Halloween is less than two months away! I hope you’ve all started to prepare. Just in case you can’t think of anything, here’s a short list of what I think will be popular costumes this year.
The Joker
Admittedly, there will still be a number of Batmans running around, especially among the younger folk, but it’s clear to see that the Joker was the real attraction of the film Dark Knight, and I’ve already seen Joker costumes popping up all over the place, for events like the movie premiere and conventions. Undoubtedly a fair amount of these will be used for Halloween too. Some of them are amazingly accurate, all the way down to the green hair and smudged, worn makeup.
For the Joker, you will need a long purple coat, a light purple suit jacket, a green vest, a reptile print shirt, purple pinstripe pants, a green camouflage print tie, black shoes, and multi-colored socks (try finding Mardi Gras socks for that). Good luck! For makeup you’ll need some kind of temporary green hair dye (it’s probably more like hair paint), white 
cream makeup base, red makeup for the mouth, black makeup for the eyes, and brown makeup for creating the shadows and basically helping to smudge and dirty up the makeup job.
There are plenty of tutorials for making Joker costumes online. If you can’t sew, that’s not a problem! You can buy clothing at thrift stores that are similar to the style you need, but light in color, and then simply dye them purple or green. This article on Associated Content gives pretty good instructions for it.
Dr. Horrible
It’s not just us here at My Disguises who are obsessed with the bad doctor. Even though it’s been difficult for costumers to get the costume items they need to make an accurate Dr. Horrible costume, we know that they will do whatever it takes to get out there on Halloween night with all that mad scientist style.
We’ve posted previously about what’s needed in a Dr. Horrible costume, and there is plenty of fan discussion over at drhorrible.net.
But what if you want to show your love for this phenomenon, without looking like everyone else? If you’re a girl you can put together a Penny outfit. Why not go as Billy, Captain Hammer, or even better, choose another villain from the Evil League of Evil? My personal favorite is Dead Bowie, but you can choose for yourself. This post on cruftbox.com has a rundown of all the ELE characters, including screenshots of all of them.
Pirates
Even though there hasn’t been a big pirating film out this year, I think it’s safe to assume that everyone still loves pirates, and they will be strong contenders at Halloween for a few more years yet.
The great thing about pirate costumes is that you don’t have to base your costume on a specific character (unless, of course, you want to). They can be as fancy or as simple as you like, and you can make a costume for males and females.
The most simple, pared down basics for a pirate costume is a puffy shirt, and baggy pants, or a skirt for the girls, if desired, and a sash to tie around your waist or head. 
From there, you can go on to add hats or bandanas, fancy pirate coats, vests, corsets for the girls, big boots, fat leather belts, jabots, weapons, lots of jewelry, and any other piratey accessory! Make sure to decorate things with skulls and crossbones—I found some awesome silver skull and crossbones buttons at a fabric store the other day.
If you’re thinking about historically accurate pirate costumes, I’ve found that the Pirates of the Caribbean films are actually pretty good references, and corroborate a lot of the research I’ve done on the period (mid-to-late 1700s); with the exception of most of Elizabeth’s costumes, and some of the more obviously fantasy-based costumes. Of course, you can do your own research by searching online or checking out fashion history books.
And while I’m on the topic, let’s give another reminder that Talk Like a Pirate Day is just a few days away! We’ll hear more from FunkyLady on that soon.
