The United States started celebrating Halloween in the 1900s, as soon as it started people started buying costumes because that’s like the biggest thing about Halloween. So the question here is does Halloween costumes changes overtimes? Why? People have different perspectives on this question. For example, Mr. Mewhirter and my friend Gary has a different perspective. Travis thinks yes because people back then had not many choices but in the modern day people do have lots of choices because people tend to look at celebrities on what they are dressing, and there are many celebrities out there. Gary, on the other hand, thinks that this is true because we have more ways to have fun now, so people want to see more different kinds of costumes. Let’s look at Halloween costumes history in the United States so that we will have a better understanding of what this question is about.

We are going all back to 1915s, around the time where Halloween started, people at the time liked to make their own costumes, especially masks. I think people would just find cardboard and paint over it to make a crown face or a creepy happy face. The actual clothing would be something that’s made out of rough fabric, people make this too.
Then 1925s hits, people still had that 1910-ish look to the costumes but it was more classy. People would wear this black dress that kind of look like a dress for witches in some ways. Masks for this time are half-covered with holes for eyes.

The only thing that didn’t change from 1925s to 1935s is that the mask, other than that everything else changed. This era of time people started to dress up as cute characters, it wasn’t as scary as people’s costumes in the 1915s and 1925s. One of the most iconic character people dressed up for was Mickey Mouse because Disney at the time was a huge thing and it still is.

1945s changed suddenly, it was more modern. Everything from materials to styles, it’s like a simplified vision of the costumes from the early 1900s, like a mixture of 1915s style and 1925s style. The biggest difference for this era comparing to previous years is that everything looks store-bought, so I’m guessing people started buying their costumes maybe because stores started actually selling costumes.

1955s changed a lot, I mean people would wear more “every day looking” costumes. People tend to focus more on makeup at the time. There were more accessories to go with the costumes.

All black outfits were more trending during the 1965s, people would wear all black outfit for any characters. Women would also wear high heels at the time.

Between 1975s to 1995s, people would wear random things, and it didn’t change much over the years.

2015 was a big change, some people would wear crazy stuff, and others don’t even celebrate Halloween. For people that wear costumes, most of them would just copy celebrities outfits. One of the the greatest example is people coping one of Kim Kardashian’s bottle champagne photo, I would assume that it’s really hard to walk in it but people still wear it.

Over these years, costumes have changed a lot, it’s kind of like a representation of what we think at a certain time period. Can I be the next biggest costume influencer?

<Allen Liu/ Portola HS 10th>