Halloween is a season of opposites, represented as much by horror-themed streaming collections and haunted houses as trick-or-treating and jack-o’-lantern sugar cookies.
The opposites are even more apparent when it comes to Halloween costumes, which let kids, adults, couples, and groups express their creativity and Halloween spirit in such personal ways. Will your costume be horror or fantasy? Literal or clever? Classic or current?
We looked into the top Halloween costumes researched in 2023 for any noticeable trends and picked up on some fun threads. Can you guess which pop culture characters made the cut?
Most popular Halloween costumes by state in 2023 [Map]
Findings on trending Halloween costumes
- If 2023 is any indication, classics will likely always be the most popular Halloween costumes of all time.
- Cat costumes were the most searched nationwide in 2023, with 12 states googling them more than any other. Fairy costumes were a close second, racking up the most searches in 10 states.
- Classic Halloween-themed costumes, including skeleton, vampire, zombie, and witch getups, topped the searches in 3 to 5 states each.
- Dinosaur costumes were similarly popular in 4 states.
- Pop culture Halloween costumes, most of them movie and TV characters, were most searched in 20% of the country.
- Ariel was the favorite in 2 states, likely due to the popularity of the live-action Little Mermaid remake.
- Barbie was a massive box office success, with over a billion dollars in sales worldwide. The state that showed the most interest in Barbie costumes was West Virginia.
- Elvis costumes were searched most in Mississippi, where Elvis was born, and in Tennessee, where Graceland was built. With not one but two Elvis biopics released in 2023, the rock’n’roll star was an inevitable addition to the most popular Halloween costumes of 2023.
- Swifties from Massachusetts and New Hampshire showed the most interest in dressing like their pop hero, Taylor Swift. The Eras tour broke Ticketmaster records when it sold over 2 million tickets on opening day.
- Other 2023 TV and movie characters that made the list include Wednesday Addams and famous cartoon plumber Mario.
Methodology
Using articles from DIYs, The New York Post, PopSugar, Variety Magazine, and HalloweenCostumes.com, we gathered some of the most popular Halloween costumes in the United States. We then analyzed their search volume and relative popularity by state using Semrush and Google Trends.
Most popular Halloween costumes by state in 2023 [Table]
| State | Costume | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | fairy costume | |||||||
| Alaska | Cat costume | Costume | # of States that looked up the Halloween Costumes | |||||
| Arizona | fairy costume | Cat costume | 12 | |||||
| Arkansas | Cat costume | Fairy costume | 10 | |||||
| California | Cat costume | Skeleton costume | 5 | |||||
| Colorado | Cat costume | Dinosaur costume | 4 | |||||
| Connecticut | Cat costume | Vampire costume | 4 | |||||
| Delaware | Skeleton costume | Zombie costume | 3 | |||||
| District of Columbia | Ariel costume | Witch costume | 3 | |||||
| Florida | pirate costume | Ariel costume | 2 | |||||
| Georgia | fairy costume | Taylor Swift Costume | 2 | |||||
| Hawaii | Mario costume | Elvis costume | 2 | |||||
| Idaho | Skeleton costume | Wednesday Addams costume | 1 | |||||
| Illinois | Cat costume | Barbie costume | 1 | |||||
| Indiana | Dinosaur costume | Pirate costume | 1 | |||||
| Iowa | Dinosaur costume | Mario costume | 1 | |||||
| Kansas | Dinosaur costume | |||||||
| Kentucky | Cat costume | |||||||
| Louisiana | Ariel costume | |||||||
| Maine | Vampire costume | |||||||
| Maryland | fairy costume | |||||||
| Massachusetts | Taylor Swift Costume | |||||||
| Michigan | witch costume | |||||||
| Minnesota | fairy costume | |||||||
| Mississippi | Elvis costume | |||||||
| Missouri | fairy costume | |||||||
| Montana | Vampire costume | |||||||
| Nebraska | Zombie costume | |||||||
| Nevada | Vampire costume | |||||||
| New Hampshire | Taylor Swift Costume | |||||||
| New Jersey | Zombie costume | |||||||
| New Mexico | Skeleton costume | |||||||
| New York | Vampire costume | |||||||
| North Carolina | Dinosaur costume | |||||||
| North Dakota | Skeleton costume | |||||||
| Ohio | fairy costume | |||||||
| Oklahoma | fairy costume | |||||||
| Oregon | Cat costume | |||||||
| Pennsylvania | Skeleton costume | |||||||
| Rhode Island | fairy costume | |||||||
| South Carolina | Cat costume | |||||||
| South Dakota | wednesday addams costume | |||||||
| Tennessee | Elvis costume | |||||||
| Texas | fairy costume | |||||||
| Utah | witch costume | |||||||
| Vermont | witch costume | |||||||
| Virginia | Cat costume | |||||||
| Washington | Cat costume | |||||||
| West Virginia | Barbie costume | |||||||
| Wisconsin | Cat costume | |||||||
| Wyoming | Zombie costume |
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