This year, Halloween snuck up on me. Typically, most parties fall on a Saturday, giving me an uninterrupted day to plan a look. No such luck in 2014. On Friday, I worked a full day before scrambling to pull something together in less than 45 minutes.
Timing was crucial — I was heading to the West Village for a costume party overlooking the legendary New York Village Halloween parade, which starts at the horrifically inconvenient time of 7:30.
I’ll admit. I was worried Frida Kahlo would be a cop-out. In the run-up to Halloween, I must have seen 4 blogs extolling the virtues of the easy-to-make Frida costume. I have special snowflake disease, and I fretted that the costume was so easy, I was bound to run into 50 other Fridas.
Except… I didn’t. I was the only Frida at the party or on the streets. (I DID witness about a dozen people dressed in Ebola hazmat suits, though.) Lesson learned: There’s enough costume variety out there, so keep it simple in a crunch.
I drew on the trademark thick eyebrows with this Tarte eyebrow mousse. Originally, I was going to create a full unibrow, but in many photographs, Frida only had a light dusting of eyebrow — NOT the full Bert. Here was my inspiration image:
Skipping the full unibrow was a mistake: I got a LOT of flack from fellow partygoers for leaving out that detail.
Lesson No. 2: Better to be hairy than sorry.
Everything in this costume came from my closet. You’ve seen the necklace and the white tutu (used as a petticoat) here. The skirt, bodysuit and rosette hair clips were all used for my 2012 Día de los Muertos costume (seen here). The pink scarf was seen here.
And I also incorporated two of my new winter purchases. Both are currently available and highly recommended — the Maje shawl was picked up during a recent friends-and-family sale, and the boots are the 50/50 design by Stuart Weitzman.
The end of Halloween is always bittersweet. Now comes the frigid temperatures, the corporate Christmas meltdown and the fun-size Snickers hangover. (Lesson 3: Eat no more than 20 pieces of chocolate per party.)
You tell me: What did you pick as your costume this year? And did you eat as much candy as I did? I think I need Twix rehab.
