COSTUMES: THE FINALE

How I became a shipwreck.

In honour of Halloween month, I thought that I should share some of my secrets to crafting great costumes. Each Monday in October, I’ve delivered a breakdown of three key elements in the costume-making process. In the final installment of this series, I’ll take you through the entire process of making my own costume for this Halloween from start to finish. You can find part one here, part two here, and part three here. Now to the reveal! You’re gonna want to open this one in your browser or on the Substack app—it’s got lots of pictures.

On September 1st, I sat my husband down and presented him with three different concepts for Halloween costumes, complete with brief mood boards for each. After careful deliberation, we settled upon the ‘PIRATE AND SHIPWRECK’ option. This delighted me, as this was the most complex option of the bunch—and now it was time to get to work.

As I mentioned before, finding inspiration for your Halloween costume is a deeply personal endeavour and one where I can offer no guidance, but I do typically take much of my inspiration from old runway shows. The pirate and shipwreck looks felt like a natural extension of Gabriel and my current obsession with early Vivienne Westwood and Galliano (and really, who isn’t obsessed with them right now?!). The ‘ship’ element of the shipwreck costume would also give me the opportunity to craft an item that has been on my ‘to make’ list for easily a decade now: Marie Antoinette’s ship headpiece.*

*A history note for you: The ship-in-hair look is actually known as Coiffure á la Belle Poule and was allegedly intended to celebrate victories by the French naval ship La Belle Poule during the American Revolution. The verity of this hairstyle is widely speculated upon, and, as is the case with many things in the life of Marie Antoinette, it may not have actually been sported by the queen herself. In my formal historian opinion, it feels likely that she did—the reports are there (and drawn often!), and it feels just like the sort of outsize, utterly fabulous thing that she would have loved.

A few images from my costume mood board...

In the interest of keeping this newsletter (kind of) short enough to fit in your inbox, I am only going to show you how I crafted my own costume. Gabriel’s look was mostly styled from items he already had on hand, including a really excellent waxed cotton tricorne hat from one of our secret favourite Westwood-offshoot stores. (Should I write about it someday?! It’s a crazy place. Let me know). Naturally, step one was…

THE SKETCH

You’ll see shortly which elements made the final cut.