How can you have Halloween without a scary costumes? Yesterday, we had a cutesy wholesome costume, but every now and then I’ll do a cooky ’scary’ costume, like the Bride of Frankenstein, or a witch.  For the second installation of my Halloween in My Closet Series this costume idea has been in my closet for a while, and I just had to get it out to you! So even though no one this year asked for Beetlejuice, I’m going to go with it….

Ms. Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice was a great movie, but where I fell in love with this story was in it’s cartoon series. Every afternoon when I came home from school…I was already in High School, and either I’m a late bloomer, or this has a bit more ’sophisticated’ appeal. I totally related to the creepy anti-culture that poked fun at everything that I was raised to look up to. I loved it. Plus it was loaded with campy humor:

q: Why don’t ghosts like like the rain?
a: Because it dampens their spirits!

For this costume, I simply pulled out everything that had vertical stripes, a black and white striped blouse, striped trousers pushed up like knickerbockers, green and black striped tights, even my shoes. I pulled a belt from a dress to make my tie, and black gloves, well for no particular reason than to make it more costumey. Beetlejuice has gloves, so I do too!

For the makeup, I didn’t have any white face paint on hand, so I used black and white eyeshadow to whiten my face and blacken my eyes, and I used black eyeliner on my eyes and for lipstick don’t forget to sharpen your eyeliner A LOT between using eyes and mouth. My hair is too long to just have down and shaggy, so I wore a pony on the very top of my head and pulled the pony over my face. You can see my tutorial on how to do that here.

This costume isn’t exactly Beetlejuice, but I just pulled elements, and a lot of Tim Burton references, specifically Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands to make it my own. But that’s the fun of Halloween!

Costume: Blouse and trousers, thrifted • Shoes, Vintage from Belle Epoque, San Francisco • Gloves gift from mother in law • Tie is a belt from another dress.

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