Ideas for fancy dress themes

As a child, dressing up was an important part of life. Being able to be Superwoman one day or a princess the next, little girls could get lost in their imagination. With no boundaries or limitations, little boys could be Action Man, Robin Hood or Pocahontas without ridicule or embarrassment. So it is only natural that as adults we still harbour desires to play at dressing up.

Why dressing up is so therapeutic

Being able to fantasise about being someone else stretches the imagination. To immerse yourself as king for the day and boss around your little siblings is great for the soul. Adults get the same release by using fancy dress costumes – the escapism for the night is a great feeling. Inhibitions are dropped and the hair is well and truly let down.

What are the best fancy dress themes

Great fancy dress themes are ones where there is a lot of scope for variety. Tarts and vicars used to be popular but really there are only 4 options – women as tarts, men as vicars, men as tarts, women as vicars. It can be fun but limiting and the idea with fancy dress themes is to go wild and become creative with it.

Halloween costumes can be a great way to do this. Basically the only theme with Halloween costumes is gruesome. The Americans really do Halloween costumes in style and take great pride in their look and imagination.

Fancy dress costumes for parties

Good themes are music – bands and singers from a particular era, or television characters. You can go old school with this and dig deep in the memory bank for programmes that were important to you, or go for current characters from popular soaps. Fruit and vegetables make hilarious costumes but these can be limiting with people with no creativity! You may end up with 50 tomatoes/red apples!