“If a woman rebels against high-heeled shoes, she should take care to do it in a very smart hat.”

October 13, 2009 2:50 PM

I want my halloween costume to be (primarily but not exclusively) an elaborate hat, and I want to make it. I have two and a half weeks, and somewhere between $25-$45 to devote to things to put on the base hat (I have a free and/or inexpensive source for various kinds of hats, and so am not factoring that into my expenses). I want it to be clever, to be ridiculous like Marie Antoinette and her wigs, and I want it to be something I can wear all night. What should I do?

My original Halloween costume idea was go go as North by Northwest: I would get a gray suit, a black tie that I'd make to look like it was flapping in the wind with some wire, and I'd attach an airplane to my shoulder. But I'm a woman and don't look good in men's clothes, and the airplane would almost certainly get in the way, so I'm going the outrageous hat route instead.

posted by ocherdraco to clothing, beauty, & fashion (13 comments total)

It's not really a hat, but here's last year's low-tech version of Sylvia Plath. i went to a party full of feminist grad students, and they ate it up.

(Incidentally, that's my buddy Papa Hemingway there. Great minds think alike, eh?)
posted by Madamina at 3:01 PM on October 13 [1 favorite has favorites]

paint it up with big polka-dots and go as toad
posted by Think_Long at 3:09 PM on October 13

The Birds? You could fit a lot of birds on a hat. If you wanted movement, some of them could be attached by wires and either stick up or dangle from the hat.
posted by EvaDestruction at 3:13 PM on October 13

Alternate toad(stool) suggestion: top it with a caterpillar, hookah, and blonde doll in blue.
posted by EvaDestruction at 3:17 PM on October 13

Carmen Miranda.

Tippi from The Birds is easy, though. Michaels or any craft store will have fake birds with long wire legs you can use.
posted by rhizome at 3:21 PM on October 13

Be the Empire State Building. Find a simple gray dress. The hat is the top of the skyscraper, with a toy gorilla (holding an even smaller female doll) attached to the side. Bonus points if you can find a way to have toy biplanes appear to be circling your hat.
posted by 23skidoo at 4:23 PM on October 13

Launching off the idea here, maybe expanding foam would stick to a skateboard helmet or similar. Marge Simpson? The biggest afro of all time?
posted by lakeroon at 5:20 PM on October 13

Martha Stewart has some great hat-based Halloween costumes. Here's a bird's nest and a skyscraper.
posted by hooray at 8:26 PM on October 13

Lots of great ideas folks. Thanks!
posted by ocherdraco at 5:17 AM on October 14

Pondering EvaDestruction's Alice in Wonderland suggestion led me to my final costume choice: The Queen of Hearts. The hat was perhaps less prominent than I'd planned, but it came off very well.
posted by ocherdraco at 12:18 PM on November 2

I love the eye-patch, is that strategically contrasted make-up?
posted by Think_Long at 4:12 PM on November 2

That's great - especially that you only had to purchase a few things to pull it all together. I hope you got lots of compliments.
posted by EvaDestruction at 7:04 PM on November 2

Yup! The card over the eye is black eyeliner (for the outline), red lipliner (for the hearts) and a silvery gray eyeshadow (for the card itself). It has been ever so slightly photoshopped, as the flash on cameras tended to make the eyeshadow almost disappear in photos, though it was quite visible in real life.
posted by ocherdraco at 7:36 PM on November 2