Vampires arrived on Oct. 5 at the Shocktober Fest, which is said to be Britain’s biggest Halloween attraction, at Tulleys Farm in West Sussex.
LONDON — This Halloween, skintight full-body leotards are a sellout in Britain.
Morphsuits,
the Scottish company behind the goofy, often garish bodysuits, transformed a drunken prank at a stag party into a multimillion-dollar costume phenomenon, thanks in part to the growing popularity here of celebrating All Hallows’ Eve each Oct. 31.Much to the consternation of some, Halloween, with all its silliness, is even eclipsing Guy Fawkes Day, the 400-year-old British festival on Nov. 5.
“We are very much in the throes of Halloween mayhem at the moment,” said Gregor Lawson, one of three founders of Morphsuits, a unit of AFG Media based in Edinburgh. “Halloween seems to just get bigger and bigger and bigger, in more and more countries and the United Kingdom is certainly catching up.”
Halloween in Britain has eclipsed even Valentine’s Day to become the third-biggest event after Christmas and Easter in terms of consumer spending, according to Sophie Carroll, an associate analyst at Planet Retail, consulting firm. Despite a weak economy, the holiday has been a boon for British business.
While sales of Halloween items in the United States are expected to slip by 6 percent this year to $6.9 billion, sales in Britain are forecast to grow 12 percent to 325 million pounds, or $525 million, from a year earlier, Ms. Carroll said. In 2001, British Halloween sales were just £12 million.
Retailers and theme parks have jumped on the bandwagon, although some perhaps too eagerly, with some of their products backfiring.
Asda, a supermarket chain owned by Walmart Stores, and the grocery giant Tesco withdrew two costumes after complaints that they made light of mental illness. One of the costumes featured a mock meat cleaver and a fake-blood-stained straitjacket.
In Lancashire, a county in northwestern England, Scare Kingdom Scream Park was accused of simulating rape in one of its “scary entertainment” attractions, involving visitors who were strapped to a bed with a cushion held over their faces as a man with a sex toy threatened them.
Widespread marketing efforts by retailers and the influx of American movies and television series like “The Walking Dead” have added to the enthusiasm for Halloween in the last decade. Britain’s large community of Americans has also helped popularize the holiday.
At the same time, strict rules governing fireworks and bonfires pushed revelers away from Guy Fawkes Day, which originally had a strong anti-Catholic taint. For centuries, the British observed the death of Guy Fawkes — a Catholic and a participant in the failed plot in 1605 to assassinate King James I and blow up the House of Lords — by burning his effigy, and in more modern times, by setting bonfires, eating sausages and watching fireworks displays.
“I find it rather sad that Guy Fawkes Day is edged out by Halloween,” said the Guy Fawkes historian and author James Sharpe.
“It was something unique in England, and even celebrated in the American colonies in the 18th century,” he said. “It’s a pity that it’s gone.”
But Britain’s adoption of the American holiday is perhaps not a surprise. Halloween was originally an ancient Celtic celebration in Ireland and Scotland, exported to the United States by immigrants. The Irish and Scots point to older Halloween traditions. Early jack-o'-lanterns were carved of turnips or winter squashes, but not round orange pumpkins; apple-bobbing began as a matchmaking ritual; and people wore costumes to ward off evil spirits.
More significantly, the British love costumes, and costume dramas are a staple of British television. To dress up and to be observed is almost a national sport, whether at horse races, rowdy rugby matches, drunken university parties or balls for young socialites.
Jeremy Angel, creative director of the family-owned costume company Angels Fancy Dress, said the British had a far bigger dress-up culture than Americans did.
“Your dress-up is Halloween, but in Britain we dress up at everything, so it’s a bit more in our culture,” he said, adding that his family company began in 1840 renting costumes out of a wheelbarrow to actresses and singers in Covent Garden, London’s theater district.
With costume parties so common in Britain, Mr. Angel said British revelers had developed sophisticated demands for Halloween.
“We don’t want to look normal,” he said. “Ladies shopping for their costumes will spend 45 minutes going through everything, looking at each accessory, speaking to staff, and then they’ll get on the phone with their boyfriends or husbands and tell them, ‘Right, unless you’re down here in five minutes I’m buying you the ghost.’ They put all their efforts into this.”
Morphsuits has capitalized on the interest.
Last year, the company had revenue of £10.5 million in Britain and the United States, and sales have quadrupled each year since the company’s inception in 2009, Mr. Lawson said. The United States has remained its biggest market, however, with 37 percent of overall sales last year.
Mr. Lawson said that an increasing number of Americans were adopting the British love of costume. For example, he said, sales of Morphsuits for bachelor parties were rising in the United States.
“When you have more fun when you dress up for a party, people will do more of that, and more and more businesses have popped up to make the most of it,” he said. This Halloween, he plans to wear a vine-covered orange Morphsuit and carve a pumpkin into a Roman centurion helmet.
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