Halloween: It’s a tricky holiday. It’s the one time of year when a mere mask has the Eyes Wide Shut power to transform professional adults who typically spend their weekdays buttoning their top collars and twiddling their thumbs in a cubicle into scantily clad, frothing-at-mouth animals who just want to mash their faces together. (So New Year s Eve, basically, with weirder outfits.) On top of the rabid lip-locking, there’s that overwhelming, needling pressure to think of a costume, as well as douse it with hints of come-hither sex appeal, ranging from a fireman who wears only suspenders to a cat with just whiskers and a bodysuit to a thigh-baring Margaret Thatcher. Once the costume part is planned? You can’t just sling a pillow-sack of candy over your shoulder, go trick-or-treating in your fishnets and tail, and cap the night off by watching a buck-toothed Bette Midler babble some gibberish in Hocus Pocus. Instead, you will be talked into going to a not-so-fun theme party in some friend-of-a-friend s apartment with a strobe light and one cobweb and listen to a grown man dressed as Frankenstein (you hope) talk about how he once was a Wiccan in college. Halloween, you see, can really be very scary.
But the 31st of October isn’t such a bag full of Necco-Wafers-bust if you have a chic coven of your own. A group of close friends can take the pressure off of thinking of a cumbersome costume as well as deciding on a velvet rope–laden location. And before you sulk that you are heading out on Halloween single, without a Tarzan to your Jane, or a Marty to your Ruth Bader Ginsberg, think again: With friends, you get to take the shenanigans of Hallows Eve with a grain of salt. That costume you couldn’t think of? The look can be as easy as a straight-from-your-closet cowgirl via a pair of booties and a denim vest, or as lazy as a bootleg superhero with a Batman hoodie and knee-highs. Have a leftover tie-dye shirt from your college days? Make like a raver and add some alien-print socks to the look. Arriving with a crew always takes the pressure off. And at the end of the night, if you decide to pass on that big messy party? Feel free to head home with your friends, take off those animal ears, grab a jumbo Twix, and watch Bette Midler in a pointy hat to put the true, spooky spirit back into Halloween.
