1. Contact your most creative fashion friend: In my case, Pam Pereira, thrifting savant and owner of vintage Etsy shop Throwback Rack.
2. Ask her to escort you to a thrift store and promise favors: “It’s Savers! It’s down the street! It will be fast and easy and fun! I’ll buy your costume!”
Halloween 2015
- Parking lot pumpkin patches got nothin’ on Gilcrease Orchard
- Ghost Story: It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your soul is?
- The Weekly Taste Test: Weird Halloween candy
- Scary cheap: How to score a cool costume for $20
- New scares refresh traditional haunts
- The amazing true story of the best candy bucket in Vegas
- The brief, bittersweet life of a pumpkin
- Khoury's taps the pumpkin this Halloween
- 20 reasons to go to the 20th annual Fetish & Fantasy Halloween Ball
- More big Halloween bashes worth reveling in
3. Follow the leader: Pam rummaged through the racks as if flicking through TV channels, dismissing duds and proclaiming cool finds. To baggy purple overalls: “It’s so Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes!” To a teal suede vest-skirt combo: “It’s Dolly Parton! All you need is balloons and a wig!” To a plaid sweater-vest: “Yes! Totally Dorkytown! Let’s find nerd spex!”
4. Accessorize: Find the glasses, and whatever else completes the look. Collared shirt? Grandma trousers? How awesome is this 1980s-era algebra tome?!
5. Doubt yourself: Should we have gone with the baggy pants? The cowboy boots? The witchy steampunk coat?
6. Nah!: Go with your gut and settle on something original. When in doubt, start with an item you love and build on it. Whether scrubs, a spidery wedding dress or a cowboy ensemble, it’s dealicious—and you can always add blood.
