Halloween

I love Halloween! It’s the beginning of my birthday month and I always treat November as my very long birthday celebration!

Over the years I have made about 20 Halloween costumes, it’s like everyone has a party to get me started!

In 1984 I saw Cats on Broadway in San Francisco and was inspired to make this one.

It was so much fun!

I went to a ski club party with a couple of friends and had a blast!

I think it cost less than $50 even with the angora boa.

I added more around white boots and you can see my wrists are also wrapped in angora!

It great to dance in too since it wasn’t too hot!

I received a lot of compliments and even had several people say they didn’t know who I was. That’s half the fun isn’t it?

In 1985 I went skiing in Sun Valley Idaho. It was their 50th anniversary so they had a movies star look alike contest for the skiers.

Since I knew ahead of time I made this dress as a replica of one Rita Hayworth wore in a movie!

One of the other skiers lent me his wife’s brand new fur coat she purchased.

When I went in front of the judges stand I dramatically threw the coat over my shoulder and drug it along the floor!

She actually squealed!

But I won first place!

In 1986 I got a bit creative with this costume!

I called it Winter and made the cape from a silver shinny material and made the color stiff with a batting that was also flexible. Of course I had to ad a boa around the cape, my wrists and ankles.

I found the triple sequence braiding at a belly dancing costume shop and cut it at various lengths. It was caught the light when I was dancing.

I added crystal necklace and earrings to make it sparkle even more!

In 1987 I made the sexy witch costume and the clown outfit including the hats. Karen on the left rented her costume in LA before coming up for the weekend

We went to several parties and had a great time dancing and carrying on like a bunch of teenagers!

We went out for breakfast at 2 in the morning and even got a round of applause from those in the restaurant!

Life is full of adventures when you take the time to look for them!

In 1988 the winter costume got re-used and I made a Mae West outfit. I even made the hat and put red lace around the mask. I even made the lace gloves!

I went all out and found a long cigarette holder and practiced talking like May West.

It amazed me that none of my friends recognized me. To be fair, I’m very well hidden behind the feathers!

The most fun was seeing the reactions of people and them trying to figure out who I really was.

In 1989 I made both of these costumes for our ski club Halloween party.

There was about $100 in feathers in each of the outfits. They took me about 30 hours each to make and surprisingly, not one person recognized us unless we talked.

I’m a big fan of capes (throw back to the old era of movies and elaborate dressing gowns) so most of my costumes end up with a cape.

These were a lot of fun to dance in too because of the flow of the capes.

I was surprise when he actually said he enjoyed wearing the costume since he is a bit of a left brainer.

This was in 1990. This was obviously inspired by Karen’s 1986 space suit.

Obviously mine ended up a bit more colorful. It started with the gold beaded head dress I found up in Marin and that started the wheels turning.

The material is a gold lame, much like from the 1940’s and I actually did cut outs and inserted other colors into the cut outs.

I made the leggings and had a great pair of gold heels to go with it.

There was also a round wide foam color that jetted out about 4 inches from my shoulders but I think I took it off to have a glass of champagne!

I made so many costumes like being the bubble gum under the table, went as a couple of dice, a lade pirate and so on.

About 5 years ago I lent the costumes to someone I trusted and her basement got flooded. She threw them all away!

Oh well, guess I have to start from scratch!