Topical Halloween Costume Ideas You Can Recreate Without Fast Fashion

It’s time to get a little spooky. Skip the scares of fast fashion and get creative and weird with these DIY Halloween costumes.

OPINION

Halloween costumes. You want to dress up. You want to have fun and let your hair down. You don’t want the planet to suffer because of it.

But the environmental impact of the holiday is frankly, frightening.

There are the treats individually wrapped in plastic (for safety reasons) but the ephemeral nature of many Halloween costumes adds further to the scariness. Topical, zeitgeisty costumes are unlikely to be re-worn. One study found that in the UK 7 million costumes are thrown out each year. It’s enough to make you scream.

Rather than relying on the convenient dopamine hit of disposable costumes, we’ve compiled a wardrobe of newsworthy costume ideas you can pull together using items you probably already own.

Microsoft’s blue screen of death

It was the stuff of IT department nightmares. At the end of July, the largest IT outage in history saw airlines, banks, hospitals and many other businesses have their computer systems kneecapped. A faulty software update to their computer systems from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike left many encountering a “blue screen of death” error page that communicated that their PC was inoperable.

Beetlejuice

Michael Keaton’s return as the suited supernatural spectre in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice garnered rave reviews earlier this year. He’s a perfectly spooky dude to double this Halloween. Play the part all night, popping up behind randoms and being just a little gross. Good for theatre people.

You’ll need: A suit, black, white and green eyeshadow and lots of hairspray.

Road cones

Some would say they already plague city streets like zombies. Seemingly when it comes to road cones there is safety in numbers, making this a scalable group costume to pull off en masse.

You’ll need: Head to toe orange clothing, two bands of white toilet paper affixed around your middle, a cut-out cardboard pothole to congregate around.

How fitting that the queen of romanticised, make-it-yourself content has an aesthetic that can be easily recreated from scratch. Model and social media personality Nara doesn’t adhere to strict dressing rules, but that’s part of the appeal here. The wide visual lexicon of her life has plenty of touchstones you can extract to make this an instantly recognisable costume. Go trad-wife or sartorially extravagant.

You’ll need: A chopping board, a diffused berry lip, either a gently coquettish ensemble or straight from the runway glamour, a side part and an ASMR whisper.

Met Gala attendees

Here are three outfits from this year’s gala that are dupable.

Zendaya

After forgoing her Met Gala attendance for five years and then nailing her 2024 return with a fruitful Maison Margiela look, Zendaya clearly felt she deserved her flowers. The star likely sent the Met’s media room into a flurry when she re-arrived in this blossoming second look (“update those listicles people!”). She donned an archive Givenchy gown and a bouquet of roses atop her head. Did she wrench it from the hands of adoring fans outside? Who cares, she’s glowing. And, with a DIY spirit, you can be too.

You’ll need: A black dress, a bouquet of flowers, hot glue, a headband and excellent balance.

Lana Del Rey

Ungenerous critics of Lana Del Ray’s darkly romantic Alexander McQueen may not have appreciated the craft that went into assembling the silk, georgette, and tulle column dress that was hand-embroidered with bronze-bullion branches and finished with a hawthorn brand headpiece and an elaborate tulle veil. But the nature-inspired creation has an air of the scavenged about it that benefits crafty costumers.

You’ll need: A corseted dress, some net curtains or tulle, as many twigs as you can be bothered foraging.

Michelle Yeoh

Michelle’s pliable Balenciaga gown was crafted from a silver aluminium-overlayed material, but you can create your own marvellous metallic moment using aluminium foil. Just make sure you reuse it please.

You’ll need: A commercial catering quantity of foil roll. Plans that don’t involve sitting down.

Lady Gaga in Joker

Lady Gaga! In Joker! Sure, the film is really bad. But Gaga still turns out various smudged clowning makeup looks. They feel apt for the circus-level chaos of the current moment (the worse your makeup looks, the better!).

You’ll need: Red lipstick, harlequin prints, a leather skirt and eyeliner. Maybe an equally clownish partner to match.

Helicopter Pad

It feels as if there is a new story about rich-lister applications for a helicopter pad every year, so it’s likely you can return to this costume next year (swapping out the Westmere postcode for Herne Bay instead). For an interactive element, you could make up voting cards so partygoers can have their say. Would they like to see you built so private helicopters can skip Auckland traffic? Or would they prefer the owners revert to their roadbound Tesla instead?

You’ll need: A T-shirt, a red marker, steady hands and the audacity.

Chappell Roan

Chappell Roan is the moment and the preeminent pop princess has a theatrical onstage style that already leans into aspects of fancy dress. “I love looking pretty and scary. Or pretty and tacky…Or just not pretty; I love that too,” she recently said on The Tonight Show. Perfection.

You’ll need: A sense of adventure, anything goes here. Cartoonish glam, clashing prints, fishnet tights, corsetry, fetishwear, costumes, playful oversized accessories, ringleted tresses, drag queen-inspired makeup that incorporates white face makeup, thin eyebrows, a bold lip and doesn’t shy away from glitter. Have fun with it.

Margiela Couture makeup

In January the beauty world was set abuzz by the beauty look legendary makeup artist Pat McGrath created for models at the Maison Margiela’s Spring-Summer 2024 Haute Couture. Pat told Vogue in the afterglow of the show “I have never, ever seen a reaction like this” as makeup artists and beauty fans clamoured to retro engineer the porcelain-like finish on the models’ skin. Pat divulged she mixed a selection of products together, applying through an airbrush to create the ultra-glassy finish, but said a serum foundation, mixed with white face paint and multiple layers of a peel off cucumber facial mask, set with a hairbrush in between were key.

You’ll need: Patience, an airbrush and a TikTok tutorial. Don’t bother getting it perfect, a bit of mess is part of Halloween.

Cate Blanchett’s spoon top

In September Cate Blanchett caused a bit of a stir on the red carpet of the Borderland’s premiere when she arrived wearing a Hodakova top embellished with layers of antique kitchen spoons. Cate’s stylist, Elizabeth Stewart, wrote on Instagram at the time that designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson designs are “changing the conversation of what sustainable fashion means today”, why not extend that to halloween costume?

You’ll need: The contents of your cutlery drawer, black trousers.

The Subway pigeon

A health inspector’s nightmare. Earlier in October, an Auckland Subway shop temporarily closed for “thorough, intense cleaning” after a pigeon was filmed helping themselves to a buffet of toppings from the sandwich bar.

You’ll need: Grey clothes, pink socks, a beak fashioned from cardboard and an appetite for cold cuts.

More Halloween ideas

Inspiration from yesteryear and beyond the grave.

10 Stylish Characters To Dress Up As For Halloween. You won’t have to sacrifice style completely if you take your cues from these thoughtfully dressed film characters.

Our Favourite Fashionable Horror Characters In Film. Tap into another realm, face your inner fears or simply take advantage of being able to let go - even for just one night.

20 Celebrity Beauty Looks To Inspire This Halloween. Put the ‘boo’ in boo-tiful on October 31 with these spellbinding, silly or downright scary celebrity beauty looks