Creative Ideas for Purim Costumes

Purim is one of my favorite holidays. One reason may be that my middle name is Esther so I can connect more easily. But I also love clothes and I love costumes. As a girl, I only wanted to dress up like Queen Esther. But as a grown-up, I discovered how much fun it is to improvise and put together costumes using what I have. There’s nothing wrong with buying costumes if you have the money to do it, especially if you or your children want something that’s difficult to make at home. But I’ve found that getting creative and using what I have to make costumes is a lot of fun and makes for really terrific ones. 

Here are some of the costumes that I’ve either improvised for myself or for my family or that I’ve seen in other publications:

• Put on a full-ish skirt, button-down blouse, and loafers. Take a heavy knit winter scarf and drape it over your shoulders like a shawl. Pull your hair back and tie a scarf once over it. Use a white eye pencil to gray the eyebrows (in a pinch, you can use a bit of solid deodorant). A long umbrella with a round handle is your cane. You’re a “little old lady.”
• A black skirt, black shell, and short jacket plus a bunch of pearl necklaces can make you Coco Chanel. 
• A bunch of necklaces and bracelets plus earrings hooked into the chains of the necklaces makes you into a “jewelry box.”

• If you like Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, this is an idea for you. Place a head wrapping shaper very high on your head and tie a dark brown scarf around it once and leave the ends hanging in the back. (If you don’t have a shaper, you can use a large scrunchie or other things to get height.) Then take a dark gold shimmer scarf and tie it around the shaper at the crown. You’re Belle.
• Speaking of characters from popular culture, if someone likes the character of Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus, this one can work. Take an orange-y red beret and place it on the head with a few strands of hair left free. An orange-y red scarf wrapped over the head works too. Add a pair of big earrings (star shapes work great but anything that can be linked to science will work) and you’re Ms. Frizzle. 
• If you agree that women do not deserve to be erased from view, this is one to try. Take a paper plate and cut holes into it for your eyes. Wear it as a mask and you’re “a frum woman as depicted by so-called frum publications.” If you have an app that pixelates photos, you can take a photo of your face, pixelate it, and stick it onto the paper plate. 
• If you want to make that statement by taking the opposite route, all you have to do is wear a brightly-colored outfit and add a sign that says “Real Frum Woman with a Face.” Hang it around your neck as close to your face as possible without covering any part of your face.