Toddler YAK costume?

October 18, 2012 10:18 AM

Costumefilter, Toddler Edition : My friend's 2 y.o. has his heart set on being a yak for Halloween. Help?

Friend (and I) are not super crafty. I'm happy to help her, but neither of us have a ton of free time to get creative before Halloween. Frankly she was hoping to buy the kid an off-the-rack option from Old Navy. If we could get a brown hoodie and pants, what could we do to make it more yak-ish?

posted by synapse to clothing, beauty, & fashion (20 answers total)

Lion's mane + Viking horns?
posted by Rock Steady at 10:20 AM on October 18, 2012 [7 favorites]

Yaks are wooly. Glue some brown yarn to it, so it hangs off the legs and elbows.
posted by dortmunder at 10:21 AM on October 18, 2012

How about getting a couple of shaggy brown bathmats and cutting up/gluing/safety-pinning pieces of same to brown jeans (re-usable) and a sweatshirt (also re-usable)? Then you just have to figure out ears and horns - you can probably get some tiny viking horns and cover the helmet with bathmat pieces, and maybe make ears out of bathmat pieces, too.

Bathmat! Destruction!

For ease in cutting the bathmat, get a box cutter, and do the cutting with the mat face-down on some grassy ground outside.
posted by amtho at 10:26 AM on October 18, 2012 [7 favorites]

Does the kid even know what a yak looks like? Or does he want to be a yak mainly because he likes the word 'yak'? Hopefully it's option #2!

Yeah, nthing lots of brown bathmat-style shagginess, add some ears & a tail.
posted by easily confused at 10:28 AM on October 18, 2012

Look for buffalo costumes. They're easier to find.
posted by inturnaround at 10:29 AM on October 18, 2012

a rope style mop head can be used to cover a vikings helmet (for the horns/fur).
posted by nadawi at 10:39 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Fake fur vest? Bathmat's a great idea, or even a small shag carpet or blanket depending on what's available at stores nearby. If you get something big enough, you can cut a hole in the middle and have it worn like a poncho, belted. If he's fixated on the lighter colored yaks, you could use those yarn mop heads and make a sort of skirt and cape with four of those.

You'd still have to modify a headpiece - probably a 'viking' helmet, but devil horns repainted brown or tan if you can't find one. (Might also be able to get more curved ones if you go that route.) Just get cat ears while you're getting those, glue them below the horns, and use the trimmings from your shaggy stuff to cover the middle of the headband/helmet.
posted by cobaltnine at 10:42 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Not a yak, but probably close enough for your kid.

And I sympathize - when she was two, my niece said that she wanted to be a steak for Halloween.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:42 AM on October 18, 2012 [15 favorites]

Is this Billy Goat costume close enough?
posted by tinymegalo at 10:42 AM on October 18, 2012

Upon reflection - if you go with a costume like what I linked, find some kind of shaggy brown vest to go over it for more of a "yak-like" effect.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:43 AM on October 18, 2012

I bought an awesome yak hat in a museum in Seattle. This isn't the same one, but it's cute!
posted by JoanArkham at 11:13 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Whoa - major thanks from friend to you. We're going to try some bathmat cutting this weekend,. The "close enough" ready-made options are great ideas, and will be the backup for our eventual failure. The yak hat is excellent, so marked as best answer, but might not work for us, since he indeed thinks yaks are brown.

(Y is for Yak in enough cute children's songs/toys/books/videos that he appears to have some idea of what a yak looks like.)
posted by synapse at 12:01 PM on October 18, 2012

Any big fabric store will sell fake fur (or "fun fur"), which would probably be cheaper than bathmats. (When he was that age my son wanted to be a windshield wiper.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:09 PM on October 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

I don't think fake fur will look right- a mop head was my first thought as well. Viking horns with a mop head glued on top and spray-painted brown would look awesome.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:42 PM on October 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

This might be too expensive (and is adult-sized), but is great.
posted by dizziest at 1:22 PM on October 18, 2012

> I don't think fake fur will look right- a mop head was my first thought as well.

I was thinking the fur could be for the body. Get a length of fake fur, cut a slit in the middle so it's a poncho, tah dah! So long as you've got a good head, the body just has to be somewhat yakky and furry and brownish.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:13 PM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was also going to suggest a mop head over a Viking helmet.

It is worth mentioning that many wigs are actually made out of yak hair. I learned this by overhearing it from someone talking about her own wig. It might sound mean to say I could see the resemblance when it was pointed out to me, but I hope you'll see what I'm getting at here.

At a little older than that, I made a costume (owl) out of an inverted brown paper grocery bag with arm and neck holes cut out. I wonder if something similar could work here, with fringed corded trim (like for curtains) bought from a haberdashery and glued on in large quantity.
posted by tel3path at 2:44 PM on October 18, 2012

The viking helmet with a brown dyed thick mop over the top sounds neat. Brown sweatshirt and sweat pants over warm clothes (if trick or treating) and then two more mop heads for the yak 'skirts' Don't forget the fuzzy yak ears (cotton balls dyed brown glued to cardboard?) and the yak tail. (mop strings braided and then foofed out at the end) It would take an awful lot of yarn to make a good thick coat of hair.
posted by BlueHorse at 10:00 PM on October 18, 2012

You could use felt and yarn and glue onto a hooded sweatshirt and matching brown sweat pants. With the hood up, imagine big eyes, black nostrils and white felt horns glued onto the hood and yard or even a fringe made out of cut felt for the mane. Get a lighter colored brown and make "hoofs" that are like spats for hands and feet and a tail pinned to the back.

Look at this product for reference: http://www.etsy.com/listing/110323250/childs-ferocious-felt-lion-coat

Felt is cheap and easy to cut and glue!
posted by dottiechang at 11:12 PM on October 19, 2012

Whoa - we are overwhelmed! These are fantastic, and give us lots of options to work with if one version proves to be too hard. Thank you all so very much from both friend and I. (She doesn't post pics of her kids online on principle, but I'll try and check back in to describe what we end up doing.)
posted by synapse at 8:33 PM on October 20, 2012