I love Halloween with a strong passion. It’s very mystical, and the colors are lovely; plus there are so many things to get excited out. For younger kids, it’s the prospect of coming home after a long night of trick-or-treating with a huge bag of sugary spoils. For some, it’s the excitement of going to parties and reveling the night away with friends and strangers. For me, and others, my favorite part of Halloween is my costume.
I really enjoy filtering through all of my ideas for costumes a month or two in advance so I can actually decide on something before Halloween creeps around. This process takes a little longer for me, since I prefer to make my own costume instead of buying it. There’s nothing wrong with purchasing a costume, but I just really like to get crafty and make it my own. Most of the time, I just take normal clothing and dress it up in the way that I envision to give the outfit an added flare of utility instead of pure aesthetic. The best part about doing this is I can reuse the costume pieces as normal clothes instead of a one-time-wear article of clothing.
This year, however, I’m making my costume from scratch. As I have written many times, I love the movie Moana, and I decided I wanted to dress up as Moana, since my hair is long enough. I didn’t like any of the store-bought costumes, and I realized that normal clothes can’t quite cut it for making her iconic outfit, so to the drawing board I went. I have roughly eight tabs open, all of which are full of Moana pictures for design reference, as well as an added five for instructions on how to make the different parts of her outfit.
Since she is such an important character to me and my culture, I wanted to do some things the traditional way. The skirt has three parts: the sash/belt, the burlap overskirt and the grass underskirt. Unfortunately, I don’t have the ability to consider the coconut (ha!) to weave the burlap overskirt from scratch (store-bought burlap will have to do), so I resigned myself to making the grass underskirt traditionally… kind of. To be innovative, I decided to use an elastic band as the waistband of the skirt, so I could easily put it on when I was getting dressed. The grass portion was raffia, and I knotted one or two strands to the band at a time. A week and four bags of raffia later, I have a functional grass skirt, trimmed and ready to wear.
The top is being trickier than I had previously imagined. I originally thought I was going to wrap a length of fabric around my body, but that seemed a little risky, since I’ll be moving around on Halloween. We have to keep it rated G! Several videos and arguments in the Makerspace at my college later, I have cut and seamed three pieces of the top, and I will be going back to the Makerspace again to have it completed (hopefully).
You might think this is over the top for something I’m wearing for only one night, and you might be right. I think it’s appropriate, honestly, especially since I want the outfit to look good and natural, instead of something cheap and phony. It’s a challenge, and it’s nice to work on something different for once. Once the outfit is finished, I think it’ll look great, and I’ll be able to show off to everyone. That’s always the best part, seeing the excitement and amazement on someone’s face when you say that you made it yourself. It’s so rewarding.