I’d like to talk about a fancy dress party I went to around this time last year. It was organised for a close friend’s twenty-fifth birthday, and she decided to hire a small community hall in Manchester. The theme she chose was 'characters from folklore and vintage cinema', which gave everyone plenty of room for imagination.
Practically all of our friendship group turned up, along with some of her colleagues from work. What made the evening so memorable was the sheer effort people had put in. Rather than just picking up cheap, generic costumes from a shop, almost everyone had handcrafted their own outfits. One of my mates came as a 1920s silent film star, completely painted in greyscale from head to toe, carrying a little chalkboard for dialogue. Another friend turned herself into a mythical woodland creature, using real branches, dried moss, and tiny battery-powered fairy lights woven through her hair. I cobbled together an outfit as an old-fashioned Victorian detective, complete with a pocket watch and a tweed waistcoat I’d tracked down in a charity shop.
The main reason I found the whole thing so impressive was the ingenuity on display. Nowadays, people often take the easy way out and buy mass-produced plastic costumes online, but at this party, there was a real emphasis on upcycling and attention to detail. You could tell that people had spent weeks scouring second-hand shops and sewing things by hand. The outfits sparked so many conversations, and it completely broke the ice among guests who hadn’t met before, making the atmosphere genuinely lively and fun.