Last-Minute Mrs. Peacock

 
One of the best things about Halloween season is it usually provides plenty of opportunities for an Unfashionista to dress in costume. I have been planning various Halloween costumes since mid-September (and ideating them for years!) but a group costume as characters from Clue never crossed my mind...until around 10am on Friday. I was one of three people going to a murder-themed event that evening, and with only 10 hours until the doors opened, I suddenly realized that we could all dress as characters from the game!

My friend took Miss Scarlet, I assigned my boyfriend Mrs. White (since he already has a French maid costume), and I took Mrs. Peacock. (See what they wore in our Photobooth pics!)

I did a little research so I could make my costume as authentic as possible, and found that there are many variations of the game Clue as well as a couple of movie adaptations, and several less-than-consistent descriptions of the characters.

But here is what I was able to glean about Mrs. Peacock from various sources. She is a wealthy widow; some sources say she has had many husbands who all met their untimely demise. In one of the descriptions I read, her character raises birds. Her appearance evolved over several versions of the game, back and forth between elderly and stuffy and young(er) and stylish, but she almost always dresses in blue and wears a hat (naturally I went with the young and stylish variation!).

This is the picture that I used
as inspiration for my costume

I was thrilled with what I learned about my character, because I have a wealth of blues and greens in my wardrobe, never miss an opportunity to dress like I'm rich, and also happen to really appreciate birds. Since Mrs. Peacock usually seems to be wearing some sort of ostentatious hat in almost all of her forms, I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to make myself a fascinator! In case you weren't up on wealthy-woman headwear, a fascinator is basically a hat, but instead of covering the whole head, it only covers part of it, and it usually has lots of frills and feathers and things sticking out of it. Fascinators are commonly seen on the Royal Family and at horse races.

How I was going to make a fascinator, I really didn't know...but I guessed I was going to find out! As it turned out, I did find out, and it actually worked out well. But the process was so long and involved, that I think it is worthy of another post all its own. So let's leave the talk of fascinators for a while, and get back to the rest of the details of the outfit.

Obviously, you can't be Mrs. Peacock without wearing blue. As it so happens, I have a blue satin dress that I've been saving (in an admirable display of patience, if I do say so myself) since I last wore it in 2014 (I wanted to give it one more chance and wear it with a particular pair of shoes...but now that it's had its second wear, it's off to eBay for this dress!).

Since we were traveling on Metro and likely to be walking around in a museum all evening (and who knows where the night might take us afterwards), I decided to wear flat shoes even though they hindered the glam quotient slightly. As long as they were blue, that's what really mattered!

The finishing touch was a pair of peacock feather earrings and some blue and green eye makeup.

But the real star of this outfit was definitely the fascinator. Stay tuned for the full story on how I learned to make a fascinator in under 2 hours!