Happy Halloween, Camp Pinnacle families! Alice here! As a lifelong theater kid and camp kween, I am a big costume person and I lean hard into Halloween. I have gone with silly puns, cultural commentary, pop music icons, beloved animated characters, and inanimate objects. I used to save every costume in a giant bag *just in case* I ever needed them again. I even kept costumes from musicals I had been in. Spandex unitard from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats”? Check. Ridiculous 90s style outfits from “Legally Blonde”? You betcha. Oh, and the WIGS. I had so many wigs, I could have been a different person each day of the week if I wanted to.
One thing all of these costumes had in common was that they were easy to repurpose for camp. Everyone needs to dress like a zoo animal? A Tigger outfit should do the trick. Minion Monday? Goggles, overalls, and a bald cap is perfect. I had a costume for everything, but those costumes weren’t necessarily representing what they intended to. When you are picking out your campers halloween costume for this year, consider the wider possibilities of that piece. Don’t know what I am talking about? Well, here are some helpful tips to picking out a costume, as told by a camp person.
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Instead of buying a costume that is just intended to be one thing, read between the lines. Think through the possibilities. That costume will be used as flair at camp. How many uses could it have? Can the same costume be used to be a wizard, a pirate, and also maybe a wolf? If the answer is yes, you have picked the right thing.
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Along those lines, get decent base layers that can be used for different things. As a college student, American Apparel was the go-to costume store because you could reuse stuff for workout clothes. UNIQLO has taken on the task of being the place to get pretty decent basics.
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There isn’t a ton of space at camp. Your camper gets to bring a trunk and they have a cubby, but that is pretty much it. 2014 Alice’s costume bag would not have fit in that space. Pick a costume that packs down small. Maybe even more than one costume. That way, they aren’t cumbersome and the rest of your campers stuff will fit.
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No boas or loose glitter. Those things shed like nobody’s business. It’s like Hansel and Gretel laying a path of breadcrumbs except instead of bread its feathers and birds don’t eat feathers, they just blow into the wind. Like trash. They are trash.
The most important thing, dear camp family, is to remain creative. Let your campers self-expression shine through. They want to dress up like a bottle of ranch dressing and they think it can work for multiple occasions? By all means. Creativity yields more interesting human beings, something the world can always use more of. – Alice