Fashion 86 : Baby Boomers Don’t Mask Their Feelings, Join Kids in Halloween
“This,” Ron Ede says, stroking a faded gray gown, “was worn to the Eisenhower inauguration.” Who wore it? “I don’t know.”
Well, you can be sure it wasn’t Mamie. For that matter, there’s no real proof the dress ever saw the light of Washington. But in the days prior to Halloween, the so-called “Eisenhower” dress was among the many “vintage” outfits under serious consideration by hordes of women (and men) trying to come up with the ultimate costume.
At Junk for Joy, the used-clothing and fashion surplus store that currently occupies the legendary Schwab’s drugstore location on Sunset Boulevard, owner Ede quickly dispels the notion that Halloween is strictly for children.
“Adults really go nuts here,” says the Australian-born Ede. “I’m also a wholesaler, and I try to sell these clothes to other stores around the United States, but they say: ‘We’re not in Hollywood, you know.’ I guess people are more outgoing here.”
Whether or not the proximity to Tinseltown is the full explanation, it’s the same story all across town: Grown-ups are haunting toy stores, costume rental companies, used-clothing emporiums and their old college trunks to find something clever, outrageous or X-rated to wear when the sun sets tonight.
“It seems as if the so-called yuppie generation just doesn’t want to grow up,” suggests Doug Spesert of Make Believe in Santa Monica, which at one time was strictly in the business of supplying costumes to small, Equity Waiver theaters. But in the last three years, Halloween rentals of mostly period costumes have quadrupled.
“We laugh about it,” co-owner Ruth Talley says. “People come in wanting to be a princess and end up as a banana.”
The millions of Baby Boomers trick or treating in the ‘50s and ‘60s--possibly in sheer numbers the prime years for candy collectors--”are the same people who are continuing to wear costumes and spending a fortune on them,” Spesert adds.
With rental prices ranging from $35 to $45 for a 48-hour period, store-bought costumes starting at $24 and custom-made ensembles running as high as $300, imagination is the only limit.
You can pose as a senorita or a Southern belle. A surgeon or a Playboy bunny. Stevie Wonder or Ronald Reagan. A French maid or a character out of “Nicholas Nickleby.”
“It’s an opportunity to be something you can’t be in everyday life--without certain ramifications,” says Richard J. Levy, an architectural photographer who has paraded as a gasoline pump. “I enjoy the shock value. It catches people off guard.”
“I look at it as a release,” says Franchisco Rossi, who is a hairdresser at the Cristophe Salon in Beverly Hills--except, of course, on Halloween. Then he is a Harlequin, well at least this year. “Everybody’s got a little person inside they want to come out and be.”
For parents, Halloween has other meanings.
“I’m 39 and I have a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old,” says Sue Antebi, who will dress up as a skeleton tonight and go trick or treating with her children and husband, who will also be in costume.
“A lot of it has to do with the fact that many of us, as older parents, are more comfortable with ourselves and very involved with what our children are doing. We get in the spirit of what they do, we participate with our children.”
The safety factor also has something to do with parental participation. To keep an eye on their children, parents either accompany their children as they go door to door or join them at private and neighborhood parties. Yet, while most Baby Boomers can’t recall ever seeing their parents in costume, the reverse is the rule today.
“I think it does have to do with being an older parent,” says fashion designer Pamela Dewey Singer. While her 3-year-old daughter Porter was going to choose between dressing up as either “a pickle in a chocolate bun or Raggedy Ann,” Singer was planning to follow suit and dress accordingly, either as a hamburger or Raggedy Andy.
“My parents never went out with us in costume,” she recalls. “Maybe as adults we have more kid in us. It’s like at the park, when the kids ask why, we don’t say, ‘Because I’m the mommy and you’re the child.’ There’s more explanation.”
Sue Antebi, who is president of the Inner Circle support group of the Los Angeles Children’s Museum, reports that at the organization’s recent Halloween party, most of the 1,100 children, parents and grandparents attending came in full regalia.
“Entire families came in costume,” she says. “People came as pumpkins, bumblebees, robots, flappers. My husband, who is an investment banker, was Stevie Wonder--totally made over by one of the studios.”
“People want every detail to be right,” explains Seabrook Ede of Junk for Joy, where there have been several requests for Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Jackie Kennedy and Fred Astaire looks.
With a wealth of old clothes to draw on, mostly from the ‘50s and ‘60s, most requests are easy to fill. But Ede admits she was puzzled by one request:
“Some lady said she wanted to be a waistline, just a waistline. She came in to look around and see how she could put it together, and then she left.”
