Halloween Costumes That Disguised, Spooked and Thrilled Through the Ages: Photos

Facts from the original

• You can tell a lot about an era of American history from its Halloween costumes—not just what people feared, but what was popular in entertainment and who was running for president.
• Halloween has evolved into the main costume holiday in the United States.
• In the early 20th century, Halloween was only one of many holidays for which Americans dressed up, according to Halloween author Lesley Bannatyne.
• Bannatyne says the average person would dress up on New Year's, Valentine's Day, Halloween and Easter.
• Dress balls and costume masquerades were much more popular in the early 20th century than they are now.
• Early 20th-century Halloween costumes were geared toward spooky themes rather than current events and were mostly homemade.
• The goal wasn't necessarily to dress as a particular creature or character, but to conceal identity in a spooky way evoking ghosts, witches, pumpkins, black cats and the moon.
• Bannatyne describes moon symbols and darker fabrics—anything that could suggest or replicate something dark and otherworldly.
• Costumes of that era sometimes portrayed other cultures and races in a way now recognized as insensitive and often racist.
• Americans culturally appropriated turbans and other symbols of the 'Far East,' reflecting a contemporary fascination with Egypt as an 'exotic' place.
• White Americans wore blackface to portray African Americans, a tradition steeped in racism that continues today.
• The only commercial costumes available in the early 20th century were paper masks or aprons for children.
• Disguises were especially important for kids and teens, who often spent Halloween night playing tricks such as throwing flour at people, stealing neighbors' fences or even stealing dead bodies.
• Costume culture changed during the Great Depression, particularly after 1933.
• On Halloween 1933, hundreds of teenage boys flipped over cars, sawed off telephone poles and committed other acts of vandalism across the country.
• Concerned adults began organizing neighborhood activities like trick-or-treating, haunted houses and costume parties to keep young people out of trouble.
• This new focus led to new types of costumes for kids.
• As Halloween became more about entertaining and occupying children, costumes became things children enjoyed, including characters from popular radio shows, comics and movies like Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
• These costumes represented things children might have seen and enjoyed rather than an abstract expression of night.
• Big department store companies like Sears started selling box costumes aimed at children, but these were considered expensive luxuries during the Great Depression.
• Most families continued to make their own Halloween outfits using costume patterns, even for Mickey and Minnie.
• In the 1950s, mass-produced box costumes became more affordable, so more kids dressed as princesses, mummies, clowns or specific characters like Batman and Frankenstein's monster.
• There were cowboy costumes, and also 'Indian costumes' that Native Americans found offensive and still find offensive.
• The 1970s brought more adult changes to Halloween costumes, including Americans wearing presidential masks, most famously Richard Nixon's.
• The first newspaper report of a presidential mask was in 1969, when a protester wore a Nixon mask to an anti-war march the day before Nixon's inauguration.
• Later in 1969, at a White House Halloween party thrown by Nixon's daughter Tricia, a female guest showed up wearing a mask of former president Lyndon B. Johnson.
• After the Watergate scandal, the Nixon mask became the more popular Halloween costume.
• Watergate caused Americans to become more cynical about their government, and as new politicians took office or ran for president, stores began selling masks of those politicians' faces too.
• The Nixon mask remained one of the most popular presidential masks long after he was gone.
• Halloween costumes in the 1970s and '80s became more gruesome with the rise of slasher horror movies.
• Slasher movies cemented Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees masks as classic horror costumes.
• Major fantasy and sci-fi movies had a big influence, with fans dressing as C-3PO, Darth Vader and Princess Leia from Star Wars; kids particularly liked dressing as the titular alien in E.T.
• 'Sexy' costumes for women were common from the 1960s onward, and in the 1990s 'sexy' versions of store-bought costumes became an established commercial product.
• Manufacturers sold costumes based on highly charged current events; in 1995, the year of the O.J. Simpson trial, costume shops sold masks of both Simpson and the presiding Judge Ito.
• Costume companies have also marketed costumes inspired by TV shows; in 2019, new Golden Girls costumes for Blanche, Dorothy, Rose and Sophia became available.
• It is probably easier, and definitely cheaper, to put together a DIY Golden Girls costume using mom's old clothes.