UW-Madison Students Look for Cheaper, Greener Ways to Dress for Halloween

With Halloween approaching, students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are weighing how to put together costumes without overspending or leaning on environmentally costly shopping habits. Many say the search becomes a scramble, with some left digging through their closets the night before Halloweekend in hopes of landing on something recognizable on a dimly lit State Street.

The pressure to spend is broad. The National Retail Federation expects Americans to spend $13.5 billion on Halloween shopping this year, averaging $115.14 per person. Students often feel their options are limited to buying a pricey full costume or piecing one together item by item from retailers such as Shein.

Costume choices on campus range from zombies and vampires to characters from the shows "Off-Campus" and "Odyssey," as well as niche internet memes like Punch the monkey. Madison is known for its student nightlife, and Halloween is among the busiest times of the year, with costumed crowds out on the streets all weekend.

Students told The Daily Cardinal that the social scene shapes both what they wear and how much they spend. Senior Hadley Wendorff said she thinks many people spend heavily on costumes, and that the culture encourages wearing several elaborate outfits in a single weekend. "If your friends have a great costume you wanna have a great costume too," she said.

Junior Lily Myhra said she searches for her costumes on Depop and estimated spending "$50 to $100." Junior Matteo Rovera pointed to yearly trends. "There's fads for the year," he said. "I would probably only ever wear one Halloween costume a year, but because of what my friends are doing, I have three this year."

None of the three students said they want to spend more than $100 on costumes for the weekend. Even so, fast-shipping, low-priced options such as Amazon, Spirit Halloween and Shein remain tempting, and they feed the fast fashion model.

Fast fashion refers to producing clothing quickly from inexpensive materials in order to follow shifting trends at low prices. The environmental toll is considerable: fashion production accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions and pollutes rivers and streams, and 85% of textiles end up in dumps each year. A costume bought for one night and discarded fits that pattern closely.

Students who have been through the process offer several suggestions for staying affordable and sustainable. They include shopping secondhand at thrift stores, on sites like Depop or Vinted, or through Facebook Marketplace; borrowing or swapping old costumes and pieces with friends; and searching one's own closet, or a parent's or friend's, for usable items.

Others recommend buying clothing that can be worn again, either day to day or as part of a future costume, and avoiding popular fast fashion outlets like Shein, Amazon and Spirit Halloween. Whether a student is dressing as a character from "Obsession" or Gargamel from "The Smurfs," the advice is the same: keep the costume easy on both the environment and the wallet.