Nora Vance

Halloween lands in the middle of midterms, right when the semester has already eaten through the money that was supposed to last until December. A costume that needs a $40 order and three separate craft store runs isn’t happening this year, and it doesn’t need to. Everything below comes from a closet, a roommate, or … Read more

By fourteen or fifteen, most guys have opinions about what they’ll actually wear out the door — and “anything, whatever, I don’t care” usually means “nothing embarrassing, nothing that took a parent three hours to sew.” The costume has to survive a group chat roast before it survives the night. This list skips the toddler-aisle … Read more

Twenty-three ideas doesn’t mean scrolling through the same five costumes with different filters slapped on. This list mixes what’s actually trending this year with a handful of thrifted-together looks that come from whatever’s already sitting in a closet. Some of these borrow one detail from a show or a trend without turning into a full … Read more

Three costumes are easier to plan than four, and a lot easier to photograph than a family of six trying to hold formation on a porch step. A trio has just enough people to tell a story — someone in the middle, two flanking — without anyone standing around in a costume that doesn’t connect … Read more

Four costumes have to work as a set without turning into three good ideas and one leftover. That’s usually where a family Halloween costume goes wrong — someone ends up in a plain black hoodie labeled “bat” while everyone else got an actual character. The 23 ideas below skip the sets already lined up in … Read more

A matching couples costume works when the two halves actually need each other — pull one person out of frame and the joke falls apart. That’s the test every idea below had to pass before it made the list. Some of these lean on something already sitting in a kitchen drawer or a closet. Others … Read more

Every costume shop rack has the same five couple options by the time October rolls around: a devil and an angel, a cop and a prisoner, a bag of chips and a can of dip. None of them are wrong, exactly. They’re just the costume equivalent of ordering the same appetizer every time you go … Read more

A solo Halloween costume has one job a group costume doesn’t: it has to read completely on its own, with no context clue standing next to it. That’s harder than it sounds, and it’s exactly why some of the easiest ideas on paper end up looking half-finished at the party. The 23 costumes below are … Read more