On Wednesdays, we wear Wednesday
A post-mortem on my most dreadful (and recent) pop culture cosplay
The scene
Halloween 2023. Netflix’s spinoff series “Wednesday” premiered the previous November, making this the first Halloween fans could co-op Jenna Ortega and Colleen Atwood’s rendition of the dastardly daughter; a rendition that is slightly older, preppier, and decidedly cooler than her predecessors.
Like millions of others, I fell in love with this Wednesday Addams with all her smarts, sarcasm, mystery-solving abilities to make Nancy Drew jealous, and downright badass goth fashion.
Costume designer Colleen Atwood did an incredible job making Wednesday an effortless fashion icon; one who doesn’t give a damn what others think of her yet is somehow still so in-fashion. In researching for this blog, I found this great post on Netflix’s Tudum blog about Atwood’s costumes along with a video of Wednesday actor Jenna Ortega giving some behind-the-scenes tidbits about some of the looks. It’s worth a watch if you’re a fan of the show!
Wednesday has always been a pretty easy go-to for Halloween. At minimum, you need a black dress (ideally with a white collar) and pigtails for people to get what you’re going for. But this new Wednesday series provided more outfit options than ever before:
Classic Wednesday!
Prep School Uniform Wednesday!
School Dance Wednesday!
Weekend Wednesday!
Sporty/Catwoman Wednesday!
The approach
So many Wednesdays to choose from!! AND I was actually torn between two Halloween costumes last year: Wednesday and, ironically, Barbie (the movie had just come out, too). So I decided to let the Goodwill Gods decide my fate.
I walked through my local Goodwill combing the racks for anything black or pink and I wound up finding hot pink bodycon dress, a black and gray striped blazer, a black sweater vest, a black long-sleeve dress, AND a dickey!!
An ode to the dickey collar
I have to take a moment to sing the praises of whoever invented the dickey, which is a portion of a shirt made to accomplish the layered look but without the bulkiness of wearing a full undershirt. As a lover of fall and semi-preppy looks, I’ve always wanted to do the cozy-sweater-over-a-collared-button-down look, but everytime I’ve tried it, I’ve been frustrated by (a) how hot it is and (b) how bulky the button-down shirt looks under a thinner sweater in the arms and torso. A dickey alleviates all of these problems. While it looks very silly on its own, it’s immensely more comfortable when put into practice.
Links: Above, left, middle, right
Back to the decision at hand…
I’m indecisive to a fault and I didn’t feel like waiting around Goodwill until a quorum of followers responded to my poll, so I brought it all home (~$30).
You might be wondering why I didn’t buy a matching skirt for the blazer and it’s because I already owned a perfect one at home…
The closet pull (a.k.a. the simple magic of a good schoolgirl uniform)
Years ago in the 2000s, when the prep style was “in,” I bought myself a gray pleated wool skirt and a gray wool blazer, probably from Kohl’s. Those two pieces have carried me through SO many Halloweens and costume parties, both in college and in adulthood. If I have one piece of advice for anyone wanting to invest in a couple staple items that will work for lots of costumes, it would be these. Plus I’ve worn them in real life whenever the prep look is in! I could write a diatribe about these two pieces (and I probably will someday).
So I had three looks to choose from: one Barbie and two Wednesdays. Ultimately, I decided the Wednesday school uniform look had the most going for it because the blazer was pretty darn close to the series version if you squint.
(I did keep both the Barbie dress and the black dress because I actually liked them and saw myself wearing them at some point in the future.)
Now it was time to add our final touches…
An accessory after the fact
With our look decided, it was time to research the accessories that would take this home.
From my research, I knew I’d need:
Black tights ✔️
Chunky black shoes ✔️
My black Timberland boots would do just the trick
A black tie ✔️
A benefit of living with a suit-and-tie-wearing partner is that you can steal their ties whenever you need one to go with a schoolgirl outfit. I snagged my husband’s skinny black tie for this.
Wednesday’s signature black braided pigtails (with bangs, ideally)
Nevermore’s school crest as a “patch” on the blazer
After my Goodwill shopping spree, I decided I to budget $20-$30 more into this costume.
The wig
While my natural hair color is pretty dark brown, it does have some balayage blonding in it and was only about shoulder-length at the time, so I knew I wanted to invest in a wig for this look. I had been wanting to rock Wednesday for many Halloweens before, so I figured I would likely wear it again in the future.
I took to Old Daddy Bezos’ Wonder Emporium (a.k.a. Amazon) and quickly found an INCREDIBLE bundle of accessories based on the Netflix series that came with a wig, a Thing hand, cat ears for Wednesday’s rowing team look, and the W/M necklace Morticia gifts her!
When I received the bundle, I was blown away by the quality of all the pieces! Despite only being $27, everything felt quite well made, especially the wig and Thing.
The Nevermore Academy crest patch
I’m sure people are selling iron-on patches of the Nevermore crest on Etsy, but I decided to go low-effort and cheap on this part since I had already spent up my budget. I googled a high-res image of the crest, measured the approximate size I wanted it to be based on how big it looked in images from the show, printed it at home, cut it out, and pinned it to my blazer. Not the best, but I knew the Thing prop would be getting all the attention anyway.
The final look
I topped it all off with a smokey eye and the darkest lipstick I own. Here’s how it all came out:
All told, I spent about $45 on this full look.
I’m quite proud of this look and how it came together, and I feel like it epitomizes my method of dressing up in costumes: pulling from what you already have or adding pieces that you will wear again, and spending a bit on final touches that will really make it sing.
With the new Netflix series out, Wednesday was, of course, a go-to for costumes last Halloween, as was evident by the four other people who came dressed as Wednesday to my choir rehearsal that weekend. (I called us “Five Consecutive Wednesdays.”)
I love a character that can be achieved purely with pieces one already owns in their closet and the OG Wednesday was that for many. The myriad of looks from the new series makes Wednesday so much more achievable to folks and I absolutely love that. But I also love being a screen-accurate psychopath, and I think Wednesday would appreciate anyone who is overtaken by a bit of psychopathy 🖤
Fantastic!