Shop your closet: Last minute Halloween costume ideas you probably have laying around

With Halloween a week away, you might be facing a last second party invitation with the command, “costume required.”

While it would be easy to run down to the local Spirit Halloween and pick out something off the rack, there are plenty of options for those who would prefer to save some cash and shop out of their closet.

Let's be real - shopping out of one's closet prevents the accumulation of items that eventually end up forgotten and sent to either a landfill or second-hand shop.

While you may not be able to put together the perfect recreation of a character from your closet, there are likely plenty of options that will get the point across.

Here are a few suggestions for costumes you can pull right out of your closet.

Witch

The third most popular costume this year is the easiest to pull out of the closet. All that is needed is a black top, black bottoms, black shoes and a black hat.

What makes this combination so useful is the number of permutations that can be pulled from it. If your top is a turtleneck, you can be an artist or mime. Roll up your shirtsleeves and slick back your hair, you’re a Greaser. Add extra eyeliner and the façade of a cynical outlook on life and boom you’re a goth.

If you have a black dress from a previous witch costume, a down hair style and large glasses, you have entered Edna Mode from "The Invincibles" or an up-do and pearl necklaces can transform you into Holly Golightly, Audrey Hepburn's character in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

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Lumberjack

Much like the formula of the witch, the formula of flannel shirt, jeans and boots provides a web of costume iterations.

If you have cowboy boots on hand, the costume makes itself. Swap that for a knit beanie and a healthy dash of nihilism and you've made yourself into a mid-2010's hipster.

Replace the beanie with straw, either real or paper, a disdain for avian beings and a mid-Western stoicism born of staring over fields of corn, you can be a scarecrow.

Detective

While a suit can be the jumping off point for many costumes, James Bond, Hillary Clinton, "Men In Black," a detective allows the most flexibility for characterization. Have a sense of world weariness and a slight New York accent? Go as Lennie Briscoe from Law and Order. Want to ditch the tie, throw on a devil may care attitude and call yourself Patrick Jane from The Mentalist.

If you are able to get your hands on a deerstalker hat the outfit becomes a Sherlock Holmes costume. If you do need to acquire a last piece it is wise to add something that, like the Holmes cap in the dead of fall, has utility beyond All Hallows Eve.

If you don't want to go the suit route, a Hawaiian shirt and jeans can make you Magnum P.I. (Mustache not included. Display chest hair at own risk.)

Rich person

While there are ways to incorporate an “Old Money Aesthetic” into day-to-day life, what you are aiming for with the “rich person” costume is a caricature of wealth steeped in the films of the late 1980s.

If you have a blue blazer in the closet, pairing it with an open collared white button-down collared shirt, khaki pants and a “Harvard accent" and you have the traditional WASP character.

Failing that you can throw on multiple polo shirts with each collar popped and become the arrogant yuppie that was once the hallmark of teen-oriented mall stores.

Bob Ross

The famous television painter is a closet shopper’s dream. If you have a light blue shirt and jeans, you have the costume. A quick trip to a local craft store for paint brushes and a palate round out the look. Roll up the shirtsleeves just above the middle of the forearm and practice the calm, slightly breathy cadence and you’ll have yourself a happy little costume.  

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What pulled from the closet costumes did you wear this year? Email us and you may be featured in a costume roundup!