New Orleans Mardi Gras Costumes
Orleanians and Visitors Act Out Their Fantasies on Fat Tuesday
Jan 14, 2008
The New Orleans Mardi Gras is North America’s biggest costume party and one of its favorite events for travelers. The dawn-to-midnight celebration encourages the meek to dress boldly, the poor to pretend they are rich, children to costume as cute animals and men to wear scanty female outfits.
Fat Tuesday, which climaxes the carnival season, is the one day of the year, other than Halloween, that people can roam the metropolitan area streets legally hiding behind masks.
For some Louisianians and their visitors, it is a day to carry out their fantasies by dressing as someone or something else. Expensively outfitted cowboys, astronauts, beauty queens, and star athletes walk the long parade routes, posing for photographers and TV crews along the way.
Mardi Gras A Day of Satire
For other participants in the celebration, it is a day of satire, an opportunity to lampoon the politicians and celebrities they considered clowns in the past year. Neither presidents, Congressmen, governors, mayors, historical figures, actors nor actresses are spared the ridicule.
The costumed characters are sprinkled among the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children that gather for the Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans and surrounding communities on Fat Tuesday. The crowds, sometimes estimated at a million, tailgate and picnic wherever there is an empty spot along the parade routes, giving the costumed characters the same attention they give the parades.
Beer and other drinks flow freely, but police roam the crowds, usually maintaining an amazing level of peace while allowing a maximum level of fun appropriate to the unique holiday.
The French Quarter, where the crowds are literally wall-to-wall in the old narrow streets, may be the most costume-intensive spot in the metropolitan area. It is particularly rich in expensive feathered and skimpy female costumes, worn mostly by men.
Elsewhere in New Orleans African-Americans costumed in elaborate, home-sewn Indian costumes, roam the neighborhoods in tribute to Indian tribes who helped blacks escape slavery in the 19th Century. They provide some of the best known Mardi Gras music with songs such as Firewater, New Suit and Professor Longhair’s Big Chief.
Costumers Range from Jesters and Dancers to Gorillas and Monsters
But most of the best costuming can be found among the families that crowd St. Charles Avenue, Canal Street, Metairie and other suburbs to watch parades.
On most every Mardi Gras one will see jesters, cowboys, Indians, dancers, Disney characters, gorillas, devils, angels, pirates, Uncle Sams, Abraham Lincolns, George Washingtons, tigers, lions, a few men in diapers (weather permitting), Elvis Presleys and Star Wars characters, as well as witches and monsters left over from Halloween.
Since Mardi Gras revelers miss few opportunities to mimic or ridicule, a year like 2008 could be expected to bring out Harry Potter pretenders, characters from Shrek, helmeted LSU and New Orleans Saint fans, steriod baseball players, a president, and a few costumed as presidential candidates.
Because the celebration attracts thousands of visitors from up and down the continent, weeks and sometimes months of planning are normally needed to secure flights and hotel rooms. Fat Tuesday visitors usually arrive on the previous Saturday and stay until Ash Wednesday.
