I believe that accessories are everything when wanting to look well dressed. Accessories should coordinate by color, and sometimes texture. There is no point getting overdressed, and just a few things can make a simple dress look fantastic.
When I was young and svelte, I dressed up as a cat for Halloween. I looked good. It was an easy costume because I always had a leotard top and bottom, and I only had to add ears and a tail. I was a lot of different things, but since 2013 I have been The Well Dressed Black Cat.
I was working as a receptionist at J. Walter Thompson around 1980 my first time as a black cat. A lot of things were different then:
- A lot of people still had rotary dial phones. There were no cordless phones.
- No one had cell phones. Some very rich people had car phones, but they came in a huge box that took up a lot of room. People were impressed when they saw someone talking while driving. Now people are less impressed and look for a place to hide because drivers are too busy with their phones to pay attention to pedestrians.
- Important people had pagers. I’m sure there were lots of accidents when people stopped to look at their pager instead of looking at the road. Now everyone has a smartphone, and there are even more accidents because people are texting/Tweeting/Facebooking instead of looking at the road.
- Cigarette smoke was everywhere, even the movie theater. Imagine going to see a disaster movie about a fire and someone lighting up a cigarette near you. Yup, it scared the heck out of me.
- Grocery stores had paper bags, and they didn’t cost anything. Baggers knew how much a bag would hold without breaking your arm, or the bag. Now, we have paper bags again, but you have to pay 10¢, and the baggers fill them so much either you break your back or the bag tears.
I was a cat for a very long time, until I got tired of it, had a child, and decided that my body type could not be a cat anymore. In 2009 I was Cruella De Ville and Spane was PeeWee Herman. In 2010, I became a witch, while Spane was a dragon. I was a witch in 2011, Spane was a bat, and I was a witch in 2012, while Spane was Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter. In 2013, I decided I could be a Well Dressed Cat, and Spane was a tarantula. I’ve been some form of Well Dressed Cat ever since. Here’s a slide show of our Halloween adventures.
How to Be A Well Dressed Black Cat
My cat had a rhinestone collar, and rhinestones at the base of her tail. I had a Tiger Bow holding my ponytail, and a coordinating bow at the tip of my tail. My earrings had brown baubles that coordinated with the bows, and I wore a sparkly onyx and rhinestone ring on my finger. Even my feet, black toenail polish, and leopard thonged sandals completed the ensemble.
The Well Dressed Black Cat Costume
Supplies
- 1 knee-high pantyhose black
- large bubble wrap about 30 inches wide
- 2 pipe cleaners black
- thread black
- craft rhinestone strips or ribbon
- ribbon 2-inch tiger or leopard
- coordinating jewelry
- leotard top black
- leggings black or stretchy black pants
Instructions
- Cut a bubble wrap strip about 1 inch high. Set aside.
- Twist the ends of two pipe cleaners together and put them in the center of the bubble wrap strip. Roll the bubble wrap into a long cylinder, flap side down so it doesn’t unroll on you.
- Get a pantyhose knee-high, and put in on over the bubble wrap cylinder, just as if you were putting on socks. Make sure that you bring the sock all the way up so the bubble wrap is covered completely.
- Pick up the pants and determine approximately where coccyx (tail bone) is, and pin the tail and rhinestones there.
- Sew the rhinestones and tail on to the pants in that spot, and remove the pins. Use some of the same ribbon used for making the bow on cat costume tail
- Put on your costume, your bow, ribbon, ears, jewelry, makeup, and have a spooktacular time!
