… and yet I just turned up this photo, which made me think of the weird things I–and my kids (and in the photo, my brother) have worn to costume events.
The photo is of my brother wearing the “Bat Fink” costume my father made him. The Bat Fink was made with plaster-of-Paris-permeated muslin over a wire armature, in the shape of a raven with a three-foot wingspan. It had yellow marble eyes that caught the light, and a bloody skull in its beak. It was built onto massive shoulder straps (I’m not sure if it also belted around the chest), which is why there was an additional breastplate of plaster-of Paris skulls which covered the straps, and black fabric that draped from the bottom of the raven over my brother’s shoulders and down to about his knees. He wore a skull mask to finish up the look. I suspect that, wearing the Bat Fink, my brother would still have been under 6 feet (he was 7 or 8 that year), but it was imposing, and likely to scare the teeth out of our small neighbors in Greenwich Village. A couple of years later I wore the Bat Fink on my shoulders (carefully draped with black fabric, but no skulls) to open the door and dispense candy to Trick or Treaters.
Okay, my family–all of us, but particularly my father–had no problem with standing out in a crowd.
This has continued down the generations. My younger daughter, at 6, had me make her a dog suit, and required me to follow after her on Halloween with a can of Reddi-Whip so I could refresh the foam around her mouth… she was a rabid dog.
But it’s really her sister who, as a teenager, showed a kind of weirdo brilliance that I still admire to this day. There was the Halloween when she went as Guitar Hero:
There was Amanda Palmer concert she went to dressed as “La Reine de Quoi?”:
And there was the costume she had me make for her when she applied for the Evil League of Evil (she didn’t get in, but did make the Honorable Mentions). She was L’Enfant Terrible, and among her weapons were her dimples:
I wish I had had the smarts to take a photo of her the year she wore a kind of Brian Froud fairy costume, including wings (painted black, of course) that we backed over several times with the car (before she put it on). She painted tire treads on her face, and wore a sign around her neck that said “Too Late to Clap.”
Dead Fairy. Like I said, the kid has a sort of weirdo brilliance that I admire.
I never did anything quite so cool–although I did go to a party (the theme was Wizard’s Convention) in a suit, heels, full executive hair, makeup, and jewelry, with a leather briefcase full of pie charts. I was a Financial Wizard, of course. On the other hand, because I could sew, every now and then I’d turn out something that wasn’t weird but was historical and…emphatic.
My father set a high bar. We’ve been trying to meet it ever since.
Your family’s creativity is wonderful and inspiring.
The best costume I ever did was to be Rapunzel at the Hallowe’en Carnival in my hometown. I took a large box and cut a window in it, then put it on my head and walked around with my hair hanging out the window. I must have been 10. I wish I had a picture.
Oh, I wish you did too!