Why on Halloween do even the primmest of us dress like a decomposing body? Stylist’s Alexandra Jones investigates

Photography: Sarah Brimley

At a Halloween party last year I got chatting to an accountant (29, homeowner) who had come dressed in crushingly bad taste as a ‘sexy’ Ebola nurse, complete with fake blood under her eyes. “So you treat Ebola, but you’ve also got Ebola?” I asked. “It’s Halloween, who cares?” she exclaimed before knocking back another blackberry mimosa and stomping off. The host raised her eyebrows and cast me an apologetic look. “Wow – she’s usually really… reserved.” Friends, if modern Halloween garb is anything to go by, the age of innocence is well and truly over.

When I was growing up, the best most could hope to muster come 31 October was a skilfully knotted bin bag and a £1 Freddy Krueger mask from the off-licence (the elastic would inevitably ping off and you’d spend the rest of the evening looking like a polyethylene Teletubby). In 2001, Halloween was worth a miniscule £12million to the UK economy; fast-forward to 2015 and it brought in almost £400million (which, admittedly, pales in comparison to the USA, where Halloween spend last year hit almost $7billion).

Since we waved goodbye to the last millennium, Halloween has become a veritable orgy of merchandise and money. In fact, thanks to what James Sharpe, professor of early modern history at the University of York, called “US cultural imperialism”, it has overtaken Valentine’s Day to become our third most celebrated festivity after Christmas and Easter.

Embrace your dark side: Stylist explores the psychology of dressing up for Halloween