This Man Rehabs Costumes to Create Halloween Magic

Meet the man turning repaired costumes into free Halloween magic for kids.

Key takeaways

• Christophe Waggoner repairs, reinvents and personally funds costumes to help families celebrate Halloween.
• He grew his first 50 to 60 costumes to nearly 4,000.
• Waggoner turned an observation about costume inequality into a free Halloween tradition.

Summary

Free Halloween costumes for kids can make the holiday more inclusive for families facing the cost of dressing up. Christophe Waggoner searches resale stores for costumes, washes and repairs what he finds, and transforms severely damaged items into something new.

What began with about 50 to 60 costumes grew to close to 4,000. The free selection includes popular princess and superhero costumes along with masks, hats, makeup and decor, giving families a way to celebrate without paying the $30 to $40 Waggoner says a simple store-bought costume can cost.

The key takeaways and summary were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.

Full transcript

[0:00:09]  Christophe Waggoner: Halloween is one of those things, you can be anybody you want.

[0:00:12] Child 1: This is what I’m gonna be.

[0:00:14] Child 2: Eleven from Stranger Things.

[0:00:16] Child 3: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

[0:00:18] Christophe Waggoner: Every child deserves a costume for Halloween.

[0:00:21] No matter your economic situation, every child deserves to be just like everybody else.

[0:00:28] Helping them dress up lets them do that.

[0:00:33] I love Halloween.

[0:00:35] Back in 2016, I moved into a house.

[0:00:38] I’d always lived in apartments, and in apartments you don’t have trick-or-treaters.

[0:00:43] So I was gonna go all out.

[0:00:45] There were a lot of trick-or-treaters, and I noticed some of the children didn’t have what others had, the really nice costumes.

[0:00:54] They had, like, torn shirts and stuff with blood or something on them.

[0:00:58] It just dawned on me, I could help them.

[0:01:01] Why not purchase costumes and just do kind of a free yard sale and see how that goes?

[0:01:14] We have an eyeball head.

[0:01:19]I just always liked making things.

[0:01:21] If you’ve ever sewn and there’s this flat piece of fabric, and then you put it to a sewing machine and it becomes something else.

[0:01:28] And that’s the closest to being an artist I’m gonna get.

[0:01:31] That first event, I probably had 50 to 60 costumes.

[0:01:35] I pretty much cleared out that first year.

[0:01:38] I said, “I should probably get more next year.”

[0:01:42] I’m gonna have close to 4,000 costumes this year.

[0:01:45] The majority of the costumes I found at resale stores.

[0:01:49] It’s kind of a treasure hunt.

[0:01:52] Sometimes I’ll get a costume that’s ready to go.

[0:01:55] And this, you definitely don’t need to do anything with because it’s shiny already.

[0:01:59] Sometimes I’ll find things, they become a costume, like a table runner or a place mat.

[0:02:05] When I bring the costumes home, the first thing I do is I sort them between glitter and not glitter.

[0:02:12] And then I put them in the wash, look at them to see if there’s anything that needs to be repaired.

[0:02:17] If I find something and it’s severely damaged, I’ll create something new out of it.

[0:02:23] Once we finish the costumes here, then I take them down to our storage unit.

[0:02:27] It is a lot of work, and it’s a lot of money.

[0:02:31] This last year, I have been fortunate that I’ve gotten donations, but most of this stuff, it comes out of my pocket.

[0:02:40] Part of the reason I do this is because anytime I can make somebody happy, it, it makes me happy.

[0:02:47] It makes me feel good that I’m actually doing something that matters.

[0:02:53] Are y’all ready to come in?

[0:02:54] Adult 1: Yes.

[0:02:55] Christophe Waggoner: OK.

[0:03:01] It’s like a big party.

[0:03:03] There’s lots and lots of laughter.

[0:03:06] Our most popular costumes are always gonna be princess costumes and superheroes.

[0:03:12] The superheroes… uh, actually I can see Spider-Man.

[0:03:15] We have things that will go with almost any costume.

[0:03:17] Masks of all kinds, hats, different types of makeup, and then we have all kinds of decor.

[0:03:25] It’s wonderful for the parents because if you go out right now to one of the box stores, it’s like 30 to $40 for a simple costume.

[0:03:35] Then you have multiple children.

[0:03:37] That can get very expensive.

[0:03:39] This way they get to have everything they want and it did not cost them anything.

[0:03:45] Michael Halse: We’ve been coming for the last three years.

[0:03:47] I couldn’t imagine this being available to me when I was a kid.

[0:03:50] I remember one year I went as, like, a trash bag because we didn’t have an outfit.

[0:03:56] Shameka Upshaw: I think it does wonders.

[0:03:57] It shows that people still care, and it shows that people are out there looking out for the kids.

[0:04:03] And they even have grown-up costumes, too.

[0:04:10] Christophe Waggoner: I’m very proud because it’s something I did.

[0:04:17] And people, they appreciate it.

[0:04:21] And when people appreciate what you do, it makes you wanna do more.

[0:04:25] I can’t believe how many people this has touched and impacted.

[0:04:29] This started as such a tiny ripple, and now I can see waves.

[0:04:34] I’m gonna be doing it as long as I can.