UW-Madison Students Limit Halloween Outfit Costs to $100

Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are capping their individual Halloween outfit budgets at $100. This move stands in contrast to national retail projections that place average consumer spending at $115.14 per person for the holiday season.

The National Retail Federation expects Americans to spend a total of $13.5 billion on Halloween shopping this year. For many students, the financial pressure forces a choice between purchasing a full, expensive costume or assembling an outfit piece by piece from low-cost retailers like Shein. The goal for many is to stay under the $100 threshold to manage costs across the busy weekend.

The campus social environment drives both the quantity and quality of costumes purchased. Hadley Wendorff, a senior, noted that the culture encourages wearing multiple elaborate outfits in a single weekend. She stated, "If your friends have a great costume you wanna have a great costume too." Matteo Rovera, a junior, admitted that yearly fads influence his purchases. "I would probably only ever wear one Halloween costume a year, but because of what my friends are doing, I have three this year," he said.

Lily Myhra, another junior, limits her spending to between $50 and $100 by sourcing items on the resale platform Depop. While fast-shipping options from Amazon, Spirit Halloween, and Shein remain popular, students are increasingly aware of the environmental impact of the fast fashion model. Fashion production accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions, and 85% of textiles end up in dumps annually. A single-use costume bought for one night fits this high-waste pattern.

To reduce costs and environmental impact, students are adopting specific shopping strategies. These include browsing secondhand stores, using resale sites like Depop and Vinted, or checking Facebook Marketplace. Many also swap old costumes with friends or dig through their own closets for usable items. The advice is consistent: buy clothing that can be worn again, either as everyday wear or for a future event, to keep the purchase affordable and sustainable.

Madison’s Halloween season is among the busiest times of the year for student nightlife. Costumed crowds fill the streets all weekend, ranging from classic zombies and vampires to characters from current television shows like "Off-Campus" and "Odyssey." Despite the variety of looks, the financial constraint remains a primary factor in how students prepare for the holiday.