Barbies (and Ken) In Boxes

Every year my university puts on a night at the end of the RAG charity week called The Dental Beer Race (the dentists organise it). It's a pub crawl down a long road in East London and everyone goes in group fancy dress, with prizes for the "winners."

People really put A LOT of time and effort into it, and two years ago myself and my friends decided to go as "Barbies In Boxes."

2013. L-R Disco Barbie, 80s Barbie, Beach Ken, Sailor Barbie, Prom Queen Barbie

 Needless to say, we fucking won. So many people thought this was incredible (and it was tbh!)

The cardboard boxes were bought off Amazon, I believe they are "wardrobe" boxes? They were cut to size, painted pink, Barbie/Ken painted on, and the Mattel circle stuck on. We then tied them to our shoulders with string. 

Great thing with this is, you can go as any Barbie so the clothes you wear don't really matter. My sailor costume was bought off the internet. 

Have to say, the boxes got annoying, and some of the bars wouldn't let us in with them. By the time we got to the club at the end they got shoved in a corner and forgotten about. 

People must have thought we were mad. Definitely one of the *best* fancy dress costumes I've ever been involved with though!

Kill Bill

For me, the best fancy dress costumes are the ones that need no explanation. The ones that you instantly know what they are. Sure, your costume could be really clever but if you have to explain it every time someone asks "What have you come as then?" or even worse, "What ARE you?" then it loses impact I feel.


And so, to one of my all time favourite costumes: The Bride from Kill Bill. Now, I love the films anyway, but the Crazy 88 scene is now so iconic that you don't even have to have seen the film to recognise the yellow motorcycling/samurai sword getup that Uma Thurman sports at the end of the first film. It's instantly recognisable and I don't think I've got many "so who are you meant to be?" whist wearing it.


I first thought about this costume during my first year of university for a "Movie" themed night (2006 - so nearly a good ten years I've had this!!). The yellow top is from Miss Selfridge, yellow trousers are from H&M. I have to say I spent a long time searching for yellow trousers, and if I hadn't of found them I wouldn't have made this costume. I bought some black ribbon and sewed it down the sides. To complete I bought a plastic samurai sword from a joke shop and covered my neck in fake blood. At the time I thought "oh yeah I'm blonde this is fine," but actually looking back, LORD NO. I had really brown hair compared to now.

2006. Look how young I am! And browner hair!

Not that you should need it, but what it's meant to look like.

2 years later. More blonde. Better costume. 

2008. Thinking I was the bee's knees "DJ-ing"

I've worn it again on 3 different occasions, before then being given a Kill Bill group theme, and so I lent it to a friend and I decided to dress up as Gogo Yubari, the Japanese schoolgirl bodyguard instead. I actually borrowed most of the clothes for this costume so don't know where they're from. But you'd need a white shirt and red scarf, blue jacket, tartan miniskirt, white knee high socks, and a spiky ball on the end of a chain, which I made out of cardboard and tinfoil. Little detail: fake blood running out of one eye. Also obviously I'm a blonde white girl not Japanese, so this isn't really the best costume in the world. Probably should have worn a wig.

2012. 

What Gogo actually looks like

Speaking of which Group Kill Bill costumes are really quite easy, one person as The Bride (in yellow), one as Gogo, one as Elle Driver (either as a nurse, or simply a white shirt, cigarette and an eyepatch - EASY), one as Budd (cowboy hat), one as The Bride in a bloody wedding gown, then unlimited number of people as the Crazy 88 (suit, mask, sword).

I most recently wore the costume on a "Heroes and Villains" day in central London, where I reenacted the famous "Five Point Palm Exploding Heart" technique on The Incredible Hulk on the steps of St Paul's cathedral in front of a lot of unimpressed German teenagers. Cos why not!

Cruella DeVille

The first time I dressed up as Cruella DeVille was for a "Villaintine's" themed night at uni in 2006. Villaintine's Day is a clever (*errr*) pun on Valentine's Day, in case you missed that one.

Because it was so effective, and so easy I repeated it for Halloween 2011 and then again Halloween 2014. For Cruella any long black dress will do, this one is from New Look, and is knee-length in a wraparound style with quite a low neckline. I wear it often for black tie does in "normal life" as well.
The scarf around my shoulders is fake Dalmatian fur, which I probably bought in Cambridge market. Elbow high red (fake) velvet gloves are a little touch which I think push this from being an ok outfit into being a really good one. It's all in the details. The cigarette holder adds to this as well. You can get these from joke shops/fancy dress shops for pennies.

2006

The most fun bit of this costume is most definitely THE HAIR. I didn't want to just buy a wig for this I wanted crazy hair of my own. Buying cheap coloured hairspray is the way to go - but be careful with white hair spray. Black is fine, it'll always be really dark and you'll only need one can. White however - some sprays are really crap and barely give any colour change at all! My normal hair colour is blonde but even on my light hair one brand in particular just didn't work ("Smiffy's Let's Party" hairsprays). The one I used most recently was "Let's Party."

To get the "dragged through a hedge backwards Mad Woman" look you really have to backcomb like crazy. Just go for it, use the whole tin if you can. The colour acts like normal hairspray as well so you don't need any extra on top. It makes your hair go rock hard and also completely wrecks it, so you'll need a tonne of conditioner and about 3/4 hair washes to get it all out, but I think it's worth it. Just make sure you have a shower before you go to bed otherwise your sheets will be covered in black when you wake up.

With regards to makeup, you most definitely need bright red lips, dark eyebrows and even you're feeling brave bright blue eyeshadow (and you will look crazy).

If you want to extend this into a Group Costume, get your friends to dress up as Cruella's burglar minions: Horace and Jasper, or even recruit 101 people to dress up as Dalamatians!

2014