Halloween season is upon us. Okay, so maybe it's only July, but hey, now's a great time to start thinking about your Halloween costume. Or, if you're like me, Halloween costumes.
I'm planning on dressing up for all 31 days of October. Now, Halloween costumes are not cheap, so I certainly won't be buying a costume for each day. Instead, I'll largely be working with items I already have in my closet.
Last year I showed you 15+ looks I had put together using mostly items I had owned previously, with some DIY props and accessories here and there. This year, I'm bringing you ten more ideas. Each one of these looks is based around a character from a horror book or movie. Some of these characters are not the most recognizable, but if you carry around a copy of the book or movie the character is from, people will probably get the idea.
I'm calling this horror bounding because I'm using principles similar to the ones I use for Disneybounding for these horror characters. While I try to get as close to the look as I can, my goal is more to give off the character's vibe than to match their look exactly. Here are the ten looks I came up with, using clothes from my closet (and, in some cases, Brian's section of the closet).
Sarah Bowman, Day of the Dead
Sarah Bowman is the protagonist of Day of the Dead, the third installment in George A. Romero's original trilogy. Sarah wears several different outfits throughout the film, but one includes an open blue button up over a white thermal top, jeans, and a brown belt. I didn't notice the belt when I was planning out this outfit, so I'm missing that element, and also my jeans are a little darker than hers. I had to borrow both shirts from Brian, and so I had to knot the blue one at the waist so I didn't look like a small child playing dress up. But even though it's not an exact replica of her look, I think it gives the right vibe.
Judy Rose Larson, Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Judy Rose Larson is one of the characters in the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead. I don't have the same red patterned shirt that she wears, but this red plaid shirt I think still fits with her aesthetic. I knotted it in the front, like she does in the movie. I paired it with a yellow top, jeans, and a scrunchie. Also, a hammer, because the characters have to board up the house to keep out the zombies.
Shaun, Shaun of the Dead
For our last zombie movie character (for now), we have Shaun, the titular character in Shaun of the Dead. In the movie, he wears a pretty standard uniform consisting of a white button-down shirt, black slacks, and a red tie. I actually didn't have a white button-down, so I used a white bodysuit instead and borrowed Brian's red tie. This look was thrown together, but if I'd had more time, I probably would have made a name tag to finish off the look.
Suzy Banion, Suspiria (1977)
Suzy Banion is the lead in Dario Argento's classic horror film, Suspiria. This is another movie in which the character wears multiple outfits. I decided to go with Suzy's ballet practice look, in which she is wearing a black bodysuit and black leggings, and has a white lace scarf tied around her waist. I didn't have a suitable scarf, so I used a white cardigan instead.
Carietta "Carrie" White, Carrie
Carrie White first appeared in Stephen King's novel Carrie, and has since been featured in a film by the same name, as well as several remakes. Carrie's prom look is her most iconic, but I don't have a formal pink dress like the movie used, so I opted for a red dress, like in the book. I added a tiara, sash, and bouquet for some prom queen vibes. If you dump a bucket of fake blood over your head, you probably won't have to explain the look. However, I didn't want to go that route, so I grabbed my copy of Carrie instead.
Rebecca de Winter, Rebecca
Rebecca may be dead at the start of the novel, but her presence lives on at Manderly. This is another book with multiple movie adaptations. For my take on Rebecca, I went with a flapper-esque outfit, in black, referencing a remark of Maxim's at the beginning of the book. I could have gone with a faux bob here, but Rebecca had long hair up until close to the time of her death, so my look is a slightly younger version of Rebecca.
Frankenstein's Monster, Frankenstein
Here's another character that has appeared in many adaptations, both book and film: Frankenstein's monster. The clothes vary depending on the adaptation, but in a lot of them, it is wearing a suit, so that's what I opted for. The key thing about Frankenstein's monster is that it is sewn together from various body parts, so you'll want to create stitching somehow. A waterproof eyeliner pencil works well for that. In a future post, I'll show you how to use felt to create stitching. I also added some zombie hand earrings as a nod to the monster being an undead, of sorts.
Clare, Voices in the Snow
Clare is the protagonist in Voices in the Snow by Darcy Coates, Book 1 of 4 in the Black Winter series. Near the beginning of the story, Clare wakes up in a strange man's mansion, wearing a dressing gown and covered in bandaged wounds. She nabs a jacket and a pair of boots from the stranger before she tries running off into the snow. I don't have a dressing gown, so I took one of Brian's shirts and cinched it with a sash belt to give a similar vibe. I added bandages around my neck and then finished off the look with Brian's coat and boots.
Since this is a four book series, there are several other looks Clare wears that you could opt for as well, if the dressing gown one isn't to your liking. And if you're looking for a fresh take on the zombie genre, I highly recommend these books. Of my 2021 reads thus far, these four top my favorites list.
Kira, aka Creepy Doll, Bunny
Kira is one of the "Bunnies" in Mona Awad's novel Bunny. The Bunnies are a group of girls in our protagonist Samanatha's MFA creative writing cohort who are ultra feminine, basically joined at the hip, and also practice magic. Samantha dubs Kira "Creepy Doll" because of her cute but creepy aesthetic, and that's one of my favorite aesthetics. Kira is always wearing cat ears, so I used a pair of my DIY cat ears. I can't remember now if the top outfit was inspired by a particular look of hers or whether I went with it because it had general creepy doll vibes. The axe, though, that does have a place in the story, although I won't say more than that.
The second outfit was inspired by Kira's in-book wardrobe. She has a lot of kitten dresses, although sadly, I don't have kittens licking ice cream cones or kittens wearing crowns, which are both kitten dresses that appear in the book. She has a pair of heart shaped sunglasses, so I went with some Valentine's heart-shaped glasses I had on hand.
You can't really see my nails in either of these pictures, but my nails have sheet ghosts with bleeding eyes to match one of Kira's dresses. For pictures of that nail art as well as a tutorial, head on over to this post.
Miranda "Miri" Silver, White is for Witching
Miri Silver is one of the main characters in Helen Oyeyemi's White is for Witching. She wears old fashioned, black dresses that are too big because she lost weight, so I went with an oversized black dress I had that had some vintage vibes. She also wears heels a lot, and so I went with the only pair of black heels I have. She always wears her mother's stopped watch, so I borrowed a watch from Brian. There's a rosy smell that follows Miri, so I added a rose necklace to symbolize that. Lastly, there's the hair. Before her mother dies, Miri has waist-length black hair. When she is hospitalized, her hair is cut into a bob. There's some strangeness about Miri's hair that I won't get into here because of spoilers, but I took pictures both ways. In the picture above, I put my hair into a faux bob and used an app to darken it.
There you have it, ten outfits inspired by spooky books and movies. Any other horror looks you'd like to see? Let me know, and I may see if I can pull something from my closet.
Looking for more costume inspiration? Check out my Instagram, @all_of_my_outfits. It is primarily Disneybounds, but on Fridays I post a spooky look for #spookygirlsclubhouse (some of the looks you see here were for #spookygirlsclubhouse. The rest were for book reviews for my writing Insta, @amber_hathaway_writes). Plus, for the month of October, I'm planning on wearing Halloween costumes each day.
