Our family dress-up box lived at the bottom of the wardrobe in the room my sister and I shared until we were eight and 10. For two little girls who grew up reading Enid Blyton, that box contained multitudes of worlds to visit and characters to become.
A red skirt with ruffles was good for both matador and flamenco dancer. An old layered petticoat made the perfect Little Bo Peep. Eighties prom dresses became ballgowns, long black capes transformed us into pirates and witches. The box had tiaras, bonnets, berets and fedoras; long beaded necklaces, plaited leather belts, suspenders, glasses, waistcoats and wings. Occasionally our younger brothers could be persuaded into sequined tutus.
Sadly, Halloween spending spikes around the world reflect the availability of cheap, one-off costumes and suggest the days of the flexible dress up box are behind us.
Buying a new costume for every dress-up occasion wastes a lot of money in a cost-of-living crisis and creates a lot of plastic waste in an environmental one. But growing up, half the fun of playing dress ups was emptying the entire box on to the floor and conjuring a character from the pile – and it’s possible to replicate the same joy as adults. Here, three stylists provide advice on how to go about building an old-school dress-up box for grownups.
‘Dishwashing gloves make everything scary’
Maria Pattison, a film industry costume designer, says dressing up is all about context. “Sometimes the ordinary delivered in a weird way can be the most effective,” she says. “Like matching blue dresses in The Shining, or a robe from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or a tennis outfit splashed with fake blood.”
Start by filling your dress-up box with character pieces: statement shirts, outlandish dresses and bright dressing gowns and jackets. Then build it up with other useful items such as tight black clothing that can be worn as a base layer, makeup supplies or non-toxic face paint, and stuffing or foam that can be used to morph shapes.
“Things like helmets and umbrellas make for effective bases to head pieces. While dishwashing gloves and gumboots have the potential to make everything scary.”
For Pattison, when you’re dressing up, more is more. Glasses and other disguising elements can do a lot of the legwork, she says. Accessories like sunglasses, goggles, caps, hats, bags and belts can help to sell a character.
“Imagination and creativity are like muscles,” she says. “They foster our ability to adapt, they help us to overcome some of the most challenging things we experience. We all need to find time for play and imagination, especially right now.”
‘Just staple them together’
When the stylist Stuart Walford makes a costume, he collects a few images of the character first so he can return to them as reference points as he goes. Then he gathers “the building blocks”. These are usually things of substance like a hat, a large piece of fabric, or a shoe that can be transformed with a bit of craft (and a hot glue gun).
“I think a lot of people assume that you have to have pattern making or fashion knowledge to be able to make a garment,” he says. “But actually, by draping fabric on your body and using other accessories to help it stay, you can make totally new silhouettes.”
He describes bed sheets as really helpful. “I just staple them together to make sort of pleats and folds. You can belt a sheet over your waist and then pull it up so it becomes a skirt,” he says. In these moments he always keeps safety pins, bulldog clips and a micro stitch gun on hand.
He suggests viewing items such as hats as a base to build on. For example, you can use things from around the house, like cardboard stapled into a cone, to turn it into a witch or wizard’s hat.
A pointy shoe with a sling back can be another good building block. “Then you can start cutting up cereal boxes or old wrapping paper tubes to create structures that can sit over the shoe and fabricate the shape you want,” he says.
‘A colander makes a fabulous helmet’
“Having a costume box full of fabulous clothes and accessories encourages kids and adults to use their creativity more,” says Polly Filla, a drag performer and costume creator. “A fur wrap can become a lion’s mane or a king’s cape. An old formal dress can become a princess gown.”
They suggest starting at your local op shop or thrift store and looking for anything made from sparkly fabrics like sequins and lamé. “Pieces of black or glitzy fabrics can become scarves, pirate’s bandanas or belts,” they say. “We used a fancy dressing gown cord with tassel ends a lot!”
A good thrift store should have a collection of old glasses, hats, wigs, handbags and gloves that can be used to give detail to a character. And when all else fails, a bit of imagination can make all the difference. Case in point: “A colander makes a fabulous helmet and five-year-old me was always partial to doing fencing [while] holding a sieve over my face.”
