What Will the Hot Halloween Costume of 2024 Be?
Every Halloween, one costume seems to rise above the rest in terms of popularity. In 2023, Barbie and Ken were the hot costumes with an estimated 1.8 million people dressing up as Barbie for Halloween. The popularity of this costume makes sense due to the release of Barbie in 2023, which took over the media and soon became the highest grossing film of the year. After the release of Stranger Things season four in 2022, the number of costume searches from the show spiked, at one point having over 135,000 searches in under a week. Clearly, Halloween costumes are heavily impacted by popular media. However, this raises the question, “What will the hot Halloween costume of 2024 be?”
Unlike previous years, this year there does not seem to be one show or movie that has taken over pop-culture. Inside Out 2 was the highest grossing film of 2024, making over 650 million dollars since its release in June of this year; however, movies such as Despicable Me 4 and Deadpool and Wolverine are close on its heels. Could it be a character in one of these new films that takes first place as the 2024 most popular Halloween costume? Or could it be one of the more memorable people who came to popularity in the media, such as Australian Olympic breakdancing sensation Rachel Gunn, also known as Raygun, who gained fame after her unique style of dance was seen by millions during the 2024 Olympic games in Paris? The 36-year-old breakdancer began to appear online as a meme and became an internet sensation. Videos of children and adults dressing in Raygun’s signature teal outfit soon surfaced, and such a costume could be a contender for the most popular costume of the year.
Charlotte Biancheri ’26 is expecting to see “people wearing all neon green” for Halloween this year, dressing as Charlie XCX’s newest album Brat. Brat was released in June of this year and became an instant hit, having over 1 billion streams in under two months. The album began to trend on social media shortly after its release, and people began to use the lime green album cover as their profile picture on social media platforms. Even presidential candidate Kamala Harris partook in the Brat trend and changed her profile picture to the iconic lime green Brat color (Denault). This trend took the internet by storm and is a solid choice for the most popular Halloween costume of the year.
However, not everyone agrees with Biancheri’s prediction. Dean Adelman ’26 believes that skeletons are going to be the hot Halloween costume of the year, saying “they are classic.” Classic costumes such as vampires, skeletons and witches tend to be popular every year as a simple, cheap and timeless option that can be reworn and repurposed for years to come. But will these timeless costumes beat out this year’s most iconic moments?
As of October 13th, the most searched Halloween costume of this year is Shrunken Head Bob from the 2024 movie, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. In just under three weeks, Tim Burton's newest film made over 225 million dollars, quickly becoming the sixth highest grossing film of the year. It comes as no surprise that the popularity of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice would make its way into the hearts of the public, thereby influencing the costume market. But… there is still time before Halloween, and you never know when a new trend is going to appear!