Vintage is all the rage as people become more creative with costumes rather than settling for pre-packaged outfits.
Like Christmas and Valentine’s Day, the pagan festival of the dead is being transformed by a more secular ritual: shopping.
Each year, more people – not just kids – get into the Halloween spirit, and businesses are reaping the rewards as a result.
“It’s huge,” says John Williams, the head of J.C. Williams Group, a retail consulting and market research firm in Toronto. What used to be a minor festival, he says, has gone on to become a spending spree, even in lousy economic times like these.
“They’re not big expenditures,” he says, adding the cost of decorations – especially pumpkins – has gone down, even if candy has become pricey.
Retail in Centretown is a telling sign that the festival of the dead is alive and well. U.S.-based retailer Spirit Halloween, which runs seasonal costume stores across North America, opened its third Ottawa location on Elgin Street in September. At the same time, second-hand stores enjoy steady business, as shrewd shoppers hunt for original get-ups months in advance.
Jemmie Holder, who manages Spirit Halloween on Elgin Street, says sales have been steadily increasing since they opened two months ago.
On average, customers spend between $50 and $60 for a pre-packaged costume.
“People are spending more money,” Holder says, adding Spirit Halloween is planning to open more locations in Ottawa next year.
But second-hand stores are not losing out to the convenience of pre-packaged costumes from retailers such as Spirit Halloween. For vintage stores and thrift shops, Halloween is the busiest time of the year.
“This is our time,” says Shirley Greaves, who co-owns Ragtime Vintage Clothing with her husband. “Usually we’re extremely crazy busy,” she says of the last weeks of October.
Greaves says these days, customers are putting more effort into their costumes, looking for one-of-a-kind disguises, and sometimes buying or renting multiple outfits if they have more than one party to attend.
Greaves and her husband say they expect sales this year to be about the same as last year, with customers spending between $30 and $60 to put a costume together, or spending between $30 and $100 to rent one.
Three forces compel people to buy into Halloween, says Peter Thompson, an expert in Canadian popular culture at Carleton University.
“The commercialization of Halloween makes it popular because people like to buy things,” Thompson says. Commercial interests are one force driving the trend towards celebrating, but, he adds, Canadian society is also growing more interested in the supernatural.
“Vampire culture seems to be on the rise,” he says, citing the popularity of films such as Twilight and TV series such as True Blood. Thompson suggests this second factor has partly to do with the social shift that occurred with the arrival of the new millennium.
“This is something that’s characteristic of societies that go through major calendar shifts: the end of the century inspires people [to be] interested in death and the supernatural. This emerges in all kinds of ways in the culture.”
Beyond that, Thompson says, another reason for Halloween’s growing popularity is the day gives people an opportunity to act out.
“People resent the way that life has become so [compartmentalized],” he says. “Halloween is an opportunity to dress up in disguise and go out and act in a way that contravenes the norms of society. . . . [It’s] all about doing the opposite of what you normally do.”