NYC Kids Favor Homemade Halloween Costumes Over Trends

Despite national trends and online searches pointing to popular culture icons like Dolly Parton and characters from "The Matrix" as top Halloween costumes for children in 2026, New York City's youth are largely opting for homemade and unique creations. A survey of children across the five boroughs revealed a preference for individuality over fleeting trends.

Five-year-old Oia from Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, exemplifies this spirit with her homemade space alien costume, complete with large pink sunglasses and ping-pong ball antennae. "I love my Halloween costume," she told The Post. "Because when I wear it, I feel like a star that’s bright."

Her sentiment is echoed by other young New Yorkers. Oscar L., a 10-year-old from Brooklyn Heights, crafted a dragon costume inspired by the "Wings of Fire" book series. "I want to be the dragon because I read a lot of dragon books," he explained. Oscar and his 8-year-old brother, Matis, created their dragon costumes by sewing large fabric wings onto hoodies and adding scale-print sweatpants and iridescent paper armor.

Siblings Artie, Stella, and Skyler V. from Tribeca also embraced the homemade approach, transforming themselves into a family of dinosaurs. "We like how they can be different colors and different kinds of dinosaurs," Artie, 5, said, "but we can still dress as a family."

In Astoria, Queens, 2-year-old Noori H. and her parents donned homemade costumes inspired by the anime film "My Neighbor Totoro." Noori rode inside a cardboard replica of the Catbus, a creation that took her parents approximately one to two months to assemble from moving boxes.

These children's choices diverge from Google Trends data, which indicated characters like Dolly Parton, Hannah Montana, and Pokémon's Ash Ketchum as popular choices nationwide. Instead, the New York children interviewed showcased a clear inclination towards expressing their personal interests, whether from literature, nature, or imaginative play, through their Halloween attire. The focus for these young New Yorkers appears to be on the creative process and the joy of embodying a character of their own design, rather than replicating trending costumes.