20s Costumes

20s Costumes

20s costumes are always a favorite at costume parties and Halloween. You can always find gangsters and flapper girls in costume shops. But there is more than one way to pay homage to the 20s, and it is easy to find and create a unique 20s costume to blow the party away.

Change it up! You don’t have to be completely unique. Flapper gals and gangster guys are fun! But just by making a few minor changes, you can make these costumes yours. Try gender-bending – let your gangster guy be the seductive one and let your flapper pack the heat. Or try wearing all black and white, and paint your skin white, for an instant transformation. You can even carry around a frame and be a black-and-white photo.

Or, try something unique. One of you can go as a piano, and carry around your sexy lounge singer on your shoulders. You can be art deco and decorate some cardboard in the opulent geometrical style that was so popular at the time. Or get some friends together and be the party’s resident jazz band. You could get political, and be a women’s suffrage activist, complete with picketing signs. Or you could be a bootlegger and carry around a jug of “poison.”

Take to the media for inspiration for your 20s costume. Are you a fan of the new show, “Boardwalk Empire?” One of you can be Nucky and the other can be one of his henchmen, or one of his many lovers. Or be opulent! Go all out, and be characters from “The Great Gatsby” at one of Gatsby’s swanky parties. Or here’s a classic – get two other friends together and you can be Don Lockwood, Kathy Selden, and Cosmo Brown from “Singin’ in the Rain.” Another option from that movie is a Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont couples costume!

Citizen Kane is another film for some 20s costumes. Go as the uptight and slightly-crazed Charles Foster Kane. Or get wacky and dress up as Rosebud, the sled! There are also many important historical figures from the 1920s. Draw on some thick eyebrows, don a Mexican dress, and be Frida Kahlo. Or paint your face and wrap yourself in traditional garb, and be a Japanese Geisha! Other historical figures include: Gandhi, Malcolm X, Babe Ruth, Al Capone, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemmingway, and Charles Lindbergh.

Artists like Pablo Picasso and René Magritte were making beautiful paintings at this time – why not go as either the artist or the art, or both! And of course, we can’t address the 20s costumes without talking about the Great Depression. This one you can take conceptually, just wear a frown and be forlorn; or literally, and you can wear a display of crashing stocks. Any way you look at the 20s, you can find a unique 20s costume.