32 Bizarre Costumes from a 1980s Dress-Up Book That Will Give You Childhood Flashbacks

Look, I love a good homemade Halloween costume. There's a certain charm to wearing a cardboard robot head that smells like glue and crushed dreams. My mom used to make our costumes every year, and yes, they were cringy, floppy, and occasionally flammable, but we wore them with pride. Which is why I need to take a moment to say: thank you, Mom, for not owning this book.

The book in question is Jane Asher's Fancy Dress, a real thing that existed in the 1980s and was probably responsible for hundreds of confused children and thousands of yards of itchy fabric. And yes, that Jane Asher—the one who dated Paul McCartney before he went full Beatle Dad. Turns out she also made truly unhinged costume suggestions like "sandwich man" and "flowerpot nightmare."

What follows is a curated collection of 32 of the most bewildering, cursed, and "is that supposed to be a what now?" costumes from the book. Some look like lost power rangers villains. Others feel like performance art gone rogue. All of them are burned into my retinas forever.

So scroll on, and thank your lucky stars your childhood didn't look like this.

Author image for John Summers John Summers
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1990s 90s memes retro nostalgia 80s music Nostalgia Overload 80s 90s kids 90s memory lane nostalgia memes millennial-nostalgia 1980s
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