Multiple Halloween costumes composed of thrifted and second hand pieces (Lily Peltz / The Puma Prensa)
By Lily Peltz, Staff Writer
Do you have your Halloween costume yet?
That's probably a question you’ve been hearing a lot lately, and if your answer happens to be no, then you should consider getting your costume from a thrift store.
Sure, you could go to Spirit Halloween, or visit Amazon and order a costume. That would probably be easier, but it would also be more expensive, worse for the environment, and way less fun.
Just because Halloween costumes are fun and festive doesn’t mean buying brand new ones year after year isn’t wasteful. Store bought costumes are typically made to be single use, meaning they use cheap, unrecyclable materials, and usually end up in landfills as soon as the season is over.
Thrifting a costume is a great way around this, as it not only avoids creating new pollution, but it also gives new life to perfectly good donated clothes that could otherwise end up going to waste.
Another perk is that thrifted clothes tend to be much less expensive than a new costume. If you’ve been to Spirit Halloween in the past few years, you know how outlandish their prices have gotten. A single accessory can cost you nearly $20. At a thrift store, each item you buy is usually not going to cost more than $10, so you’re likely to find almost everything you need for under $45 (probably even less if you reuse things you already have).
It’s also one of the best ways to make the most out of the season. You can go online and have a costume in just a few clicks, but where’s the fun in that? Why not actually try and have fun getting your costume? You can get some friends together and all try to thrift costumes together, or you can accumulate pieces over the span of the whole month. I personally prefer the latter, because it lets me enjoy the process of getting a costume all October long.
If finding all the individual pieces of your costume seems like too much effort, you can also thrift prepackaged costumes. The local thrift stores with the best selection of costumes and accessories (that I’ve seen) are Redwood Gospel Mission Thrift Store and Sutter Hospice Thrift Store. And you don’t have to buy specific costume pieces, you can DIY regular thrifted clothes to fit your costume.
You could also use pieces already in your closet at home, borrow stuff from your friends, look at an online secondhand site, or reuse last year’s costume. Honestly, anything is better than buying a brand new costume when thousands of usable costumes and clothes are just waiting to be worn again.