Bad Bunny: Mannequins don the ever-popular costume choice at Hustler Hollywood in South Beach. Flogger not included. Photo by Richard Stewart

Last Halloween, you couldn’t walk down Lincoln Road without being halted by a sexy police officer. The submissives among us will be glad to know the sexy cops should be on the beat again this year.

“It’s about a power struggle,” said Eric Joseph, a staffer at Hustler Hollywood on Washington Avenue in Miami Beach. “A cop supposedly has the power and can command someone to do something. Women sometimes are perceived as being powerless, but [dressed] as a cop they can walk down the street and tell anyone to get on their knees and they’re going to do it.”

Nationwide, Halloween masqueraders spend $5 billion on tricks, treats and other ghoulish gear. Yet in South Florida, pricey fantasy frocks often consist of, well, very little.

“What’s the trend? To be as naked as possible,” Joseph said. “It’s the one time of year you won’t get arrested for indecent exposure.”

Pasties and angel wings are popular. Apparently male demons will be running amok with “briefs and body glitter,” Joseph said. “Wings, a corset and a nice pair of heels, and you’re out the door ready for the tabletops” — more than one gal’s choice this year.

“It’s about living out a fantasy,” he said. “Being an angel or a demon, and at the end of the night having someone take their body. Straight men are asking for heels and women’s clothing. It’s a release, and whether or not they look really well or really bad, it’s their night to be fabulous.”

Other costume trends this year: “What’s big in the box office — pirates, for example, and a sexy bee costume,” Joseph said. Apparently that costume choice is a tribute to the upcoming release of the animated Bee Movie, starring the voice of Jerry Seinfeld. Just behind Joseph, a woman paid for her costume selection — a Harry Potter wizard-school girl outfit that sells for $42.99.

Having worked two Halloweens at the Hustler store pretty much qualifies Joseph as something of a sexy-costume expert. So what does he plan to dress up as? “I’m either going as Tyrone Biggums from the Dave Chappelle show or a Caucasian,” Joseph said. No particular Caucasian — “just a white guy,” he explained.

If Joseph is a costume expert, body airbrushing artist Cjay Fiss could be called the noncostume expert. Fiss has established quite a reputation for his craft of freehand-airbrushing wildly colored body-paint designs on everyone from kids to celebrities. He’s achieved a sort of cult status via word-of-mouth advertising and his Web site, www.drawingonpeople.com.

With rates starting at $100 per session, Fiss’s schedule for this Saturday is booked solid. Starting in the wee hours of the morning, painting an elaborate skull on a five-year-old boy’s face, Fiss will slog through his long list of appointments, which includes a couple planning to attend an event at Tootsie’s Cabaret in North Miami Beach. One will be painted as a silver robot, the other a gold one, clothing optional. Fiss said hot-pants and pasties are a popular combo with his art.

Fiss got his start painting people’s bodies at Fantasy Fest in Key West in 1997. But “this is much better,” he said. “I don’t have to travel all the way down there when we’ve got it goin’ on right here.” Fiss now primarily cashes in on promotional jobs and the Halloween costume painting trade.

‘Tough’ business

According to the National Retail Federation’s 2007 Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey conducted by consumer spending research giant BIGresearch, nearly 60 percent of adult consumers in the United States plan to celebrate Halloween. More than one-third of adults are expected to dress up this year. Of those, nearly three-quarters already have their costumes planned. The top five costumes consist of traditional favorites — almost 17 percent will be witches, about 4 percent pirates and 3 percent vampires.

Even though Halloween was not created as a consumer holiday, it has become a major marketing phenomenon. Halloween began as a Pagan Celtic celebration of Samhain. Citizens of what is now the United Kingdom once believed that on Halloween (originally called All Hallows Eve) spirits would rise from the dead to cohort with the living.

The holiday tradition made its way to the United States during the Irish immigration of the 1840s. In recent years it has become an excuse to look sexy. And you won’t hear retailers complaining.

Consumers are expected to spend more on Halloween this year than in 2006: an average of $64.82, compared to $59.06 last year, according to National Retail Federation statistics. BIGresearch estimates that 2007 Halloween spending will top $5 billion.
Lately, online sales have taken over the traditional costume market. Even companies with street presence like Party City, Target and Wal-Mart have a noticeably bigger online costume presence than in years past — and with no small attention paid to the “sexy” costume market.

“Ten years ago, we used to have lines of people waiting two or three hours for a Halloween costume,” said Franco Carretti, owner of ABC Costume shop, a costuming staple since 1960 on Northwest 24th Street in Wynwood. “Now they buy junk on the Internet.”

With an increasing demand for quantity rather than quality, Carretti said the future of the costume shop business looks “tough.” Census data indicates there were just 2,232 costume rental and formal wear establishments across the nation in 2005.

“Thank god there are still people with a lot of money who want a very nice costume,” Carretti said.

Robot invasion

Inside ABC Costume, one woman tried on a Catwoman costume while another transformed into Sexy David Bowie. The most popular and elaborate outfit at ABC Costume: “Courtier Marie,” sexy Marie Antoinette attire that costs about $85.

“Every girl wants to be sexy. That is the word — sex,” said Franco Carretti, who took over the ownership of ABC in the early 1980s.

Carretti also rents the real thing — a full ball gown with a crinoline hoopskirt, petticoats and a powdered-looking wig. That one rents for around $250 for the standard three days.

The “spirit of the age” this year is sexy, staffer Deborah Diers-Weisman said. “The first thing they ask for is sexy Marie Antoinette — what they end up getting is sexy pirate. Last year it was police woman. Four years ago you could not keep Red Riding Hood in the store.”

Duos looking to save a few bucks can rent a “two-person bull” costume and contort into a fully enclosed, fluffy, brown, four-legged contraption. You’ll drop $85 on that costume, before potentially dropping from lack of coordination or heat exhaustion.

The most popular costumes at ABC Costume Shop range from sizes 2 to 6, though it does carry plus sizes.

“In the last two or three years, women and men, they want to look sexy,” Carretti said. “In Miami there are beautiful young people — they diet, and they want to show off.” ABC starts taking costume reservations as early as the first of September, which can then lead to a series of fittings, alterations, pressing and then packaging. “The last moment is always busy,” Carretti said. “A lot of people think about their costume before, but a lot of people think about it at the last moment, or get a last-minute party invite.”

Carretti expects many of his customers will be seen in their sexy glory at chi-chi parties like those at Vizcaya and the Moore Building.

Rows of foam heads sporting wigs, plastic tommy guns and Statue of Liberty crowns line the walls among rack after rack of pressed and packaged costumes waiting to be picked up. Carretti points at a fuzzy red hippie costume, an Arabian prince, a cave man, Cleopatra, a police officer, a Roman, a leprechaun, a showgirl, a naval officer, a cowboy, a viking, Napoleon, a full mariachi costume, a cardinal, a ballerina and Fidel Castro.

“Gangster is always popular, who knows why,” Carretti said.

The back of his warehouse contains an entire sewing room filled with industrial sewing machines and seamstresses, with tape measures around their necks and straight pins in their mouths, pinning and primping elaborately sequined costumes for professional dancers, cruise ship shows, opera performers and movie and theater actors.

And what is Carretti going to be this year? “Nooo,” he said, laughing and waving his finger from side to side. “I’ve been in the costume business for 50 years, and I’ve never once dressed up. I dress other people up — if I had to dress myself, I’d laugh.”

As a customer raised his hand to his head and whisked off a waist-length wig of lush brown hair, another ABC patron tried on a rubber mask of an angry golf ball that encased his head, and placed a plastic beak on top. “Is my head on straight?” Joe Martel asked.

“I’m going to turn it into Robot Chicken,” he later explained.

In the dressing room, Diers-Weisman helped a young woman try on costumes.

“She’s narrowed it down to a very sexy police lady, a very sexy fire lady or a very sexy pirate lady,” Diers-Weisman said. “Five years ago women wanted to be elegant and beautiful. But South Florida is unlike anywhere else — it’s a sophisticated holiday on which to see and be seen. The Lincoln Road experience has accelerated in reaction to a national Zeitgeist — every year there is something that is the Zeitgeist of the year.”

And what is Diers-Weisman going to be this year?

“Tired,” she said, with a smile.

Comments? E-mail angie@miamisunpost.com.