Gettin' My Ghoul On

I dread Halloween.

I'm not good at it (I am, however, good at things involving lots of cooking, like Thanksgiving and Christmas), and experience has told me that I prefer not to participate in stuff that I'm not [immediately] good at.

This year, however, I decided to turn over a new leaf. Inspired by my huge change in career, lifestyle and location, and newly friended by dozens of creative folk, I gave myself ample time to step up. I figured, "This year is the year. If I can just come up with ONE good costume, I can do the same one every year."

So what is a timeless, hallmark Halloween figure?

Vampire.

Boosted by recent pop culture trends, there are a myriad of vamp accessories out there. I took advantage. There are two typical ways one can do this: over-the-top slutty Elizabethan, or over-the-top white-face Bella Lugosi. I decided to try for surreptitiously eerie: sophisticated, well-dressed, and upon closer inspection clearly not of this world.

Cleverly using my vision plan's hardware allocation, I went to the optometrist and scored some bloody looking contacts (that also appear black in dim light). I found a store online that makes vampire teeth that you can custom fit to your own teeth. Already possessing of a starched white shirt, a vest and black skirt, I assembled my undead persona.

Two key components to any vampire outfit: hair and skin.

Hair must be one of two ways: You can either brill cream it down or you can freak it out. I decided to get freaky. No less than copious amounts of 3 separate hair products (root lifter, pomade, HAIRSPRAY) gave me that immortal fresh-from-the-casket look.

I combined this with the palest most porcelain foundation I could find, and set it with lots of cornstarch. Having spent the last 5 months in a cadaver lab, I have some idea of how to correctly pull off the dead look. I carefully dabbed some grayish eyeshadow under the eyes, then proceeded to outline them in blacks, grays and purples, to really pop those blood contacts. The last debate was whether to go with blood red lipstick to highlight the teeth, or go with the dead lips look. Not wanting to detract from the decidedly much eerier eyes, I opted for the latter. This consisted of using a combination of concealer, foundation and more gray eyeshadow, all set with cornstarch.

This all led to an overall beautiful "dead and unfed" look.

Once dressed, I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, "what am I, some kind of Midtown stock trader by day, biter by night?"

Works for me.

L-R: Peter Pan (Adrienne, DPM), Nos Veratu, Dorothy/Heidi/
St. Pauli Girl (Darcie, DO)

The eyes were what really made the outfit. Because they would just appear dark at first glance, it'd take people awhile to realize that they were red, and upon that realization they'd freak out a little. Costume WIN.