If you also follow my friends and family blog, sorry about the nearly-duplicate post. This is my first Circle of Clothes post in over a year. I guess Halloween is what gets me the most motivated to share things here. There's so much other stuff I'd like to share, but there are only so many hours in each day...
Um... this wasn't what I had planned for THE GREAT HALLOWEEN COSTUME OF 2011. I'd been giving friends clues about it: "I will be tasty and delicious," I taunted. But, the nearer the end of October came, the longer the hours I ended up working to get this show Big Love off the ground: about 60 hours per week for a couple of weeks, then about 80 the next, and by the last week, I worked - no exaggeration - about 90 hours over seven days. Some people don't believe that this is possible. But I assure you, it is. It just sucks a lot. It's like being in grad school, except that you find yourself wondering why the heck you're still working these kinds of hours even though grad school ended years ago. And it is not exactly conducive to things like also producing a Halloween costume in one's "spare time." So, the show opened on Friday the 28th, and I entered post-show recovery mode, and "Plan Tasty and Delicious" was simply not going to come to fruition in 2011, but I still needed a costume for a ballroom party I was determined to attend on Saturday the 29th.
So... gasp... I RE-USED A PREVIOUS COSTUME. But I did re-vamp it. The first iteration, thrown together last-minute back in my grad school years, had sparser leaves, only safety-pinned in place. So, hours before I was to leave for the ballroom party, I jogged over to Kmart and picked up another bag of fake autumn leaves (it's ridiculously easy to find fake autumn leaves in October), and I stitched them all in place so they wouldn't get mussed when I danced. The garments to which the leaves are attached are four pieces (skirt, tunic, Turkish bodice, and scarf) that I acquired during one of the summers when I worked as a sales wench at the booth of delightful designer (and all-around kind and beloved gentleman) Steven Overstreet, at the Southern California Renaissance Faire. Those were good times, they were.
Oh, and in case it's not clear: I was "Autumn," darn it! Not "Mother Nature" (though our planet is quite ill, we still do have more than one season!). Not "a fairy." Not "some kind of leaf goddess." Just Autumn, plain and simple. There is a song called "Autumn Leaves," sung best by Eva Cassidy. It is beautiful and meaningful. Look it up on youtube, if you wish. You won't regret it. My choice to re-vamp and re-use this costume was encouraged by that song. As a rule, I don't wear a Halloween costume for more than one Halloween, but I made an exception for this one. Autumn makes me melancholy. So does that beautiful song, in a way. But I took something that makes me melancholy, and I turned it, I think, into something beautiful.
I'll shut up now, and leave the rest to eye candy...
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