Adult Halloween Costumes

Costume ideas for grownups

Grown-ups like dressing up too! Whether it’s for an office costume contest, a Halloween theme party or just to take your kids trick-or-treating, it’s fun to cut loose and dress silly (or scary) for a day. Popular themes for adult Halloween costumes include TV and movie characters, historical figures, monsters and iconic or mythical archetypes like pirate, mermaid, angel and devil.

Adult Halloween Costume Ideas

If you want to go all out, superhero costumes never go out of style. Brightly colored bodysuits will certainly stick out, however, so be sure you are prepared to be in character all day. The other perennial Halloween favorites – vampires, zombies and their ilk – usually require a lot of makeup. These costumes are fun and easy to make, but again, you’re stuck with that fake blood all day.

For a more versatile outfit, choose a costume that can be accomplished mainly through accessories. A pirate costume, for example, begins with a pair of black jeans and oversized white shirt. Add a pair of boots, a pirate’s hat, an eye patch, a cutlass and maybe even a parrot and you’ve got a great costume. Take them all off and you can go on a coffee run without looking like you just held up a galleon.

Costumes for Parties

For an evening Halloween party or a theme night in a bar, adult costumes can get elaborate. This is where you might consider that robot costume made up of boxes and ducting spray-painted silver. Keep in mind, though, that you still might want to sit down, dance, eat, go to the bathroom… How much comfort and convenience you’re willing to sacrifice will play a major role in choosing your costume.

Many people seek out sexy costumes, especially for Halloween clubbing. For women, just about any theme can be adapted by adding more eyeliner, shortening the skirt and revealing more cleavage. A nurse outfit by day becomes sexy nurse by night. A fun choice is a mermaid costume – this theme lends itself naturally to skimpy tops, tight bottoms, gauzy fabric and lots of glitter, and it’s not as much of a cliché.

Sexy Halloween costumes for men play on bad-boy archetypes like pirates, cowboys and gangsters. Take your daytime pirate outfit and kick it up a notch by going bare-chested, with just an open leather vest. For a more refined appeal, dress up in a double-breasted suit, fedora and tommy gun, and charm the ladies with your sauve style. Vampires are sexy, too these days, thanks to recent popular movies. Forego the black suit and cape – today’s vampires dress stylishly, betrayed only by their fangs and brooding (read makeup-enhanced) eyes.