Halloween Costume Ideas: Avoid the Most Popular Trends

Some of us wait for Halloween all year long. It's our time to shine, to get weird and creative and eye-catching (and, if we're very clever, extremely punny). That great idea you've been nursing all year (or that you just thought of) might be a bold new frontier of costuming — or it might be at every party, trick-or-treat, or dress up for work day you see.

Google recently trawled its search data for Apartment Therapy to come up with the most common Halloween costumes for 2019, if search terms are anything to go by. So far, three options are floating to the top all across the United States: IT, dinosaur, and witch. Obviously all of those can include a lot of variation (who would dare mistake an ankylosaurus for a ballerina T-rex?), but when you drill down into the lists, we've definitely got some dark horse results.

Wyoming, for instance, is keeping things classic by favoring Alice in Wonderland's Mad Hatter. Hawaii, meanwhile, is all about its Fortnite characters. Delaware and Mississippi favor what's retro, particularly if it's straight out of the '80s. Northernmost states like Alaska and Maine are all about pirates.

Costumes aren't the only way to stand out, of course. Each state also has its favorite Halloween candies, which can make or break your neighborhood reputation among the kids. If you're too busy worrying about your financial future to get busy with ghoulish get-ups, we can't blame you — it's a scream out there.