

 

It is a unique experience to fall asleep at your boss’s house in a dinosaur costume and wake up and take the train. In a dinosaur costume.

The next night was my good friend Elly’s annual shindig. I don’t usually like to go with the lolita=costume route, but I did. I went there. I did some weird doll makeup and donned a dress.

First I curled my hair, used silver and purple eyeshadow, lined my eyes with white eyeliner, did my normal cateye black eyeliner, and drew on ridiculous lower lashes. I covered up my brows with foundation and drew on them with eyeliner. Then, HELLA BLUSH. I don’t purport to be good at these things, by the way.

The finishing touches were false lashes, some ridiculous lines to make me look like a ventriloquist doll and which looked more and more like oddly placed facial hair as the night went on, and to top it off I covered the edges of my lips with foundation and shaped them into a more dolly look with a black outline and gold-red gloss. SPOOKY AS SHIT.

 

Yes, I’m with Jem and Stormer! They are truly outrageous, therefore appropriate for this blog! (By the way, “So Outrageous” is sung in one or more Steely Dan songs, it’s not just me misremembering ‘truly outrageous’ in a fit of invented nostalgia.) TRULY OUTRAGEOUS.

The dress is by Chinese lolita brand KidsYoyo, bought secondhand off of egl_comm_sales on livejournal. The tights are from Target.

Next was Witch Party, where I gave my first ever tarot reading in which my sublimated jealousy showed its face in a cruel and horrendous divination where I told my best friend that her happy times were behind her. I’m great at fortune telling!

 

 

The dress is actually from the consignment store I work at, except it’s from the Princeton location and I bought it a year before I started working there. It’s INC size 12. The boots were given to me by a consignor. ~Job perks~. The hat is from Halloween Spirit. I mean no like I conjured it using my magical witch ancestry blood.

Here’s a fashion tip: get your fucking bra under control. I’m the worst. I used cheap black Halloween lipstick from Rite Aid to bleed out the edges of my crimson lip gloss. Like a boss! A witch boss.

I had two classes on Halloween morning and I could have gone the “cat ears and a bell” route like my classmate, but I went for something a little more my style.

 

I bought the dress at a hipster craft fair at Penn’s Landing. The blazer is from PayHalf.

 

The skeleton knee socks are actually a pair of tights my friend Cat gave me, and which I couldn’t begin to pull over my thighs. So they got the chop chop.

Later in the day I changed into my most, uh, original costume. When I was thinking of what I wanted to be for Halloween, my thought process went like this:

-What can I be for Halloween that involves purple hair?

-Only a unicorn.

-But unicorns aren’t scary.

 

Thus, Sparkles the Magical Blood-lust Unicorn.

Frolicking in the snow, looking for fresh meat. The dress is a vintage nightgown from the 60s I found on etsy. I also found the pink slouch boots on etsy. The belt is from H+M. The tights are SUPER COMFY AND MAGICAL sweater tights from Target. The horn was made by artforahome, who was very helpful and accommodating. I added the disgusting fake blood.

 

The tail is a pink wig that I bought last year and never used. If I had given myself more time I’d have figured out a way to make it look, well, more like a tail and not just like a wig on my butt.

I started out with foundation and then really cutesy pink blush and white and gold eye makeup. I used a red mineral eyeshadow to line my lower waterline. To make my hair into a mane I put it into two ponytails, curled it, backcombed it, and pinned it to the side of my head.

The final touches were gigantic sparkly false eyelashes, fake blood, and hot pink lipstick. By this point it was verging on clowny. I was ok with that.

 

I think I feel Halloweened out. I can actually wait until next year instead of wishing it would happen immediately all over again. This never happens!