I have a confession: I once spent $72 on a salon Halloween manicure that started chipping by day four. Four days. For that money, I could have bought a decent gel kit and done three sets myself. That experience is why I started paying attention to which designs actually hold up, which ones work on…
I have a confession: I spent most of 2023 avoiding French tips because I associated them with the thick, square, pink-and-white sets that dominated middle school. My friend Priya tried to convince me otherwise, and I resisted for months. Then she showed up to brunch with a micro French tip in a muted espresso brown…
I have worn glasses since I was nine years old, and I have a very specific memory of Halloween 2019. I was standing in my bathroom, trying to put in a pair of decorative white contact lenses for a scarecrow costume. It took me 45 minutes, both eyes were streaming, and I ended up going…
I have a confession: I spent my entire 20s wearing costumes that required a body glue intervention and heels I couldn’t walk in past 9 p.m. Now I’m 42, my feet have opinions, and I want a Halloween costume for women over 40 that doesn’t make me feel like I’m wearing a cheap polyester sack…
I was 31 weeks pregnant on Halloween two years ago, and I spent the entire week before scrolling through Pinterest, convinced I’d either look like a giant orange balloon or spend $80 on a costume I’d wear for three hours. My friend Danielle — who was 36 weeks along at the time — actually tried…
I’ve been engaged for nine months now, and I can tell you the costume pressure hits different when you’re a fiancé. Suddenly every party feels like a test of your couple branding. Last year my fiancé and I showed up to a friend’s Halloween party as “a guy who forgot to plan” and “a woman…
A teacher friend of mine spent $40 on an elaborate costume her first year teaching third grade, wore it for exactly one recess duty, and came back inside with the cape ripped, glitter everywhere, and a kid asking if she was okay because she’d tripped over the hem on the playground blacktop. She told me…
My grandmother wore the same “witch” costume to her senior center Halloween party for about six years running, and every year she complained about the cheap polyester dress snagging on her cardigan and the pointy hat sliding off. Two years ago I finally helped her put together something new, and the thing that struck me…
I used to buy a wig for basically every costume, until I actually sat down and did the math: $15-20 a year, every year, for a wig that usually looked a little off under porch lights and got shoved in a drawer by November 1st. Somewhere around year four I started picking costumes that worked…
I learned this lesson the hard way three Halloweens ago, standing on a porch in Minneapolis in a costume that was basically a bedsheet and some face paint, watching my toes go numb while I handed out candy. Never again. If you live somewhere that hits freezing by late October, “cute costume” and “I can…