The best pop culture costumes for Halloween 2023
From the totally obvious (Taylor, Britney, Mario) to the slightly obscure (Grimace, Portia, Luigi), we've got you covered
Aux Features halloween
Image: Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Parkwood (Getty Images), Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Macy’s, Inc, Nicole Weingart (Bravo), Shane Mahood/SYFY
Halloween is a mere 11 days away, which means you probably haven’t settled on what you want to wear to your spooky events. You already know you’re going to see more Barbies, Kens, and Oppies than you can stand, so we’re here to help jog your memory with some of the other things that happened during this long pop culture year.
While the Screen Actors Guild has just released their own guidelines on what to wear for striking actors—namely, don’t dress as characters from struck work—we’re guessing most of you don’t fall into that category. Even if you do, though, you’ll find plenty of SAG-approved costumes here, from the worlds of reality television, animation, pop music, and memedom.
18 Comments
Open question to the American people: why do you dress up for Halloween in costumes that have no connection to Halloween? Yours, a confused Brit.
sst
Because they’re easy to dress up as, frequently kinda funny, and since the people primarily wearing costumes that this article is addressing are older, they’re more likely gonna be showing them at parties, and you want to (try to) be original, so you can’t just be a scary monster, there will be so many of those! Also some people are going to be dressing up for costume contests at various social events and let’s be real, even if your Dracula costume whips ass, at the end of the day it’s still Dracula, we’ve seen it.
Also a timely reminder for the Aussies:No, you’re not celebrating Halloween because you’re 1/4 English or whatever. You’re celebrating Halloween because you’re a Seppofied cultural-cringer and just copy shit you see off TV.
Dear twat, fuck off.
Because we don’t have “Fancy dress parties” any other time of the yearUnless you are into cosplay
And there’s only so many times you can deal with overweight bearded men dressed as Sailor Moon even if you are into cosplay.
I have no clue who a solid half these people are (and think some may be made up, but I’m an old), think most of the others may be paid placement due to how lame and obvious they are, and fully expect any party of couples under 40 to be 25% Travis and TaylorIf you’re going as the Saw puppet in 2023, I have no clue what to think about your creativity and originality
“Billy the Puppet is another costume that has been around a while but has become relevant again via Saw X.”
I am still going to argue that they didn’t become relevant again. It did $43M at the box office. And it was a lame part of a series largely aimed at nu metal fans even at its height. In 2005, you avoided the guy at the bar dressed in a Saw costume. That hasn’t changed.
Your dislike of the character doesn’t make it irrelevant.
There’s Grimace, which us olds recognize. Although I’m not sure why you’d want to give McDonald’s free advertising.
Can we stop with mocking Britney Spears, please? She has been exploited for decades. Making light of her very real struggles with mental illness isn’t funny.
Half of these are just “dress as a normal-ass person and say you’re from a TV show and/or are a celebrity”. Like damn, if you can’t think of something creative just shorten the list. I admit I do the mish-mashed Pratt Mario idea
These are almost all dumb ideas.
My family only dresses in the most relevant costumes possible, which is why I have been spending the last month making Castle Crashers costumes for all four of us.
It’s going to be 50% Skibidi Toilet this year
Barbenheimer is literally the only one of these that would make a great costume.As a side issue, I don’t think anyone except Beyonce could dress up like Beyonce and look like Beyonce instead of a $15 bag of vinyl advertised as “Sexy Alein Girl – She is Out of This Warld”.