A Mardi Gras Costume party with friends,Queensland 2011.

One of the oldest examples of Fancy Dress being worn in Australia is on display at the Western Australia Museum. It was a Child's Fancy Dress worn by Miss Rita Lloyd aged nine years to the ‘Lord Mayor’s Juvenile Fancy Dress Ball’ at Mansion House in Perth on 8 January 1909.

Susan Grima the owner of Glamcostume, one of Australia's largest fancy dress costumes stores, identified the top 5 selling fancy dress costumes(and themes) in Australia for 2010. They were 1.Alice in Wonderland Costumes 2. Superhero Costumes 3. Toga Costumes 4. 1960s Costumes and 5. Sailor Costumes.

Have you been invited to a Costume Party and are considering Hiring a Costume? Before you go out and visit the costume hire stores, why not consider Buying your costume. Consider the aggravation that is involved in hiring a costume, and it is typically no cheaper than buying your own. Plus you don't have to return your costume afterwards if you buy your costume.

Hiring a Fancy Dress Costume

Typically you have to find a Costume Hire Company in your area. Then you have to make the time to visit the costume store, to look through their costumes. If you turn up early in the week, the costume you are after may not have been returned from an event the previous weekend, or may be in the cleaners.

• Visit the Costume Hire Store
• Look for a costume
• Do they have a diverse range of costumes in various sizes.
• Pick a Costume
• How many people have worn that costume before you
• Does the costume look overly worn and shabby.
• Maybe you need it altered - hem taken up or waist taken in.
• Comeback again to pick up the costume after it's been altered.
• Pay your rental fee. Most Hire companies in Australia will charge around $70 to rent a costume for a weekend.
• Return the costume Monday.

That is a great deal of aggravation, to hire a costume, when it is relatively simple to buy one.

Buying A Fancy Dress Costume

The process for buying a fancy dress costume is relatively easy.

• Visit a Online Costume in your own time and after hours if you choose
• Your not limited to a costume store in your area - most costume comapnies will deliver Australia Wide
• Online Costume Stores usually have a large range of costumes available in various sizes, including Plus Sizes
• Websites like www.glamcostume.com have their costumes categorised - so you can easily search by theme, or by Gender.
• You simply order your costume and it's delivered next business day - right to your door or office.
• It's far easier
• Prices for Costumes Vary from $39.90 to $99.90 covering both Men and Women
• You own the costume to use again at another costume party.

It simply does not make sense to hire a costume when it is so easy and convenient to purchase your very own.

Do You Really Need a Reason to Dress in Fancy Dress?

Reason 1: Batman Costume
Because you can go up to people and say "I am Batman"

Reason 2: Anything in Lycra
Because you look great in Lycra.

Reason 3: Anything in Lycra
Because you look horrendous in Lycra

Reason 4: SuperheroCostume
You get to wear your underwear on the outside.

Reason 5: Mad Hatter Costume
Because sometimes you just don't want to make sense.

Reason 6: Nurse Costume
Because damn - you look sexy.

Reason 7: Hippie Costume
Because you like the idea of FREE LOVE.

Reason 8: 50s Sandra Dee Costume
Because look at me I'm Sandra Dee - I'm lousy with Virginity!

Reason 9: Austin Powers Costume
Comeon who doesn't want to go up to women and say "shagalicious baby".

Reason 10: Dr Evil Costume
Because all you really want is a shark with fricken lasers beams.

Reason 11. Genie Costume
Because you can grant 3 wishes.

Reason 12: Captain America Costume
Because they are really comfortable pyjamas.

Reason 13: Gangster Costume
Because you wanna make an offer they couldn't refuse.

Reason 14: Rock God Costume
Because now you can do air guitar and really look the part.

Reason 15: Pirate Costume
Because you can make t' buxom beauty walk t' plank.

Reason 16: Pimp Costume
Because who's ya daddy.

Reason 17: Viking Costume
Because pillaging a English village sounds like fun.

Reason 18: Burlesque Costume
Because DAMN it's SEXY

Reason 19: Star Trek Costume
Because you want to go where no man has gone before!

Reason 20: Michael Jackson Costume
Because you're Bad. (who's Bad!)

Mardi Gras Parties and Costume Ideas

You are going to a Mardi Gras or Carnival party and are looking for the perfect costume, but which style of fancy dress should you select? Glamcostume understands the various styles and co-ordinate all our Costumes within their own category.

The Mardi Gras celebration is called many things across the world and celebrates Shrove Tuesday or Fat Tuesday. (Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday in French)

New Orleans -USA

The New Orleans Costume mix usually involves shades of green, purple and gold. Purple is to represent Justice, Gold is to represent Power, and Green is to represent Faith.

The New Orleans Carnival seasons roots come from preparing for the season of Lent, and start after Twelfth Night on Epiphany (January 6). It's made up of parades, balls (mainly masquerade or costume balls) and king cake parties. Shrove Tuesday has been knows as a day for fun, and comic masquerading. It's known as a time of mischief where men, women, and children, both slaves and masters and free people, could all celebrate together in as silly a costume as possible.

Think Jester Costumes or King Costumes.

Examples:

Mardi Gras Jester

Mardi Gras King

Mardi Gras Masquerade

Regal Queen

Mardi Gras Flashing Light Hat

Mardi Gras Hat

Rio Carnival - BRAZIL

Rio Carnival is held each year 46 days before Easter. Carnival in Rio Costumes are sexy and skimpy. Vibrant colours, masks and feathers adorn the locals as they celebrate the last day before Lent. Dancer costumes - bikini styled showgirls are all part of the mix for Rio Carnival. The origins of the carnival date back to the ancient Greek spring festival in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine. Later modified by the Roman Catholic Church into a festival leading up to Ash Wednesday. It quickly evolved into a massive celebration of indulgeone last fasp of music, food, alcohol, and sex before Lent - or the 40 days of personal reflection, abstinence, and fasting until Easter. A week filled with virtually every known sin, followed by 40 days of purging, was probably not what the church had in mind. The word itself comes from Latin, "Carne Vale" or "farewell to the Flesh".

Examples:

Peacock Showgirl Costume

Can Can Burlesque

Aristocrat Burlesque

Venetian Carnival - ITALY

The Venetian Carnival dates back to the 11th Century. The Carnival started as a celebration of the victory of the Republic in the war against Ulrico Patriarch of Aquilia in the year 1162. Dances, processions, magicians and street theatre were performed in the Piazzo San Marco. In 1268, masks were worn in the carnival, as the celebrations became more wanton and licentious.

Venetian Carnival Costumes should evoke grandeur and mystique. Costumes are often made of velvet, lace, brode and satin, and are elaborate, rich and detailed to create a magical feel. These costumes combined with an appropriate mask allow the wearer to escape into a world where fantasies can be realised. Masks were worn by both men and women, but not girls of marriageable age. Masks were often worn with a small cloak over the shoulders over a long black cape, and with a witch style hat.

 Examples:

Masquerade Queen

Velvet Cape

Venetian Mask

Venetian Mask with Tricorn Hat and Feather

Scaramuche Mask

Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras - AUSTRALIA

Sydney Australia celebrates with the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. It's a vibrant celebration with strictly no set costume parameters other than fun and flirty. This is one of the larges Gay Pride events in the world, and has reached global iconic status. The first march on June 24th, 1978 consisted of a a few hundred people, some in fancy dress, gathered at Taylor Square in Sydney and followed one truck with a sound system down Oxford Street towards Hyde Park. Many bystanders joined in and soon there were around 1500 revellers. The police stepped in and violently arrested 53 men and women, many of whom were beaten in their cells. The police were seen to be heavy handed, and new laws were passed in the favour of demonstrators. In 1979 3,000 people marched in an incident-free parade. Until today, where the "New Mardi Gras" has grown to a festival of around 100 different arts events, a 70,000 person daytime picnic called Fair Day, the Parade, and Post-Parade Party.

In 2006 Conde Nast named it as one of the world's top 10 costume parades in the world.

Mardi Gras remains the one truly global gay annual event.

Examples:

Lady Gaga Costume

Ring Toss Adult Costume

Blow Me Bubble Gum Costume

Mardi Gras parties are all about having fun. Popular practices across the world include wearing masks, wearing costumes. Dancing, Parades and overturning social conventions are all part of the reason why Mardi Gras is so much fun.

For all of our Mardi Gras Costume Ideas - http://www.glamcostume.com/categories/Mardi-Gras-%26-Carnival-GLAM/

The terms "Mardi Gras" (pronounced mardigra  ), "Mardi Gras season", and "Carnival season",in English, refer to events of the Carnival celebrations, beginning on or after Epiphany and ending on the day before Ash Wednesday . Mardi Gras is French for "Fat Tuesday" (in ethnic English tradition, Shrove Tuesday ), referring to the practice of the last night of eating richer, fatty foods before the ritual fasting of the Lenten season, which started on Ash Wednesday. Related popular practices were associated with celebrations before the fasting and religious obligations associated with the penitential season of Lent. Popular practices included wearing masks and costumes, overturning social conventions, dancing, sports competitions, parades, etc. Similar expressions to Mardi Gras appear in other European languages sharing the Christian tradition. In English, the day is called Shrove Tuesday, associated with the religious requirement for confession before Lent begins.

In many areas, the term "Mardi Gras" has come to mean the whole period of activity related to the celebratory events, beyond just the single day. In some US cities, it is now called "Mardi Gras Day" or "Fat Tuesday" "The festival season varies from city to city, as some traditions consider Mardi Gras the entire period between Epiphany or Twelth Night  and Ash Wednesday. Others treat the final three-day period before Ash Wednesday as the Mardi Gras. In Mobile, Alabama , Mardi Gras-associated social events begin in November, followed by mystic society balls on Thanksgiving ,then New Years Eve , followed by parades and balls in January and February, celebrating up to midnight before Ash Wednesday. In earlier times parades were held on New Year's Day.Other cities famous for Mardi Gras celebrations include Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Sydney in Australia, Quebec City, Quebec in Canada; Mazatlan, Sinaloa in Mexico and New Orleans in the USA. 

Carnival is an important celebration in Catholic European nations. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the week before Ash Wednesday is called " Shrovetide ", ending on Shrove Tuesday. It has its popular celebratory aspects as well. Pancakes are a traditional food. Pancakes and related fried breads or pastries made with sugar, fat and eggs are also traditionally consumed at this time in many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Ancient Origins of Halloween

Halloween's origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in).

The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities.

During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas.

Halloween Comes to America

As European immigrants came to America, they brought their varied Halloween customs with them. Because of the rigid Protestant belief systems that characterized early New England, celebration of Halloween in colonial times was extremely limited there.

It was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups, as well as the American Indians, meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included "play parties," public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other's fortunes, dance, and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland's potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today's "trick-or-treat" tradition. Young women believed that, on Halloween, they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings, or mirrors.

In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers, than about ghosts, pranks, and witchcraft.

At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season, and festive costumes. Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything "frightening" or "grotesque" out of Halloween celebrations. Because of their efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century.

By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular, but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague Halloween celebrations in many communities during this time. By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodated. Between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighborhood children with small treats. A new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6.9 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country's second largest commercial holiday.

Today's Traditions

The American Halloween tradition of "trick-or-treating" probably dates back to the early All Souls' Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called "soul cakes" in return for their promise to pray for the family's dead relatives.

The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The practice, which was referred to as "going a-souling" was eventually taken up by children who would visit the houses in their neighborhood and be given ale, food, and money.  

The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low and, for the many people afraid of the dark, the short days of winter were full of constant worry. On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits. On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.

Superstitions

Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world.

Today's Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into cats. We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians, who believed that triangles were sacred; it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe. And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.

But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today's trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead. In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday--with luck, by next Halloween!--be married.

In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it. In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went, represented the girl's future husband. (In some versions of this legend, confusingly, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.) Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night, she would dream about her future husband. Young women tossed apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the shape of their future husbands' initials; tried to learn about their futures by peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water; and stood in front of mirrors in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their husbands' faces.

Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry; at others, the first successful apple-bobber would be the first down the aisle.

Of course, whether we're asking for romantic advice or trying to avoid seven years of bad luck, each one of these Halloween superstitions relies on the good will of the very same "spirits" whose presence the early Celts felt so keenly. Ours is not such a different holiday after all!

Source: History.com