If you haven't already, meet Chanell Karr. She's a familiar face in the music and nightlife scene, well-known as vinyl-spinning DJ COCO, in addition to her position as marketing and box office manager for Nederlander Entertainment at Covington's Madison Theater.
You may also know her from her days at CityBeat where her she utilized her vibrancy and creativity in our events department.
If you're familiar with her, you're probably hip to her fondness of the Halloween season, and her commitment to fun and outrageous costumes she comes up with each year.
This year is special, though. Karr decided to go big. After some quarantine-related cleaning and reorganizing, she was inspired by her accumulated items and which her the drive to try some out some costumes she'd been meaning to create.
"I’ve had a running list for years of various outfits & costumes that I’ve wanted to recreate, and I thought - well, now I have the time! But I couldn’t choose just one look, so I decided an entire month should be fun & a nice way to distract myself from all the craziness in the world," Karr explained.
Karr says her love for Halloween stems from her admiration with the beautiful autumn season, along with her mother's encouragement that making your costumes yourself is more fun. "Which works for me, since I love thrifting, and throwing together looks. Halloween is a time to show off your creativity and have fun dressing up in outfits that you might not normally wear - channel something or someone you’ve always wanted to be," she explains.
Her costumes range from Disney movie characters to musicians like Wierd Al Yankovic and Janis Joplin, TV shows and even her mother from the 80s.
Initially, Karr's month-long project was "an excuse to get ready and wear some of the clothes that I haven’t gotten to wear in a while." But as the project continued and she found herself appreciating her moments recreating nostalgic movies, shows, etc., she hopes it inspires some fond memories from whoever sees her costumes.
When asked what her favorite costume was, well, she had a few:
"Oh, how can I pick just one?! I like the ones where I didn’t even have it planned & it came together - the Jack Black look from School of Rock. Or on a whim, I decided to dress up as Karen & Georgia from the My Favorite Murder podcast, which I’m usually listening to, and that one has gotten over a thousand likes on social, which is so cool! Random people that I don’t even know from all over the world who are also true crime fans! SSDGM. But I’d have to say I really loved recreating a photo of my mom from when she was a teenager. I posted it on her birthday, and it features her old chest of drawers that she had in the photo."
Karr says she has accumulated the various wigs and items over the years with ideas of what they could be used from. She drew from her list of about 100 costume ideas when choosing what to be each day for the month. "I just would look at the list each day, and decide how I felt that day. What character did I want to be, what outfit could I pull together, etc. there’s no method to the madness," she explains.
All hail to the Halloween Queen. We are not worthy.
