The Best Costume for Today

Donner Parties, sinful shindigs, Criterion celebrations, and more opportunities to dress the hell up.

Hi! Today, I’m anticipating going to *parties* again this summer after what feels like years of crashing in a suburb where everyone either has given up on fun or drunk drives, both of which I wholly condemn. I’m a HUGE advocate of holding costume parties outside the context of Halloween (or Purim!), just because—they loosen people up, create amazing photo ops, and remind people that parties aren’t Networking Events and adults aren’t boring by default. This is totally appropriate for my fashion blog because I want it to be.

One random tip is to invite one or two COMPLETE randoms to your party, like people from Tinder you’re pretty sure aren’t going to rob/kill you or a childhood friend who followed you on Instagram after twenty years—having a few wild cards breaks up any cliques that might otherwise form and keeps people who might know each other too well on their best behavior, plus if there is a dearth of single people at the function, the sexual tension that ratchets a shebang up to elite from just ok will be absent, which would be a crying shame!

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The hallmarks of a good party theme are:

• Inherent funniness - You want there to be something intrinsically silly or subversive or ironic about the theme so no matter what people wear, it’ll veer to the side of funny and no one can possibly accidentally take it too seriously, like a [better] game of Apples to Apples: the prompt itself is designed so any responses will automatically elicit levity in context. This makes people less nervous to swing for the fences in their costumes and makes the party itself much less awkward or fussy.

• Simultaneous specificity and lenience - It’s important to pick a theme niche enough that people are encouraged to think critically and creatively about how they can respond to the prompt without being so esoteric or obscure that they’re discouraged from even trying, or only a select few people can enjoy the theme. Nothing oriented around one specific piece of media, no inside jokes, and nothing too cerebral. Puns are a great cheat to finding a theme that doesn’t need granular explanation but go beyond “Animals” or “Prom” or the like.

• Accessibility - Going along with lenience above, you should pick a theme that is conducive to accessible costuming, i.e. people can ace the theme without spending a lot of/any money, using clothes they can find in their own or friends’ closets, or at most, a thrift or dollar store. Themes like Rococo or Black Tie or the like may discourage people from attending or attempting to dress up—I sure don’t have anything black tie-appropriate in my closet right now, and I’m not buying some hokey suit off Amazon for $70 just to turn up for one party. Specificity can actually make a theme more accessible, as people tend to think more creatively and in a problem-solving matter when they’re faced with a unique directive than if they’re just given something vague to work with and expected to do their best.

• Sexiness - Most people, when presented with the opportunity to wear a costume, instantly shift into full slut gear, as is their right, and if there’s something about the theme that’s already smutty, all the better. That’s what differentiates a child’s costume party from one for adults 99% of the time. The other 1% would be if your party were IRS-themed, which I don’t recommend unless you want to send several guests spiraling into financial insecurity crises and ensure the absolute sexlessness of the night.

Seven Deadly Sins

This one’s super straightforward. Aside from any errant Fullmetal Alchemist fans you’ll catch like moths to flame with this theme, each sin is so easy to get creative with: PJs or sweats and drawn-on eye bags for Sloth, a stained shirt and a handbag that’s just an empty chip bag for Gluttony, straight-up lingerie for Lust are all low-hanging fruit, as was what I did for Wrath, literally: I put plastic grapes in my hair, slashed up a t-shirt, and for some reason I genuinely can’t remember wore a rosary. The makeup did heavy lifting.

Donner Party/Memento Mori

Bonus points if it’s a “dinner” party serving corny, dead body-related foods like peeled grape “eyes” or pasta “guts” (when I hosted this, I was in college and we tried to cook spaghetti in an electric kettle which started a small fire!). If you don’t know what the Donner Party was, here you go, and I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but you need to grow up and face the world, man. If you’re of the (WRONG) opinion that joking about cannibalism is in poor taste, Memento Mori is a more affable title for what’s essentially the same thing: a party about death. Dress as anything from a skeleton (level 1) to the Fake Avril Lavigne conspiracy (level 5) to Ego Death (level 99, I’ll let you work out the details).

I dressed as Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic [below], which is a great pinch-hitting costume, as all you need is as much underwear as you feel obligated to wear, a large swath of transparent/translucent plastic (I think I got mine from a hardware store? They’re surprisingly [scarily?] easy to find), duct tape, blue or gray makeup to daub on your lips and strategically about your face, and hair gel for the “wet look” effect. Cut arm holes in the plastic and have someone help you roll yourself up like a burrito, leaving enough to float behind your head like a halo. It’s messed up, sexy, and an iconic but intelligent reference. The only downside is you create your own personal body greenhouse and you will be dripping by night’s end, but hey—Laura was fished out of a river or lake or something! So on theme!

Serf’s Up

I somehow don’t have any photos of my costume from this party (sacrilege, half the fun of a costume party is the photoshoot beforehand), but any mix of Medieval peasant + surfer bro is perfect for this theme—I wore a bonnet, bikini top, and swim trunks, and others wore Gunne Sax dresses with goggles, tunics and “wet look” gelled hair, and the like. The soundtrack here is essential: mix the Beach Boys with Gregorian chants until someone gets sick of it and hijacks the aux to play literally anything else.

Adult Swim

I don’t have any pictures from the actual party again, but anything swim-related is an easy bet, because pretty much everyone at least owns a swimsuit and if they don’t can readily acquire one for $15 from a few companies I won’t give the honor of mentioning here. Anything “adult” can jazz up the swimsuit—a business suit, something slutty I’ll leave up to the imagination, old age makeup worn with a tiny bikini—people can be as modest or immodest as they like with this theme. My Evangelion swimsuit covered me up enough that I was comfortable wearing only it (this party is best held in summer) and I think was related to a complex conception of adulthood regarding the relationship between Rei and Shinji’s mom, but this was so long ago that I’ll just accept that I wanted to go ass-out for anime, as per usual.

Funny Business

Though I do not dream of labor, the kitsch of the traditional office job, when somehow defiled or perverted, makes for great costuming, especially when viewed as a group. I personally would wear the below Fashion Brand Company muscle dress, but anything from using a ton of blush and unbuttoning a button-down to mimic the trope of the Drunk Businessman to dominatrix-adjacent pinstripe suits to just tying a thrift store tie around your head like a frat boy drinking after a day at his fintech internship would be great for this theme. I don’t know almost anything about The Office (my sister showed me the only episode I’ve ever watched, which was the one where Steve Carell outs his gay coworker, and I was unimpressed and horrified until the last three minutes when I was gasping for air and streaming with tears of hilarity), but I’m sure someone would have something to say about it in this context!

Cry-Terion

This one might be too pretentious to meet the “accessibility” quotient, but if you’re well-acquainted with most of the people attending the party and they’re the types to at least know what would be on Criterion, encouraging them to dress like a tragic/doomed/gloomy character from any of those films leaves the door wide open for myriad Tony Leung sadboys, Paris, Texas homages, disturbing Jacques Demy couples’ costumes, and more. Project the longest film on the channel onto the wall on mute during the party (something Akerman? I’m not enough of a fuckboy to know). I actually wore the below Marie (from Daisies) costume while attending a completely non-costume party—I HIGHLY recommend showing up to random functions in cosplay, or at least heavily inspired by a character, and seeing if anyone notices. Really fun to do this with friends, so you have a little secret to share all night.

Happy partying and remember two important things: 1) I will be in NYC from May 14th on and 2) as a subscriber to this blog, you are hereby required to wait until then to hold your summer bashes and you must, of course, invite me. Don’t worry, I will bring it (and bring a bottle of nice-ish liquor if you’re into that).

<3 HR