As costume spending hits $1.8 billion in 2010 for adults, children and pets, more manufacturers are getting into the business, including lingerie companies producing skimpy costumes. And with more nightclubs promoting big Halloween parties, more grownups are trying to find sexier options and finding them everywhere from Party City and Target to Fascinations.
This year, several lingerie companies have launched the raciest lines of costumes yet. Imagine Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz in the costume of an gingham bra with white puffy sleeves, a matching micromini over a couple of white-ruffled panties, with white thigh-high stockings. The red ruby slippers? Six-inch platform heels.
Thank goodness it's warm here on Halloween.
More than one-third of adults plan to dress up this coming year, according to the National Retail Federation. And Halloween spending has greater than doubled because the mid-'90s.
Mark Franks, Castle Megastore president and chief executive, said that as he used to search for costumes for his shops, he'd to choose from under five manufacturers, ones that offered such year-round classics as sexy nurse, cheerleader and schoolgirl. Now, his store stocks styles from greater than 20 manufacturers, including sexy bumblebees, and the newest big seller: a sultry Border Patrol agent, including a minidress and binoculars.
"People have started getting up to just how much business is being carried out in adult costumes," Franks said.
New kinds of costumes from new manufacturers are driving sales dramatically at a couple of the Valley's biggest adult-store chains, each of which are located in Phoenix but that have locations everywhere in the West.
Castle Megastore has seen a 75 % increase in sales over last year, and Fascinations has seen a Twenty percent increase, store managers say.
Sales also are up since they are stocking more sizes and devoting approximately 30 percent of these sales floors to costumes throughout the season, which starts on Labor Day. Castle Megastore even hosted an in-store costume fashion show on the chain's Deer Valley location latest research by, attended by about 200 people.
Your inner prostitute
We all like to be an exhibitionist sometimes, said Scottsdale psychologist David Jecmen, who practices at Sanctuary: A Healing Place.
"And there's a part of us, too, that's really an inner prostitute," he stated. "All of us offer an inner cast of characters, and one of them is often a prostitute and she represents that raw sexual energy. And . . . unfortunately we cannot have a large amount of safe places to convey that."
So Halloween has become a national opportunity for adults to express themselves sexually minus the fear of serious peer judgment or negative consequences, he said.
The people at Fascinations know this well. On this occasion of year, they see countless new clients. In fact, the businesses remodel to focus on them.
On the Tempe store, costumes are stocked next to seven changing rooms, five of which were created just to accommodate Halloween shoppers. In that area, they'll see only platform heels, stockings, false eyelashes and fancy panties, all products stocked year-round but moved to the costume area at Halloween.
Locally at Paradise Valley Party City, you are able to walk at night cutie-pie kids bumblebee costume and Harry Potter robes towards the miniskirted French maid and sexed-up versions of '80s cartoon characters.
Oahu is the same when you shop at traditional costume retailers like Spirit Halloween Superstores, Target and Easley's Fun Shop, as they are increasingly catering to those seeking to have a decidedly more adult holiday.
Phoenix's Jaraka Blair, 25, a call-center manager, picked her provocative Little Bo Peep costume from Easley's Fun Shop given it was sexy and playful.
She's wearing the white-and-pink ruffled bustier top with coordinating mini and stockings to some co-worker's Halloween party. But she's not focused on her reputation because her boss isn't going to be there.
"It's just the laid-back people," she said. "It lets them see a different side of me it's not the work side. I favor that Little Bo Peep is innocent although not totally. At all like me."
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