Growing up, I had an immense love-hate relationship with Halloween. My birthday falls on October 28, and too often, my birthday celebrations were lumped in with Halloween. Black cats and Jack-O-Lanterns? I was more into Disney princesses and the color pink.
Funnily enough, my blog has become the catalyst for me to start loving Halloween again. Maybe it is because I am no longer the little girl that sits in anticipation, counting down to midnight until it is my birthday. However, my mindset has shifted in the recent years to appreciating Halloween for what it is: a chance for me to spread my creative wings, dress up in crazy ways, and have fun.
This year, I was inspired by Color Me Courtney’s Halloween challenge, hosted on her Color Me Magic Instagram account. My original plan was to participate in all 13 days of the challenge. Life, however, had other plans for me. I am still incredibly excited to present these three, sustainable Halloween looks in honor of this challenge. Too often I see one-and-done Halloween costumes, and I cannot, morally, take part in this culture.
Thus, my goal this year was to show creative ways to dress up for Halloween while being sustainable. Each year, we generate so much waste from throwing away costumes that are one-and-done is. An easy way to do sustainable Halloween can be renting your costume, but that isn’t always an option. That is why my method is to create a sustainable Halloween costume is to reuse what I already have in my closet!
If you want to learn more about how I shop consciously, check out this post!
Without further ado, let me present my three Halloween outfits: Bellatrix Lestrange, Alice (in Wonderland), and Maleficent.
a sustainable Halloween costume with black leather and lace
featuring Bellatrix Lestrange and Maleficent
The origins of Halloween came from an Ancient Celtic celebration of Samhain (pronounced sow-in or sah-wen). Druids (Celtic priesthood) ‘communed with spirits’ to get insight on what the new harvest year would bring. Over the years, these traditions morphed into our modern day Halloween holiday, and in honor of the “spookiness” of Halloween, I wanted to do as many “scary” costumes as possible.
Out of Courtney’s challenge list of costumes, I was most excited for Harry Potter. I recently visited Harry Potter World in Los Angeles and bought myself a wand. A chance to whip out my wand and dress up as a character who had my hair color? Sign me up!
Once I put together the outfits, I realized how fitting an outfit like this would be for the other costume I was most excited for: Disney Villains. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil came out this weekend on October 18, and I can’t be more excited. Not only was the first Maleficent movie epic and Angelina Jolie the perfect Maleficent, Sleeping Beauty had always been one of my favorite Disney princess movies.
Breakdown of My Bellatrix Lestrange and Maleficent Outfit:
- Faux leather pants: Purchased 2018 and worn several times
- Lace bralette in black: Purchased 2017 and worn several times
- Black corset: Purchased 2019 and worn once *Newly Purchased for Halloween*
- “Faux fur”/teddy coat in black: Purchased 2017 and worn several times
- Black boots (not pictured): Purchased 2016 and worn several times
- Fingerless gloves: Purchased 2019 and worn once *Newly Purchased for Halloween*
- Wand: Purchased 2018
- Horns: Purchased 2019 *Newly Purchased for Halloween*
What I Opted Out of Wearing:
Everything that I opted out of wearing was due to a sustainability reason. I practice slow fashion, which means I only purchase items that I feel like I would get good usage out of. Based on the breakdown of what I wore, I purchased 3 new items, making me cringe and my heart heavy.
- Wig for Bellatrix Lestrange’s frizzy hair
- Harry Potter style robes
- Maleficent’s dress and cloak
- The walking staff that Maleficent carries
- Maleficent’s wings
Synthetic wigs are typically made of plastic fibers (polyester, acrylic, polyvinyl) and are overly processed to create the look of real human hair, and the same goes for the wings and staff. My wand was a purchase from when I visited Harry Potter world, but I knew a staff or wings would sit in the back of my closet, collecting dust and getting forgotten.
Lastly, I also chose to not buy robes or a cloak, and rather turned to a modern take on Bellatrix and Maleficent.
a sustainable Halloween costume that is sweet, girly, and feminine
featuring Alice in Wonderland
My third and final outfit for Halloween was an ode to my childhood. In many ways, though I’d like to believe I was a Disney princess, truth is that I was most like Alice. I had a strict childhood and even stricter grade school years, all thanks to my now absent father. Alice, in many ways, is a reflection of who I used to be: always studying and always trying to escape through a creation of my own mind. After some time of losing oneself in a dream land created from an overactive imagination, I, so like Alice, would forget what was real.
Although the challenge was Tim Burton movies and I could very easily have put together a look based on Nightmare Before Christmas, it was most fitting to be Alice. Would Tim Burton approve of my happy-go-lucky Alice? Maybe not, but I think he would appreciate the inner turmoil that you might not see behind the scenes. Truth be told, life has taken me on a wild ride recently. More and more I find myself “reverting” back to my childhood self and escaping into my dream land.
I also loved Alice’s outfit because this was the outfit that I considered to be most sustainable. It was so easy to put together a look based on Alice (which can also for Belle so long as you switch out the teacup for books and pull your hair back in a low pony).
- Striped Blue Dress: Purchased 2019 and worn once *Purchased for a separate purpose and not Halloween*
- Black Hairband: Purchased 2019 and worn once *Purchased for a separate purpose and not Halloween*
- Apron: Purchased 2019 and worn once *Newly Purchased for Halloween*
all in all…
… the best Sustainable Halloween to be the ones that utilize the most out of normal clothing items you can find in your closet. The older we get, the less important it is that we look exactly like the character we dress up as. How cool would it be to say that the whole outfit is sustainable and wearable for other occasions?!
What I love most about Halloween is being able to express my creativity to the fullest. If I do say so myself, I am extremely proud of the three looks I out together, all the while being sustainable. Shifting our thinking of sustainable fashion and moving towards practices that are environmentally friendly is tough. When it was September and talks of Halloween were starting to pick up, my first thought was to hit up a Party City and the best matching costumes that Mikhail and I could do. Being sustainable and environmentally friendly is a conscious choice and a daily fight against our instincts. What I hope, however, is that I have been able to shed light on how I approach a daunting task such as dressing up for Halloween in a way that I hope Mother Nature can appreciate.
Let me know which costume was your favorite in the comments below! I can’t wait to see what you all dress up as for Halloween!
