Happy Halloween! Where are all my Barnard girls who somehow got into this school but still manage to procrastinate in every single aspect of their lives? This one’s for you!!

Hewitt Small Plate

Culturally relevant! Iconique! A true statement! To embody the talk of Fall Semester 2019, the HewittSmallPlate, is to open the floor up to discussion, to implore the room to think critically about the nuances of nutritional education, and most importantly, to be able to make a costume in about 20 minutes.  All you have to do for this little number is dress in monotone colors, cut out two cardboard rounds measuring approx. 2-6 inches (depending on both on how much cardboard you have and how satirical you would like to make this), paint them white and attach them to your front and back. Voila! For added effect, if the function has snacks it is recommended but not required that you slap the food out of people’s hands. What? It’s just a friendly reminder that they’re eating way too much and if they really want to eat a normal portion then they can always go back for seconds :). 

Bold, Beautiful, Barnard 

Are you in a thrupple and feel like the whole costume where someone is Jack Black from School of Rock, someone is Sarah Silverman from School of Rock, and someone is Ned Schneebly from School of Rock thing is overdone? Are you feeling something a little more conceptual? That’s where the costume of the century comes in- Barnards very own motto, “Bold, Beautiful, Barnard”. Expectedly, the person to claim ‘Bold’ should already have a bold, star quality about them (if they don’t then really ask yourself why you’re still in this relationship). For this, they could venture into many different directions; an exclamation mark costume, a simple bold eyebrow a la Cara Delevingne, an attitude of overconfidence induced by tequila all night, etc. The second thrupplet personifying ‘Beautiful’, ideally should already be beautiful (important). For them to be able to fully access their role I would recommend a budget of $200-$500 (nails, Drybar blowout, gorgeous little Reformation slip dress). This, of course, will result in your beautiful. The last piece of the puzzle, ‘Barnard’ need only wear a Barnard shirt, sweats, hat, and of course, a thong. Whether or not your thrupples ‘Barnard’ has a couple of hours or months to pull this look off, another route that is heavily recommended is to create an incredibly accurate diorama of campus with buildings and historical facts clearly labeled and accessible, reminiscent of one of those Barnes and Noble Dragon books, and then wearing that like a sash. Thrupples therapy is not required but recommended as the only true requirement of this costume is that you stick together the whole night, in order.

Sexy Anne Nathan Meyer

That’s right, you didn’t think I was gonna hit you with some history. This list would be incomplete without Barnard’s own founder little ol’ Anne! Facts about Anne you didn’t ask for: she wrote an autobiography called ‘It’s Been Fun’ (funny), she attended Columbia through a special program but failed her tests because they covered material from the lecture she wasn’t allowed into, she didn’t want women to vote :(, and she named Barnard after Frederick Barnard even when he explicitly asked her not to! Because everyone will truly be at a loss for what she looks like you can probably get off with just wearing little round glasses and doing your hair up in a bun. For the outfit, I would recommend dusting off that classic year of 1889 dress you always have lying around. You don’t have to crop it or anything, founder Anne in heaven thinks you look sexy just the way you are (probably)!

Small Hot Coffee With a Swipe at Liz’s 

After HewittSmallPlate, the second biggest bummer of this semester has been finding out that I can’t drink a small iced coffee in Liz’s in the cold, harsh, dead of winter. But hey, maybe Chartwells was just trying to get us to all be a little more Italiano when they got rid of cold drinks with swipes. For this costume I’d recommend finding a small trash can, painting it white, and cutting arm and leg holes. ¡Facile! *Italian hand kiss thing* If this doesn’t sound sexy enough for you (ridiculous), I picture this as well with a brown tube top, a muffin or maybe almond croissant in hand, and perhaps no pants (embody the essence of hot coffee!). What’s fun about this one is that you can also modify this fit based on your lactose preferences, say, if you’re a coconut milk with your coffee kinda gal maybe tape white pieces of paper across your shirt to depict how disgustingly it congeals! While this costume is last minute, it does require character work in that you have to pretend to be mad and in a rush the whole night, because no one drinks scalding black coffee if they love life.

Barnard Buy Sell Trade

The agora of Barnard, where ideas, missing AirPods, and Urban Outfitters sale selection posters are passed up and through Barnard’s highest society. This costume requires a state of mind- of desperation for a red turtleneck(?), of chaos, and of the sheer confidence to let people you know you originally purchased a Prada jacket for $300 and are now trying to sell that same Prada jacket for the still inaccessible price of $275. Imagine this costume like Lady Gaga and the muppet dress. For this, you simply need to take an old dress you don’t care about and start taping, stapling, and sewing on items. Objects required in this masterpiece are a pair of Everlane jeans that are just a liiittle too small, some ‘semi-formal dress options’, shoes that have clearly been worn more than described, and if you can, an oscillating room fan. For the full effect, I would also advise having the facebook messenger notification sound on a loop to play all night, and if you’re too dr*nk to text your friends back, an automatic text response of “Pick up in Plimpton” should do. 

The Thread That Holds Barnard and Columbia Together

High concept, high reward- this costume is for the Barnard Gal who makes it a point never to go east of Broadway. After wearing this for a night, you should be living and breathing the Wikipedia page line “legally and financially separate from Columbia.” There are two ways you can execute this truth. The first, and perhaps the easiest (?) is to dress up like Broadway. If I have to explain to you how to create a costume of a street then you need to seek out treatment. The other more rewarding realization of this sacred truth is to dress up as a literal spool of thread. For this, you need a long piece of cardboard you can tape into a cylindrical shape. You can attach straps to this so you can wear it like in the way our culture has accepted that ‘wearing a barrel’ is a costume and something that we should think is funny. The thread could be light blue, representing the one beautiful color that unites us. It could also be translucent, emblematic of the more invisible ties (Hewitt, sports I think, etc.) that bind us. As an accessory, I would recommend an oversized needle with a picture of Millstein on it, truly where we all raise our white flags and snuggle together in big green chairs <3

a Barnard Halloween via Bwog archives