The Saturday before Halloween is traditionally the busiest day of the year for Just Imagine in Kitsilano, with eager costume hunters lining up down the block waiting to get ushered inside the busy Broadway store.
But this column isn’t for those who have planned ahead and already have their respective costumes, waiting to get worn this weekend – it’s for the rest of us slackers who wait … till the very last minute.
Here’s three quick and easy shopping stops with easy costume options (and here’s to hoping there are no scary lineups):
Just Imagine
3060 West Broadway
A year-round staple with a second location at Granville Island, a warehouse, and a busy online store, Just Imagine is a locally-run Halloween empire.
Owner Donna Dobo has seen the rise of Halloween as a kids’-only affair to an event that includes excited adults, outlandish house decorations, and even pet costumes. But one thing that is consistent is that most years there are a handful of pop-culture influenced looks that emerge as favourites. This time around, one of those is the store’s NASAcostume (available for all ages in both white and orange), inspired by the hit movie The Martian, with Matt Damon playing an astronaut stuck on Mars.
“They are unisex spacesuits, and they are really authentic,” Dobo says, adding that prohibition-era looks – flappers and gangsters – are also popular picks for adults this year.
For those who don’t want to change from their everyday clothes, Dobo suggests they try Tinsley Transfers – special effects makeup that can be easily applied for a zombie effect.
“They are so easy; you just slap them on with fresh water then add blood,” Dobo says. “You can zombify anything.”
The same goes for a vampire, she says, noting you can wear anything and just add teeth, makeup, and maybe some costume contact lenses, and look like a hungry blood-sucker.
But after all of these years in the biz, what Dobo loves the most this time of year is seeing what the customers come up with on their own, using what they find in the store to make a uniquely freaky costume.
American Apparel
2242 West Fourth
Over at the American Apparel store on West Fourth, the company has done the heavy lifting, by putting together everyday in-store pieces to create striking Halloween looks.
American Apparel isn’t a Halloween store per se, but drawing on its ironic millennial wear, the company has devised a ton of options with clothes that can be worn even after the party is over.
Costume options include flamboyant Queen singer Freddie Mercury, hair bands of the Sunset Strip, sultry leopard and black catsuits, disco duds, Norwegian black metal looks, and ‘90s club kids.
“As a group, we are going to do a Jane Fonda-workout theme,” store manager Carlysle Stonehouse says, about their dress-up plans with American Apparel bodysuits and legwarmers.
Seems a lot of shoppers want to go back to the bell-bottoms and short-shorts of the 1970s.
“[The look] is an easy one; we have people doing it all of the time,” Stonehouse says, by throwing together American Apparel running shorts, wrist bands, headbands, and double stripped knee-high socks.
As I said, the appeal of American Apparel Halloween threads is that many can be worn on a regular basis – that Freddie Mercury white tank can be a summer staple, the leopard catsuit ($58) can be worn with sneakers and a motorcycle jacket (but only if you are in your 20s, I say, cause otherwise you’re veering into dangerous Peg Bundy territory), the running shorts can, in fact, be used for, well, running, and so on. Plus, the other nice thing about American Apparel is knowing the clothes weren’t made in an overseas sweatshop.
Urban Outfitters
2199 West Fourth
Finally, for those who want to zip out and grab something quick and weird, stop by Urban Outfitters on Fourth Avenue for a mask, like a toothy open-mouthed T-Rex, a long-tongued German Shepard, and a wrinkly pug mask, which range in price from $29.99 to $52.
Ideal for the last-minute Halloween partygoer looking to throw on something that will creep the shit out of people with very little effort.
Sounds like the perfect costume to me.
