Classic Costumes

• The same classic themes that looked adorable on a child still look good on a teen, albeit with a few more grown-up touches. Witches, vampires and monsters require little more than a few iconic costume elements, such as a conical hat or fangs, plus some cosmetic expertise. Give classic costumes a more mature update with more sophisticated makeup. A small child's darkened eyes and plastic fangs say "vampire," but a teen vampire might go a step further, using makeup to create a grisly corpse-like pallor and drizzling fake blood down the front of the costume as if the vampire had recently enjoyed a messy meal.
  
  

Zombie Costumes

• Gruesome makeup turns any ready-made costume into a zombie version of the job or hobby the costume represents. Teens who belong to the football team or the cheerleading squad can convert their uniforms into zombie regalia; a zombie cheerleader or quarterback makes more of an impact than an ordinary zombie does. A trip to the thrift store to buy an old wedding dress or used surgical scrubs provides the foundation for a zombie bride or doctor. Making a teen look like the walking dead with makeup can be as detailed as creating fake scars and decayed skin with latex or as simple as applying greenish or grayish makeup.
  
  

Couples Costumes

• Teens who are romantically attached might want to dress as a pair. Couples' costumes work as well for teens as they do for adults. Every high school with a drama program has staged productions of "Romeo and Juliet," so teens with access to the theater department's costumes might be able to borrow the title characters' garb. Famous couples, both real and fictional, work as inspiration for a couple's costume, especially if one or both of the couple resembles the famous pair.
  
  

Satirical Costumes

• Teens who have distinctive styles of their own or who don't want to look as though they're trying too hard, might choose to go in the other direction and scale down a costume instead of dressing to impress. For example, taping a cotton ball to the rear of a pair of jeans and affixing a couple of hand-drawn ears to a headband would be a sardonic take on a bunny costume. A round, red nose on an otherwise unpainted face is an understated version of a clown.
  
  

Funny Costumes

• Look to puns, idioms and jokes for inspiration for easy costumes. A thrift-store wedding dress with shipping company labels attached to it could be a "mail-order bride," whereas a fake knife and a few miniature boxes of breakfast cereal could be the basis of a "cereal killer" costume. Think about common phrases and expressions that could translate into a visual pun. A cat costume involves little more than a few drawn-on whiskers and a couple of cat ears on a headband, but add some yellow feathers glued to an old shirt, and you become the "cat that ate the canary."