Tried to make it bit by bit on my own

[venta]

Some time ago, on a pub crawl, my dance team happened on a bunch of people in fancy dress in north Oxford. They were dressed as superheroes and were an impressive bunch, both in outfits and in variety. rapperaddict and I spent a happy quarter of an hour covertly spotting the various more obscure charaters. There was an impressively muscled Robin, a curvy Silk Spectre, a Spiderman... around twenty, a couple of whom we couldn't identify.

What almost all of them had in common was that they were dressed ready-made costumes. The sort you can buy on the internet for £20-£30, and wear once before the cheap fabric splits at the seams and the accessories are lost or broken. They look good for your one party night, of course. The rather obviously home-made Nebula[*], with patchy blue face paint, looked very much outclassed.

<engage nostalgia mode>

Back in my day, we all had to make our own costumes. Fancy-dress hire (and it would be hire, not purchase) was expensive. A fancy-dress party was as much a challenge of creativity as it was about actually dressing up. Coming up with your own costume (or a suitably creative excuse for a lack thereof), and then marvelling at other people's outfits.

Of course, I did live for ten years with Frances, who is a past master of creating fantastically complex or unexpected costumes. I still remember the time she bought a packet of purple balloons and went to a party as a blackberry. But her spider outfit (involving three pairs of black evening gloves) was a masterpiece.

I think the most I've ever spent on fancy-dress kit was buying a £15 curly red wig the year I went to the RPGSoc Christmas party as Ragged Robin. It was a good wig, too. I only spent that much because I expected to use it again - sadly, it was a casualty of the house move the following year, and hasn't been seen since.

These days, I can probably afford to spent £20 on a party outfit. But what bugs me is the waste of it. Cheap fancy dress items are disposable clothes; even if they survive the evening, the chances of you having the space and inclination to store them until the next time you're invited to a relevant party are slim.

At New Year, I was bidden to a party where the fancy-dress theme was "unlikely or rubbish superheroes". I went as Wander Woman (in the face of danger, she... wanders off), wearing an outfit made of clothes I already owned and £1.69-worth of gold cardboard.

The thing is, you don't actually need to be a carbon-copy of your chosen character for people to work out who you are. My Wonder-Woman-inspired outfit looked basically nothing like Wonder Woman (because, as you might be aware, I lack her pneumatic curves, her voluminous black hair, and her natty line in backless Stars-and-Stripes leotards). But my cardboard headband was plenty for the party hostess - dressed as BirdLady (Is it a bird...? Yes, yes it is...) - to identify me.

Reday-to-wear-costumes provide an easy solution for those lacking in inspiration, or time. But they're never as much fun. And if you make your own out of last decade's cast-off clothes and some string, at least you know no-one else will show up looking the same :)

And because apparently nothing on the internet is complete these days without a picture, here's a rather grainy picture of me dressed as Wander Woman.




[*] At least, I think I mean Nebula. I'm not good on GotG.

Comments

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on this! My favourite costume of recent years was for a Dark Side of Disney Halloween party; I went as Ursula from the Little mermaid, wearing a black strapless ballgown (model's own), a large shell strung on a ribbon (model's own), and four pairs of black tights stuffed with newspaper (model's own), some of which were strung to my arms, so they moved when I did. I also carried a plastic lobster (model's own). The only thing I bought was hairspray.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

£1.69-worth of gold cardboard

Didn't see the decimal point at first and was briefly very confused!

My useless superpower is that I always turn up to costume parties dressed in the same costume as someone else, no matter how obscure. "Come as a Superhero"... I went for Hong Kong Phooey. But no, dr_bob (I think?) had gone for the same thing. On another occasion "Come as a Film" saw with with forty fun size packets of Maltesers stapled to me. But again, I was somehow not the only one. (In fact IIRC that was dr_bob again? Perhaps my superpower is narrower than I thought...)

[venta.livejournal.com]

The Malteasers are defeating my puny film knowledge. I want it to be the Maltese Falcon, but can't quite work out why 40.

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

Yep - was indeed me as the other Hong Kong Phooey. And I was also the malteser falcon. Whose is the super power?

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Correct!

40 for no better reason than it was the number required to make two wings. :-)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Good point. Maybe it's you!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah right, that makes sense now ;)

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

That said, it's a rubbish superpower - even worse than lactokinesis.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Surely lactokinesis would really give you the edge when cow-tipping?

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

Indeed it would - As used (not quite for cow tipping) in Misfits. [Warning: linked site contains spoilers]

[deborahw37.livejournal.com]

My husband once went to a fancy dress party dressed as the parking meter/ gas stove/ robot from Wallace and Grommit' s A Grand Day Out He made it from a large cardboard box and it included a drawer with the parking ticket writing book and pen and the hammer! I went as Wendy from the wool shop..in a skirt and twinset and pearls ( all charity shop) with " hair" made out of a plastic pudding basin painted in shiny gloss paint.

We won :)

[lathany.livejournal.com]

But my cardboard headband was plenty for the party hostess - dressed as BirdLady (Is it a bird...? Yes, yes it is...) - to identify me.

And, yes, I can see that it does!

[ceb.livejournal.com]

I remember going to a party as a flock of bats for ... some reason lost to history.

[venta.livejournal.com]

That sounds truly impressive!

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm intrigued. How did you do that?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds rather cool as a costume!

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

It was a lot of fun, and I do love Ursula!

[ceb.livejournal.com]

Bat-shaped cookie cutter, draw round it on a sheet of black cardboard repeatedly (think I might have had to buy that), cut out and safety-pin the results to a non-black T-shirt.