Halloween Costumes Trends: How Are They Determined?
Each year, Halloween costume trends change. It is not a coincidence that everyone has the same costume ideas on a single night of the year. So how do these trends come to be? Who determines what rides on the winds of popularity each October 31st? And why do they choose the costumes they choose? Let’s take a look at how Halloween costume trends are determined.
Halloween Costume Trends: The Fashion Industry
The fashion industry is one of the most powerful industries in the world, and for good reason. The fashion industry influences more than just clothing; it influences culture, lifestyle choices and even Halloween costumes.
The fashion industry’s influence on Halloween costumes is simple, yet undeniable: it designs costumes based on its own creations. And since this is the same industry that determines what clothes people wear every day, these costumes will inevitably be popular as well.
Here are some examples of recent Halloween costume trends that were influenced by the fashion industry:
1) In 2010, Lady Gaga rose to prominence in both mainstream music and pop culture. With her outlandish outfits and unique style, she quickly became one of the most recognizable celebrities in the world. As a result, many people decided to dress up like her
Halloween Costume Trends
Halloween is one of the best holidays there is. There are a lot of things to love about Halloween: the scary movies, the traditions, the pumpkin carving, and of course, the costumes. As someone who has been dressing up for Halloween for as long as I can remember, I am always fascinated by how different costume trends come and go. Every year there are a few trendy costumes that you see everywhere. Sometimes these trends seem to come out of nowhere, and other times it’s obvious why they have become so popular. Here are a few examples of recent trends, and how they came to be.
Trend: Breaking Bad Costumes
Reasons Why This Trend Took Off: The final season of “Breaking Bad” began in August of last year (2013), so it made sense that it would influence Halloween costume choices that year. The show was immensely popular and gained a cult-like following as it progressed through its five seasons on air. Fans were devastated when the series came to an end in September 2013, but dressing up like their favorite characters was a way for fans to pay homage to the show.
Trend: Miley Cyrus Costumes
Reasons Why This Trend Took Off: Popular culture is always
As Halloween approaches, the costumed masses will once again descend upon Halloween stores, each hoping to stand out from the pack.
This year, there will be approximately 2 million Barack Obamas; 1.2 million pirates; 700,000 witches; and 600,000 vampires. With so many people in costume, how can one hope to stand out?
The answer is: with a trendier costume.
Each year, the National Retail Federation releases a list of the most popular costume trends for that year. For example, according to their 2008 report, among children ages 5 to 14, “pirate” ranked as the
What’s the hot costume this year? You’ll know when you see it.
A generation ago, wearing the right Halloween costume was about as complicated as deciding which shade of black to wear to a funeral. Dressing up in costume was something kids did on Halloween, not adults. And if you were going to dress up, you just went down to the local party store and picked up a Spider-Man mask or plastic witch’s hat.
Today, with more than a quarter of Americans over 18 planning to attend a Halloween party this year, according to the National Retail Federation, choosing the right costume is serious business. The nation’s 2,500 costume shops generate about $300 million in revenue annually; another $300 million comes from online retailers. Costume manufacturers such as Rubie’s operate factories around the world and employ tens of thousands of workers during peak production season.
The king of the industry is Disguise Inc., which makes costumes for Marvel characters like Iron Man and Captain America as well as Disney princesses and “Star Wars” droids under license from those companies. Disguise is owned by Jakks Pacific Inc., which also makes toys and action figures based on different popular characters. (Disclosure: I used to work at Disney.)
Halloween is a time in which adults and children alike are free to express themselves in any way they want. It is a time where people can dress up as fictional characters, scary monsters, or even animals. The possibilities are endless. For many people, it is the holiday of the year that they look forward to the most.
However, depending on what costume you choose, you may be labeled as either trendy or unoriginal. Since Halloween became more widely celebrated in the late twentieth century, there have been several trends that have emerged. These trends range from generic costumes such as witches and vampires to specific pop culture icons such as Harry Potter or the minions from Despicable Me.
The question remains: How do these trends determine what costumes are popular during any given year?
Every year, the party store Spirit Halloween opens up in a new retail space. This year, they’re opening up a whopping 1,300 stores across the country. Just like any other retailer, they have to make tough choices about what inventory to carry at each location. Naturally, they have historical data to guide them: past Halloween sales at every zip code in America. But that doesn’t tell them how popular different costumes will be this year.
It’s impossible to predict the future with certainty, but luckily for Spirit Halloween, we can do a pretty good job of predicting which costumes will be most popular this year based on the first three weeks worth of web traffic on search terms like “Costume Ideas For Women” and “Unique Costume Ideas.” In fact, our analysis has consistently predicted the top five most popular costumes from the year before within 1% accuracy over the past 2 years.
We also know that people are more likely to buy costumes that are unique: if you’re going to dress as Eleven from Stranger Things this year, you’re more likely to buy your costume from Spirit if you don’t see 5 other versions of it at parties before Halloween arrives.
What we’ve done is build a model that predicts the popularity of different costume themes this year based on web
A few years ago, I was a data scientist working for an e-commerce company that sold costumes.
Inevitably, around the end of September and beginning of October, the leadership team would start to ask about our Halloween season projections.
When we began the process of making these predictions, the first step was to look at the orders we had received so far–and find trends in them. We would bucket costumes by category: superheros and villains, animals and pets, pop culture icons from movies/television/etc., and so on. Then we would look at what customers had ordered in previous years. We’d also look at how popular certain costumes were across different regions of the country. The goal was to be able to predict what percentage of our total costume sales would end up being in each category.
As an example, let’s say that last year 5% of our orders were for Star Wars costumes (Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, etc.). This year, we were shipping out more orders than last year–but only 3% of them were Star was costumes. So we might decide that Star Wars costumes were trending downwards this year–and adjust our estimates accordingly.
This is where it gets interesting: After a while, a