Robots

I thought my boyfriend Joe had done well with the gaffer tape and cardboard boxes when he created his Daft Punk helmet for Bestival this year...


Then I came across this genius on the Instructables website.


Click here: HERE
for his instructions, if you have recently been made redundant/ won the lottery and aren't fussed about talking to any of your friends or family for the foreseeable future.

Giving in to the geek

Sometimes, a genius costume can say more than just "I've thought about this a bit too much". It might say, "I am an incurable geek and I'm going to go right ahead and revel in it". Thanks to the topsy turvy rules of the world of Fancy, this sort of bravery is rewarded with the adulation of others. By those that get it, anyway. Who cares about the other f**kers?

Thus, the lego stormtrooper is born. Awesome, indeed.

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/10/awesome-lego-star-wars-halloween-costumes/

And the headgear of a lesser character from Monty Python's Holy Grail is desirable enough to be a saleable commodity on the ThinkGeek website

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/hats-ties/beac/

And coming to a party dressed/ made up as "Low Resolution" gets the respect it really deserves.



Can you be a genius and not be a geek anyway?
http://kindacarsick.com/post/230881676

Jurassic Carpark

My friend Tom, for reasons as yet unknown, is in search of a dinosaur costume. The quality, price and realism of the costume will, I imagine, depend on his requirements:

For celebrations in retail outlets, children's fetes, or sporting events:

(Available for hire from

mascotsuk.com for upwards of £95 for 3 days, or to buy from charlievegas.co.uk for the price of a low quality sofa)

For film production, natural history related events and scaring children:

Consider using this article to build an animatronic robot dinosaur.

(NB: The word 'simple' in the heading of this article is entirely inappropriate. It includes this sentence, for example: "as for the analog inputs they can accept switched motion sensors gyroscopes, potentiometers, etc").

I have no idea what the raw materials cost to do this, but I imagine hiring someone with the skills to build animatronic veloceraptor workings doesn't come cheap.

But, having aligned and attached all your potentiometers and that, imagine the fun! Here's some inspiration

For friendly parties, office japes and low quality fringe theatre:

(a snip at £2.49 from websites like partydomain.co.uk or, I imagine, all good party shops)

You'd have to sew yourself a dinosaur costume or alternatively, make like the Microsoft advert and just wear normal clothes as in, "hey man, you're, like, a dinosaur, man)

Alternatively, "Barb's Baton Bargains and Halloween" on the US Ebay site offers a full latex dinosaur head licensed from the Jurassic Park franchise for around $20 plus $25 P&P. On this note, this happy fella has scored himself an original Dilophosaurus mask from the film. You could ask his advice?

Best mask I saw:

... on an ebay site. But it's been snapped up. And I fear it's for a fantasy geekoid zombie dino thing anyways.

On a separate note, I observe that almost all wearable dinosaur apparel is based on the T Rex. Probably for wearability reasons. But, for example, surely the costumes designed for our four legged friends are an opportunity to mix it up a bit? A missed opportunity if you ask me. Not that I advocate dressing beagles in any form of reptilean themed clothing.

Bestival 2009

So I've stopped throwing a tantrum about missing Secret Garden for a wedding and have started to get excited about Bestival's Space Costume opportunities.

In a moment of hasty generosity I promised to knit a friend a Clanger costume and am seeking inspiration from 

here

 and 

here

Meanwhile the opportunities to enthrall and impress with ROBO MAGIK are many:

Although every picture comes with inbuilt sense of dread, and memories of last year's Jellyfish debacle. Must learn to solder and also to create costumes before actually getting in the van to go. I do wonder how these will hold up in the rain. After partying in the trenches last year I am more sceptical about the appropriateness of knitwear/ cardboard boxes in a Bestival costume.

Oh stuff it, fingers crossed, pray for sun. 

The Highest Form of Fancy

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It runs in the family

My Mum recently attended a party which required her to dress as someone or something in a Beatles song. No, not a Beatle (that would be rather limiting) but a fictional Beatles-inspired character. What a damned good theme! Difficult though. Think it might have been better to have allowed people to come as someone or something from any song. But anyway.
My suggestions were:
Polythene Pam (although as Mum pointed out she's so good looking but she looks like a man - and there's something about jack boots and kilt going on too. Not a very flattering look)
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ( we thought everyone would do this though)
Paperback Writer? (You could pick a famous writer, see, and go as them)
Her Majesty? (either Maj herself or some other Queen)
A chauffeur (from Baby you can drive my car?)
Lady Madonna (either by tying children to her feet - ahem- or perhaps a Ciccone stye get up?)
There's a whole cast of people in Penny Lane to be plundered... or some circus freaks from Serjeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Her friends had already picked out Desmond and Molly from a market stall.
Anyway the upshot was she went thus:



Yeah
And she don't care.

Special report from St Ives

Once again, the splendid silliness of St Ives’s New Year festivities brought a tear to this fancy dresser’s eye.
Cornish people being impervious to driving winds, lashing rain and unsatisfactory fireworks in their pursuit of a knees-up, the fancily dressed crowds again fell upon the coastal paths in their droves to parade in a magnificent display of costumery
(Reportedly slightly smaller droves than in years past but it looked pretty busy from where I was standing).

And once again I dreamed of my little fancy dressing emporium only to watch thousands of impressive home made costumes troop past, a testament to unnecessity being the stepmother of invention:

As I mentioned, the Cornish are hardy folk and so able to brave the January nights clad in a tutu and a comedy wig, but attendants from more weakly stock need to focus on costumes that integrate warmth, waterproofing and imaginative theming. Notable success in this field:

(that last one is me)
At New Year in St Ives, people seek out strangers, feed them hot toddies, sling an arm around their shoulders and sing songs.
It’s difficult to know if this unusually sociable crowd is the result of the costumes, the cider or the bonhomie engendered by leaving London. A key moment for the meeting of minds might be, for example – finding your brother/sister-in-costume:

Being especially impressed with an outfit passing by: (look! Its the Invisible man!)

Identifying the costume (these are actually terracotta warriors, a triumph in cardboard knitting if not necessarily in verisimilitude)

Or Zombie attack:
So the advice from me for St Ives is to find yourself a costume with interactive potential as well as warmth and head coverage:
• Santa Claus (although beware the fact that this is a FAMILY event and try not to ruin the dreams of thousands of small people with your drinking/ smoking/ vomiting antics)
• Bobsleigh/ Slalom team
• Queen’s Guard

Costume Tutorials

Ages ago I decided to spend less on buying costumes from ebay and instead to spend time making costumes with my sewing machine and a foam cutter etc. I would simply locate all the clothing and trinkets I have piled up around the tiny flat we live in and I would run up hand-made costumes that caused onlookers to gasp and say 'where the hell did you buy that confection?' etc and so forth.
Two snarl ups and some quite dodgy hand made toys that I need to apologise to my godchildren for later and I have a box of recyclable garmets, foam and no new costumes.

So these tutorials are cause for guilt and embarrassment. Maybe one day they will spur me onto actual action. In the meantime, look upon these works, ye mighty, and despair.

http://xenomachina.com/2005/10/howto-lego-minifig-costume.html

http://www.instructables.com/id/Halloween-2007---Who-Ya-Gonna-Call/

sigh

Bernie Ambitions

This weekend I spent some time on a golf course hanging out with my boyfriend's family and trying to avoid sunburn, which was more fun than you might expect. At one point a friend of my boy's brother ran into the restaurant sporting one of those Bernie Clifton costumes which look as though a person is riding a massive bird.

This was a coincidence as my New Year's resolution for 2007 is to make a version of this that makes it look as though I am riding a Pink Flamingo in time for Bestival in September. A resolution that, true to form, I have largely ignored since its conception in January, save for purchasing some pink feathers and papier mache.

SO anyway, in comes the chap, whose bird was, at best, a little shoddy and nondescript (orange) and who seemed as happy with the appendage between the legs as he was with the rapturous reception he received (his bird's neck hang loosely until manually pulled up whereas mine will, I hope be self sufficient).
More like this (this is not him. This is the bastard son of David Beckham and that bloke in Corrie with the high voice)

Anyway, prompted by the arrival of a substandard Clifton I was able to consider my original plan for contruction again.
For example, one advantage his costume has over my original design was that, thanks to its loose covering across the top he was able to sit down. This was something I hadn't considered to date, and had planned to create a more solid rounded bird body around me bum. This now seems unnecessarily impractical. It also brings the subject of toilet visits up again, something I have been neglecting in my enthusiasm. Even this chap was saying his costume was hindering is ability to urinate. And he had the advantage, obviously, of external genitalia and largely civilised lavatories, whereas as a lady at Bestival I may particularly struggle on this score. However I am sure this is something that can be managed, with the correct design. Possibly with some sort of integrated funneling device?

Anyway the best advice on construction I have found to date is this online site about making halloween costumes for kids:
http://jas.familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts?page=CraftDisplay&craftid=10262
Although this is handy for the feet:
http://www.costumes.org/classes/254pages/projects/birdfoot.htm

But in the search I found these beauties:
How to make 10 ft silver wings (this is possibly the most impressive costume I have ever seen)
http://www.cockeyed.com/incredible/wings/wings.html
How to make a head out of meat:
http://cascade.mit.edu/halloween/meathead.html

Which just goes to show that neglecting the pursuit dressing fancy will only lead to depriving myself of All Sorts of Fun. Hey! Never mind the bloody job, where's the plastic skull covered in chum?

Best of British

My mate Calli is a real inspiration, so she is. Every year she, her sister and friends hold a party in January with an obligatory fancy dress code and a slightly off kilter theme. Fairly mucks about with any plans you may have had for de-toxing but that's a ridiculous notion anyway.

This year's theme was 'Best of British', which is a great theme because its one of those slow burners: at first you think, yeah, okay, that's a fine idea, Ill go as a...and then suddenly,

WHAM!

a thousand brilliant costume plans leap into your brain.

Like, I'll go as a...

BA Air Hostess (this is Calli and her sister and their four fantastic legs)

A Beefeater? Mary Poppins? (yes that's me on the right: have to say, the Poppins was a bit tough on someone too superstitious to open an umbrella indoors..)

A Brownie? A Cricketer? Its like, there aren't enough slightly porny costumes in the world for this theme...

hey! I might come as a Spice Girl (Breaking the rule that blacking up is only allowed if you are coming as Mr T.. I think. I'm reliably informed that since Avid Merrion all bets are off re. Scary)

Or St George! That's brilliant!

What about being a Beatle? So cool... (although I think George H would have pulled Baby if he'd been on the Spice Girls bus in real life)

A Royal Couple? Bring that on. This is Calli's Mum on the left who clearly does nothing by halves neither

and finally, my personal favourite, the schoolgirl Mum. The only possible improvement here would have been to exchange that glass of rioja for a Pineapple Breezer.

All these very very up for it people went on to create an absolutely rocking party with a riotously sweaty dancefloor. Anyway this all goes to reinforce two Important Lessons:

1) Broad but original themes are really fun to think of costumes for

2) Fancy dressing makes for a swifter passage to Party Greatness.

Fern's Guide to Festive Fanciness

Some might say that forcing ones family to wear festively themed gear for Christmas Day is dressing up an already overdressed holiday. Some might say that insisting your little brother wears a Santa Suit complete with deluxe beard and half moon spectacles (and consequent sardonic scowl) is not conducive to encouraging relaxation and bonhomie around the familial hearth. Some might say that kitting your mother out in a Santa Baby outfit and sparkly green slippers is a bit... much. And I know at least one person who would say that prosthetic elf ears and a giant satin babygrow is probably a step too far into fancy for a chap.

To these folk, I say PFF! Look at the FUN! And check out my mother's legs!

Anyway: some guidance as to the costumes of Christmas:

1. Festive fanciness can be enjoyed all year round, unlike carols or tinsel, and is particularly useful on fancy occasions that might be a bit chilly.
2. Every lady loves a Santa. Some a little bit too much. This is often regarded Wrong. Personally, I think you should get it where you can and if it takes a big curly beard and a apillow or two then stuff that greatcoat tight and enjoy. She'll probably feel a bit ikky in the morning though.
3. If you are dressed in a santa suit you can (and should) expect to get a lot of interaction with the general public and passers by and so forth, making humorous sallies on the subject of their Christmas list. You might want to suggest better behaviour on their part or to advise that they write up their requests in a letter to the North Pole/ Lapland. Alternatively, you can do as my Joe did on New Years, dressed as Santa with a pint of scrumpy in one had and a fag in other and snarl 'put it in a fu**ing email its my day off you bastards'. But remember to watch out for small children and try not to shatter their dreams where posssible.
4. Ladies, if you have a real sense of occasion in December you will do as Mariah and my Mum did and get those legs out. You will look hot. I am not sure quite why, but trust me, its a good look, with or without the kinky boots.
5. The lack of variation should be embraced. I don't really hold with dressing up as a Christmas pudding or such. I much prefer the Millions of Santies approach, especially when they are doing inappropriate things like brawling or jogging: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/4081415.stm

Ho!

Fern's Guide to Dressing Fancy - Voodoo

A while back my friends Richard and Jared held a Voodoo Party in aid of the crisis in New Orleans. I've just found the guide to dressing Voodoo that they put on their promotional website. And I thought to myself... "that's a quick way to update the blog at a time of the year when my brain is far too fuzzy to actually come up with any original thinking."

You Do Voodoo
Learned sources have informed me that Voodoo can mean
· The practice of Shamanism in West African Native tradition
· Any kind of Black Magic
· Weird shit in general.

So, depending on the purity of your translation, costumery could range from facsimiles of Witch Doctor regalia to just looking a bit odd. It’s a very flexible theme allowing for all styles and tastes. Since the event is in aid of the folk of New Orleans, it may be appropriate to work in a New Orleans/ Mardi Gras theme, opening the field still further.

For those who don’t want to show their face, masks are essential.

Skull on a stick, purple wig, top hat, disturbing furs – a classic rendering of the theme of Voodoo in the medium of clothes.

Why not come as a goat?

Some easy options:

· A skull mask can be teamed with any outfit, as can a plastic snake
· You can achieve a lot with white face paints and a top hat
· If in doubt, think Bradford Goth. Try this site for ideas and you can cast your judgement on teenaged eejits whilst you’re at it! http://www.gothornot.com/

For those who would like to walk in the chicken feet of past masters of the Voodoo Aesthetic, I give you:

Screaming Jay Hawkins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGPhpvqtOc
Mr Hawkins embraced our theme wholeheartedly in his stage show, bursting out of a coffin, with bones through the nose, festooned in skulls and feathers and off his box on a potentially lethal cocktail of tequila, LSD and methamphetimine. The fact that he is reputed to have fathered over fifty children is testament to the fact that a drunk man may still succeed with the ladies if he only dresses up fancy.


Marla English
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051174/
B Movie heroine, Marla English, wasn’t just a woman who dressed a bit strange. No, she was a Voodoo Woman, an evil siren picked by a mad genius to provide the model for his slave race of magical ladies. Think tight/ripped pedalpushers and blouse, a safari hat and tying yourself to a stake. Gagging optional.

Slash
http://www.snakepit.org/
Slash isn’t so much Voodoo as a bit goth rock but to my mind there is a blurry edge between the two and I fancy the leather pants off him so here he is for my delectation and yours. He favours a top hat and leather waistcoat combo but if you are concerned about your upper body fitness it could be an opportunity to dig our that old metal t shirt you’ve been dying to get back into

Lisa Bonet
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000956/
In Angelheart, the beauteous Cosby daughter breaks free from the novelty sweater and stripy tights look to work a style more dependent on chicken killing and bucket loads of blood. It did it for Mickey but it scared the tits off me. Not for fainthearted priestesses or those who don’t fancy a lot of dry cleaning. Get a dress from the 1950s (not one of mine), a chicken and introduce them to each other with the aid of a sharp knife.

Jane Seymour
http://www.bondmovies.com/stills/lald/
Bond girl and Voodoo Priestess, Jane’s role in Live and Let Die was a little girl’s dream. I’ve never seen this movie and frankly it looks like a heap of chicken shit but I dig her headdresses, which the dedicated could probably construct with a drawer full of spoons and a spool of sticky back plastic.

Fern's Guide to Dressing Fancy: Halloween

There are some American imports of which I wholly approve : Tom Waits music, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Kraft's Mac and Cheese and Halloween's Fancy Dressing being a handful of examples.
When I were a lass Halloween basically consisted of a crap edition of Why Don’t You in which children with difficult accents inexplicably shoved each other’s faces in buckets of water with apples in, and some plastic Jack O Lanterns, which briefly surrounded the pick and mix in Costcutters. Aside from that I forlornly watched decades of films and telly from the States in which children and adults alike obsessed about what their costume this year would be, came up with something slightly random and brilliant, knocked on each others doors and went partying with their pets and pet aliens dressed up as midget giants or robots or something. In the same way that US High School probably doesn’t involve quite so much running your own radio station and copping off in locker rooms, I’m sure Halloween doesn’t always attract smart wise ass checker shirted chums with a fabulous sense of the absurd. But Still. Having one day dedicated to costume parties has got to be a step in the direction of Cool, hasn’t it?
Anyway rejoice! For the gradual merging of our nation with its corporate benefactor has finally resulted in the great gift of Halloween. Now we can all play. Some young folk think it even started here in the first place. Who gives a shit? Where did I put my glow in the dark teeth?

The great thing about Halloween is that it seems any costume is on brief. Witness Matt's unusual cartoon elvis cum zorro take on the whole thing. I don't know what it is, but it kind of works... And here we see a perfectly normal Halloween ghoulie fest gatecrashed by a cheerleading Superman. Actually that really is scary.

All that stuff about dead people and ghosts and ghoulies and so forth is fine, but I suppose some of those Yanks got bored of hauling the same skeleton suit out of the closet every year, and ran out of scary things to be, so as I understand it, the deal is now that the more random and clever and even figurative you can be the better. Although I hear this mainly from my friends in LA and New York. Maybe it’s all still zombies and freaks in the Midwest (insert generic US friendly joke about not being able to tell difference here). We are either still in the early stages of development regarding Halloween costumes here, or desperately clinging to its pagan roots, so people in the UK tend to opt mainly for the monsters witches and that.
After all its not every day of the year you get to scare the living bejesus out of pre school children (Trick or Treat is it sonny? Treat yourself to my Hilarious Dripping Blood Teeth, and Realistic Pussy Wounds my Tiny Parka Jacketed Friend) without imminent arrest. Lets stick with it for the time being because as we all know, having a theme is a Good Thing and stops you sticking plastic bags to your head in a sleep deprived panic.

The theme of Dead Walking the Earth is however, a very liberal one. Can you think of anyone interesting who has died?

Oh yes. Everyone! Brilliant. Come as Elvis, complete with bloodless green skin and the poppy out eyes of a heart attack victim. Come as Mama Cass with half a chicken hanging out your mouth. Come as Charles the First with a genius mechanical head under your arm. Excellent do-it-yourself-without-actually-stabbing-yourself wounds can be found through the theatrical make up company, “Screen Tests” and involve some shelling out for latex glue and latex glue remover but really do return the effort and expense in children’s screams alone. (In London you can buy it at Charles H Fox in Covent Garden but am sure you can send off for it)

Otherwise there’s always the Underworld. You can go Classic (Medusa, That Thing with One Eye, er…. Sorry didn’t go to posh school. Ask someone else) or Pagan (Your basic Witch, Warlock, Werewolf, Vampire type thing).

I am particularly proud of our use of ghoulish make up here...

Yes, yes, you can go as a cat or a naughty devil. If you genuinely do look really sexy in it. If you don’t look really sexy you will definitely meet someone else who has come as a cat or a naughty devil too and is really sexy, and then you will be plunged into a maudlin and quite boring depression.

These girls will sit next to you if you come as a nughty devil. Then you will look less like a naughty devil and more like a rather plain bird in deely boppers.

You should consider the B Movie for inspiration. Aliens, Dracula’s Wife, Evil Robots, Mummies, Zombies, Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster (yes I am that pedantic. It may be a tedious and overrated gothic novel but the movies got it right and so should you.) Munsters, Zombies and Ghouls (oh my).

However, it has to be said that the best costumes I’ve seen yet hark back to the real roots of the festival itself and feature Dead Prom Queens, Jocks with Knives in their Guts and Cheerleaders with their Eyes Gouged Out. Yay! Go Team!