As our teenage years come to a close, it’s important to look back on the good times… and the not so good times. This is especially true for Halloween, which can be the time of a child’s life, or the worst night ever. Here are our best and worst costume through the years:
Although I have worn many hats and many different costumes in my lifetime, a few have withstood the test of time. As a little girl, I was a firefighter for four years in a row. This was due to my hyperfixation on the firefighting profession, so, of course, I wore the outfit in preparation for my dream job.
My worst costume was my rendition of “Pippi Longstocking.” This idea came after a long stalemate of costume ambiguity in my life. I had the “brilliant” idea to put wires on my head so my braids could stand up just like Pippi’s hair. Although cute and thrifty in theory, it was painful and off putting in practice. Needless to say, I had numerous people bombard me with “Who are you?” that night. Although playing the part of Pippi wasn’t happy ever after, I am glad it’s given me a story to tell. I am prepared for there to be a new “Best Halloween Costume” contender in my memory showcase this year as I get ready to become Pitbull for this spooky season.
-Meredith Harper ‘24
Like most children, I loved Halloween. I enjoyed the freedom and creativity that came with choosing who I wanted to be for the night. Throughout my childhood, I had a wide variety of costumes: some that were crowd pleasers, and others that missed the mark. I would say my “worst” costume was when I was Snow White for 3 years in a row. Although I was a very cute and enthusiastic Snow White, it was not a good enough costume to repeat 3 times. Being a Disney princess is already fairly basic, and repeating it multiple times does not help with creativity points.
I have a lot of favorite costumes, but one of the best was when I was a painter. This costume was a bit of a DIY, which made it more fun. I splattered colorful paint on a white button down shirt and wore a black beret. I even drew on a french moustache with my mom’s eyeliner to tie the whole look together. This is one of my favorite costumes because I had a lot of fun making it with my mom, and I remember being so excited about wearing it.
-Sarah Hennig ‘24
Like many young children, when I was five, I wanted to dress up as an inanimate object. The result was a rough costume failure. I chose to dress up as a rock, cut arm and head holes in a hollow plastic rock from Home Depot, and went off to my Halloween costume parade in kindergarten. Unfortunately, later that night while trick or treating, my giant rock outfit kept moving up and scraping my chin and lip and poor little me couldn’t handle that pain so I changed out of my costume that night. So to my memory, that would be my least favorite Halloween costume.
However, my favorite costume to date would be my friends and I dressing up at frat boys our sophomore year of high school. We had polo shirts, fraternity sweatshirts and hats, boat shoes, flip flops, khaki shorts, sunglasses, and poorly tied ties to really give the “cool college drunk party kid” effect. Although this is a popular costume now, we all thought we were very original and felt like we were pushing the boundaries of high school rules by walking about with red solo cups, pong balls, and my shot glass necklace. It was simple enough for a group of girls to put together and be comfortable wearing during a school day, and will remain one of my favorite Halloween group costume memories.
-Maria Sell ‘23
My Halloween costumes over the years have had their ups and downs, but some of my most memorable were from my high school’s costume contest. In all my time in high school I only placed in the contest once, sophomore year. Me and a couple of friends dressed up as other holidays, including Christmas, Valentines Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and me as the 4th of July. It was definitely one of my better ideas, and it was pretty easy just to throw the costume together.
Now senior year was another story. At my high school, it was a tradition for the entire senior class to pick a theme. It’s pretty easy considering how small my school was (my entire grade was just 60 girls). We all voted on a couple of ideas, and the deciding theme was Shrek. Now that doesn’t immediately seem like such a bad idea until you see 60 people all dressed up as different versions of the ogre, not the movie characters, just Shrek. Let’s just say the rest of the school didn’t think it was as funny as we did.
-Maggie Hayes ‘24