A Guide to Couples Costumes With Tips From Al Gore, Heidi Klum, and Coco

No TV Reference Is Too Obscure

Happy Almost Halloween! Still trying to figure out what you and your significant other will be? Slate turns to the most dedicated Halloween couples of all time (Al and Tipper Gore, Heidi Klum and Seal, and Ice-T and Coco), along with a few others for guidance. Here, the vice president and his wife stand triumphant as the 1960s animated TV characters Underdog and Polly Purebred back in 1999, when they were still married and throwing their annual costume extravaganza.

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Pay for Your Costume

What’s more wholesome than a Beauty and the Beast costume, created by Disney especially for the fantasy-loving vice president and his wife?! Unfortunately, soon after the couple’s 1995 Halloween bash, the Washington Post reported that Disney never billed the Gores for the $8,300 custom getups, which made them “improper gifts.” The fee was eventually paid by the Democratic National Convention, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Courtesy the White House.
Keep It Simple

Broke and uninspired? Model yourself after the Gores’ mummy costumes from 1998.

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Want To Get Noticed? Incorporate Religion.

In 2008, Heidi Klum and husband Seal wowed and terrified their friends as Hindu goddess Kali and mythical character Angulimala. Despite a demand for an apology from a Hindu priest, the model didn’t show any signs of regret. "My husband and I were in India last year,” Klum explained following the controversy. "I loved it because she's so mean and killed all these different people and had fingers hanging off her and little shrunken heads everywhere."

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Cross-Dress

“If you are unsure about how to make a couple’s costume funny, just switch roles,” Klum advised earlier this year. “It's really funny as a woman to dress like a man!” Here, Seal as Eve caresses the biblical red apple that encompasses his wife’s belly.

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Holding Hands Connects Unrelated Costumes

While it remains unclear how exactly vampires and law enforcement officers are related, a small gesture can turn separate costumes into a couple’s concept, as this photo from 2005 proves.

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It’s OK if You’re Not Creative

In 2005, Ice-T and Coco demonstrated that even if you’re rich and famous, sometimes you just want to don leather and fishnets like everyone else.

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It’s OK if You Just Want To Be a Nurse

Even people with reality shows and Playboy spreads crave opportunities to dress like a sexy medical team, the couple showed in 2010.

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Just ‘Cause Your Spouse Won’t Dress Up Doesn’t Mean You Can’t

Sometimes otherwise good husbands won’t give into their wives’ Halloween enthusiasm. In 2009, first lady Michelle Obama made it acceptable to be an asymmetrically festive couple.

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When All Else Fails, Dress Up Like Furniture

NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon dons a bedside-table outfit at Heidi Klum's annual Halloween party in 2005. In short shorts, his then-girlfriend (now-wife) Ingrid Vandebosch helps solidify the "one-night-stand."

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