It is my favorite time of the year. Eating a shameless amount of candy, putting my pets in hot dog costumes against their will and making everything incredibly spooky — and having it be socially acceptable. In the spirit of everything frightening and eerie, I want to share my favorite chilling designer lines and how to gain inspiration from designers for your Halloween costumes this year.

All White

Alexander McQueen is the king of creepy and my favorite designer. We mirrored the makeup from their Fall 2009 line on our model, junior communication science and disorders major Justine Reyes, because in my opinion it is by far the creepiest, most magical and well-done line that truly showcases Alexander Mcqueen’s style. The makeup is all white, including the eyebrows and eyelashes, with very red lips to contrast. This line was followed by McQueen’s tragic death in February 2010.

The almost clown-like makeup is perfect for Halloween and you can get makeup like this for $3.00 at Savers. If you want to spend a little more for a professional and smooth look, I recommend the white face powder they sell at Hot Topic.

Animal Inspiration

There are other lines from Alexander McQueen that effectively make your skin crawl such as their Spring/Summer 2012 line that included a bat-speckled dress covering the model’s entire neck and head. Their shoes that look like lobster claws or armadillos, which is what they’re called, from their spring 2010 line are weird and unnerving. Another creepy look was their parted and straight back hair in their spring 2009 line, and their dark, feathery, almost raven-like dress from their autumn/winter 2014 line.

Enough fangirling over McQueen for now. There are other designers and lines that have touched the undead like we did with our models such as the Blonds, John Galliano, Iris Van Herpen and Gareth Pugh.

The Shining

The Blonds did a line in fall 2013 inspired by the famous horror film “The Shining.” They featured a dress with fake blood made out of red beads, a dress with a pattern of knives on it, a coat with blood pooling in the lining and a dress with the famous “here’s Johnny!” face of Jack Nicholson. They also had a dress with a mummy-wrap vibe we used for inspiration with the dress on Reyes. You can get a dress like this at Forever 21 or any store with horizontal ribbed white cocktail dresses. Or, to get it exactly like that dress, you can buy a bunch of white belts and wrap them around a white body con dress.

Creepy Dolls and Skeletons

John Galliano’s autumn/winter line in 2007 had dresses with prominently red tones and models with possessed doll makeup holding broken dolls. We used this creepy doll feel on our model, junior art major Jess Dueker, with her innocent-style flowy dress and pale makeup. You can get a dress like this at H&M and the makeup at Savers.

Iris Van Herpen featured a dress that was simply a skeleton barely covering anything and stopped mid-thigh. What makes the dress unique in design and stand out as one of the creepiest designs in fashion is that the skeleton does not look human and makes the model appear creature-like.

Dirty Vibes

Gareth Pugh had a line in autumn/winter of 2013 featuring black dresses made of recycled trash bags and feathers. It seems Pugh took the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” quite literally but they pulled it off by creating a creepy, dirty vibe with this line while somehow still remaining couture and high fashion. The undead makeup they used was also inspiration for the makeup we did on our models.

Hope for the College Budget

If a designer can make a line of clothing out of cheap garbage bags and reap a fortune from it, you can make a fun costume this year on a college student budget. Halloween is a fun time to explore the art of fear and the weird, creepy things that make us humans uncomfortable. I encourage everyone to have fun and enjoy the spirit of Halloween celebrated both on and off the runways.