Halloween's coming - have you got your costume ready yet?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday October 23, 2014

It was a four-year-old's birthday party and I saw half a dozen of them, including the birthday girl, dressed in flowing blue gowns. It was a Frozen theme - based on the blockbusting Disney cartoon - and they all chose to dress as Elsa. She's the powerful, magic one you see, while the heroine Anna was a bit too nice and wimpy for these girls.

After that, everywhere I went, I couldn't seem to cross a street without seeing some Elsa or Prince Charming being ushered in and out of their parents' cars. "Tell you what," I thought, "someone must be making a mint out of all these costumes."

When I checked, I wasn't far wrong. "Halloween's been going gangbusters this year," said Dale Pruser of Creative Costumes in Prahran. "I'm so busy - especially those of us with kids. It's like everybody is going to a party, and trick-or-treating is organised for whole streets"

Dale has been in the business 20 years "but now it's huge. We'll do even more business than Christmas."

It seems that the American passion for Halloween has joined with the riotous local custom of Muck-Up Week to fill the streets with masked revellers. With mini ice-queens weaving in and out between their feet. Oh and don't forget last weekend's Zombie Shuffle over Princes Bridge. The costume people do well out of making our fresh-faced youngsters look like rotting flesh.

So what is this passion with dressing up? After thirty years of plain dressing, jeans and jumpers, are our youth angling back towards the flashy dressing of the seventies and eighties? Is Sergeant Pepper coming back?

Costumes are definitely a necessity if you're going to a party over the coming days - Dale Pruser recalled the frequency of week-before and week-after parties to celebrate Halloween.

Research in the US has indicated that this little splurge will run to $8 billion over there, and as usual we are following at a fast trot. That's a lot of pumpkin heads. In fact the average person has budgeted around $80 a head. They are looking for better costumes and more variety.

Matthew Shay is president and CEO at America's National Retail Federation, who have conducted the research for 11 years now and found rapid and consistent growth. "There's no question that the variety of adult, child and even pet costumes now available has driven the demand and popularity of Halloween among consumers of all ages," he said. Even pets?

Yes - pets are the fastest-growing category in the dress-up market and if you look around your favourite shopping centre you will discover a whole variety of doggy outfits, from $2-shop cheapies to some surprisingly expensive quality merchandise.

But then as you and your children haunt the suburban streets on Friday week, you don't want the family werewolf to let you down.

Even the Australian Retailers Association has been surprised. "I noticed yesterday four customers at Bunnings buying boxes of skull fairy lights," said Executive Director Russell Zimmerman. "I'm quite staggered by the popularity of it - it's becoming a part of the market, like Mother's Day. We'll start to look closer at it."

Perhaps this is what to do if you're too young or too poor to get invited to the Spring Racing Carnival. Because after all that's a dress-up event too.