When Halloween comes to town

There was a time Halloween saw the release of Nightmare On Elm Street film. At the time, horror movies were more about physical fear than psychological thrillers and dark lords.

In 2018 Halloween has become fashion's most outsize party. So much so it is hard to tell what the dressing up is about anymore.

Each year it is taken even more seriously. From the entire array of TV series and movies released around this time of year, to the amount of time, effort and money spent on costumes, Halloween is now that time of the year where cosplay meets high fashion.

DRESS-UP

And the biggest star of Halloween for almost 20 years now has been Heidi Klum. She has gone as a series of Klums, Jessica Rabbit and this year, a very realistic Princess Fiona along with Shrek.

The movie Black Panther was a huge inspiration for African American celebrities and their families who dressed up as Wakanda royalty. Characters are drawn straight from pop culture.

The Kardashian-Jenner clan all turned into Victoria Secret models complete with the real deal wings straight off the runways lent to them by the sexy brand.

Lupita dressed up as the female lead in Clueless, a movie that has long been considered the zeitgeist of 1990s fashion. Rihanna walked the fine line between scary and sexy in leather with a pink skeleton face.

Beyoncé dressed up as the awesomeness of Florence Joyner-Griffith with her one leg spandex, while Jay Z complemented her by making a political statement to black power as 1968 Olympic Games 1st and 3rd 200 metre dash winners Tommie Smith and John Carlos, complete with the bowed head and fist pumping the air.

Kelly Rowland went straight up Black Panther. Not the movie, the movement.

The essence of Halloween is captured beautifully in the 2017 Oscar-winning riveting animation film, Coco, inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead holiday.

However, Halloween is also All Saints’ Eve, preceding the Feast of All Saints on 1st November by the Roman Catholic Church, a day for commemorating all saints.

Halloween, in and of itself, is an ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, where costumes were worn to ward of ghosts and people lit bonfires. All Hallows Eve later became Halloween.

But, now that there is candy, a very commercial food, and adults have dived right into what used to be a game for children, it is also abundantly clear fashion can be used to escape real life.

CELEBRITY FAIR

Halloween is now a night when we step into the shoes of people we either admire or want to mock — and what is fascinating about 2018 is the sheer absence of Trump costumes — becoming a fictional character, something fashion and lifestyle publications are more than happy to help curate, or just go straight up supernatural.

What celebrities are doing though, is designing a collection of outfits because you simply can't trend or break the internet with just the one look. There are as many as four outfit changes. Babies and pets are part of the fun as costume extensions.

My favourite part of Halloween the past few years though, has been the ingenuity of make-up artists who can create an entire skeleton, erase a head and replace it with a sputtering neck and design alien-like beings with wide, dangerously spooky mouths.

Instagram has been a joy to watch in October, thanks to self-taught artistes when it comes to special effects with prosthetics, silicon, make-up palettes and imagination. They are turning into frightening stars, outshining cute babies dressed up as SpongeBob or pink loofahs.

I see why the grown-ups wanted in. There are very few, if any, times in our lives where we are not subject to judgement over how we look.

Where a grown up can decide to look foolish, silly, ironic — like Diddy dressing up as the clown that scared him half to death on the "Ellen Show" that went viral — sexy, like most female celebrities prefer, politically charged to looks that one eventually ends up apologising for.

It is the only time in the year where both men and women enjoy making up their look, masquerade as a goofy persona they otherwise would never get to. It is not the least bit surprising Halloween is a big deal in a world where we have to put our best faces forward and be perfect on social media.

It is also quite tricky criticising a costume without context or understanding. It forces both player and observer to think, and maybe even experience an Aha! Moment, something that rarely ever happens on the other platform people play dress-up for, the red carpet.