It may be more than a month away but if you’re going to impress with your fancy dress at Halloween you’d better get planning soon. There’s going to be a lot of competition for the best costumes.
In 2016, by far the most popular costume for women was Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad with her pink and blue pigtails, and there were plenty of ironic Donald Trumps around last year – so what’s going to be big on All Hallows’ Eve this year?
These are going to be the year’s biggest Halloween trends of 2018, according to experts…
Matching costumes
According to the trend forcasters at Etsy, we’re going to be seeing lots of matching costumes this year, with 5,700 options available on the retail site.
For grown-ups that means couples going as a witch and wizard, or taking the easy option with T-shirts that say things like, ‘Mr and Mrs Zombie’ or ‘Pumpking and Pumpqueen’.
For little ones, that means adorable Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm outfits or any of a variety of culinary pairings like salt and pepper, ketchup and mustard or little sushi rolls.
Temporary Tattoos
Etsy also predicts that spooky tattoos will be big this year, but only fake ones of course, having seen a 28% increase in searches for ‘temporary custom tattoo’ recently and over 2,000 search results for halloween designs.
Looking for something modern? You can also get face tattoos and go as the divisive American singer Post Malone.
Glam transformations
"Last year we saw sales of lashes at Halloween overtake sales at Christmas for the first time ever," says Superdrug’s Simon Comins.
"Glitter sales also increased by 300% and ghoulish cosmetics, from exclusive brand Revolution, by 69%."
The retailer expects glamorous Halloween make-up to be just as popular this year and has created YouTube tutorials for four sparkly looks: a crystal skull, mermaid, bejewelled dragon and a glitter zip.
Skull make-up
Mexican sugar skull designs has become very popular in recent years and Pinterest reports searches for ‘skull make-up’ have gone up 40% compared to last year, so that trend looks set to stick around.
Classic costumes
While some people want to be topical or trendy with their choice of Halloween disguise, some creepy costumes never go out of style.
Pinterest says that searches for ‘witches’ have increased by 45% year on year and ‘zombies’ by 55% so expect to see plenty more broom-wielding women and undead beings marauding the streets when October 31 rolls around.
