From Y2K to Barbenheimer: Halloween trends throughout the years

Halloween’s just around the corner, and with it, plenty more wacky costumes are set to pop up on your feeds. Whether you’re frantically scrambling to find inspiration on what to wear or you’ve got your finger firmly on the pulse of which outfits are all the rage, it’s still interesting to look back over the last 25 years at the turbulent century we’ve experienced so far, and reminisce about what was popping off. 

This year, Halloween looks to still be dominated by the hangover of last year’s Brat Summer, along with costumed tributes to the pop music it-girls like Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan. With the rise of TikTok and social media over the past five years, you can expect absurd brain-rot characters ranging from a cappuccino-headed ballerina to a sneaker-sporting shark to be in vogue come October 31st. But let’s take a step back and rewind the clock to the start of the so far turbulent 21st century to see what else was trending on the spookiest night of the year. 

Image credit: Robin Canfield / Unsplash.com

Halloween of course has Christian connotations, with the term derived from the Old English saying of All Hallows’ Eve, the day before - yes, you guessed it - All Hallows’ Day, aiming to pay tribute to saints and departed souls. Its modern-day association with dressing up owes a lot to its pre-Christian influence of Celtic paganism and the holiday Samhain, ominously meaning “summer’s end”. The festival precluded the gloomy Winter evenings where bonfires were lit to ward off supernatural forces, and where the boundary between our world and the realm beyond blurred. Samhain’s fusion with All Hallows’ Eve following the 5th century Christianisation of Ireland is believed to be where Halloween was birthed, and the initial purpose of dressing up to frighten away supernatural forces has mutated over centuries into an excuse to look silly while downing a few shots. Enough with the backstory, let’s jump ahead, kicking and screaming into the year 2000. 

An important prelude to the pervading trends in 21st century in the UK was the Cool Britannia movement of the late 90s, some of which was felt as a hangover come the 2000s. Inspired by the 1960s era Swinging London and co-opted by New Labour in their rise to power (all while scored by D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’), Cool Britannia saw increased pride and optimism in the UK and a celebration of the country’s youth culture. The most notable faces from this era were the Spice Girls, whose memorable nicknames and iconic style made them an easy choice for dress up in both the late 90s and early 2000s. Perhaps the most famous example of this is Gerri Halliwell’s Union Jack dress, which she wore at the 1997 BRIT Awards, not only summing up the movement but giving plenty of people easy choices during the spooky season.

The 21st century kicked off amid a period of mild panic, as the Y2K bug made people think planes were going to fall from the sky and computers would grow a mind of their own. Luckily for us, they didn’t, and Halloween trends continued to develop into the noughties. Those experiencing a bout of costume block in late October time needn’t worry during this decade’s first half, as Harry Potter debuted on the big screen with 2001’s Philosopher’s Stone, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy inspired swathes of orcs and hobbits, and the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies kickstarted in 2003, introducing Jack Sparrow to the world and to Halloween house parties. 

Image credit: Johan Vasiljevic / Unsplash.com

Image credit: The Mad Sparrow Cosplay / Facebook.com

Cult classics had their day in the sun too, with Gwyneth Paltrow’s wunderkind playwright Margot Tenenbaum from Wes Anderson’s 2001 opus The Royal Tenenbaums, fitted with a signature blond bob, thin cigarette and big fur coat, made her character the noughties rendition of Pulp Fiction’s nose-bleeding, Twist-loving poster girl Mia Wallace; easily replicable and instantly recognisable among hip film buffs and costume lovers alike. Other sleeper hits included 2004’s Mean Girls, whose quartet of cliquey Plastics made for perfect group costumes, and the low-budget smash hit Napoleon Dynamite from the same year introduced its nerdy titular character to Halloween parties, complete with goofy glasses, curly blonde hair, and a ‘Vote For Pedro’ T-shirt. 

Image credit: Napoleon Dynamite / Facebook.com

Like with a lot of the noughties pre-recession, Halloween trends basked in the hedonistic side, and with pop stars' private lives being pasted over the papers like no one’s business, there were plenty of celebrities from this era whose style was easily replicable in October time. Just take Britney Spears as an example, her debut late 90s hit ‘...Baby One More Time’, 2000’s ‘Oops!…I Did It Again’, and 2004’s ‘Toxic’ all had iconic music videos with zeitgeist-affirming outfits, while Christina Aguilera sported an iconic look during this time, most notably from her look in 2002’s ‘Dirrty’ music video.

As we entered the latter stages of the noughties, the likes of Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Shrek remained firmly entrenched in the zeitgeist with continued instalments, but they weren’t alone. James Cameron’s 2009 colonial epic Avatar became the highest-grossing film of all time upon its release, and the blue alien species Na’vi were the newest trend to jump on for dedicated costume enthusiasts.

As for popular figures, Lady Gaga rose to fame in the late 2000s, spawning a dedicated fanbase of ‘Little Monsters’ as well as sporting iconic looks carried over into spooky season. In 2009, the death of Michael Jackson brought the King of Pop back into the limelight, and is still a popular choice for October, no matter the era you choose from. 

Image credit: Rodrigo Teaser / Facebook.com

The thing with trends is that they operate like boomerangs (don’t ask where the source for that quote came from) and even the most outdated fads rear their heads after a thirty-year cycle. Superhero movies never truly left the zeitgeist, but by the 2000s had faded away in favour of swashbucklers, fantasy epics, and wizarding worlds. 2008 changed the tempo for superheroes and no, it wasn’t from the Lehman Brothers, I know that’s what you’re all thinking; it was from the release of The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s gritty re-imagining of the Caped Crusader that legitimised Batman as more than a billionaire with silly gadgets and gave us Heath Ledger’s twisted take on the Joker, and Iron Man, which kickstarted the ballooning Marvel Cinematic Universe and resurrected Robert Downey Jr.’s career. 

Image credit: Agents of Khaos / Facebook.com

Now, superheroes were all the rage again, and it peaked in 2012 with The Avengers, giving every comic book nerd an aneurysm out of sheer excitement, and giving new relevance to a slew of iconic heroes. This continued throughout the decade, as Marvel’s rivals DC attempted their own interconnected franchise with their renditions of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Harley Quinn thrust back into the spotlight. While these characters have always been far from underground Halloween picks, Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Harley Quinn saw an uptick in clown makeup and baseball bats circa the end of the 2010s. 

A lot of the trends have been influenced from across the pond, but UK culture has its fads from this time too. Look no further than the 2013 premiere of Birmingham period drama Peaky Blinders, as Tommy Shelby’s signature getup gave plenty of guys an excuse to don a flat cap unironically. 

Image credit: House of Cavani / Facebook.com

As for celebrities who trended during this time, there were some controversial options, too. A certain businessman with a complexion of lasagne-stained Tupperware burst onto the political circuit around this time, donning an infamous red cap, wishing for his country’s so-called glory days. Those who like their Halloween served with a dose of controversial politics could have a field day now, or at the very least, Donald Trump was a common outfit choice owing to his signature look and easily imitable voice. 

Image credit: BBC Yorkshire / Facebook.com

By this point in time, social media was in full swing. Word-of-mouth and conventional media didn’t cut it anymore, and trends could make their way to your screens from half the world away. Some of social media’s costume scalps from this time included Left Shark, the background dancer from Katy Perry’s 2015 Super Bowl halftime show with exceptionally poor timing, and the moral panic that spread in the wake of the 2017 film It: Chapter One, where a slew of copycat killer clowns were filmed wreaking havoc worldwide. 

Image credit: Nellie Adamyan / Unsplash.com

The start of the 2020s was turbulent in general; turbulent to trends, turbulent to social interaction, and turbulent to costume shop business owners, but not turbulent for fear. That’s because, as we all know by now, the COVID pandemic grasped the world and wouldn’t let go until at least early 2022, as the UK spent Halloween indoors and socially distanced, making Halloween fairly difficult for costume aficionados, unless they were okay with keeping the festivities going over Zoom. 

Still, trends must continue, and the rise of TikTok meant most of us were singing from the same hymn sheet, and making it easier than ever to see what the main buzzwords and outfits to try were. By 2023, the marketing stunt of releasing pink-laden feminist Trojan-horse Barbie at the same time as atomic bombmaker biopic Oppenheimer made that year’s summer the one of Barbenheimer. The following year saw Charli XCX release her album brat, coining the term ‘Brat summer’ and dragging the unhinged party girl aesthetic into public consciousness just in time for Halloween. 

Of course, nostalgia is a circle, and with the noughties now a whole two decades ago, there’s plenty of young people who came of age during this time who see a pre-recession early 2000s world with rose-tinted glasses (some through a costume, others more metaphorically), and thus Y2K themed dressups are now all the rage. Most trends never truly go away but instead adapt. Superheroes, princesses, zombies, and movie characters will always have their days in the sun but have their cultural relevance peak at different times, like in the early 2010s, while in some cases, trends won’t have a rhyme or reason to be trending at all, like with our probable slide into surrealist AI Italian brainrot characters this decade. 

Either way, we’ve got a lot to see yet from where the next Halloween trend is going to come from, in this decade and beyond. We’ve come a long way from the Celts, that’s for sure. 

Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, Facebook, and YouTube for the latest music and events content.