Josh Sundquist may have lost his leg to cancer in childhood, but that hasn’t kept him from excelling as a Paralympic skier, soccer player, best-selling writer, speaker, and perhaps most notably, creator of some of the greatest Halloween costumes you’ll ever see.
Embracing his disability, he makes outfits that all manage to knowingly wink at his condition without really making it the focal point. While that in and of itself is interesting, what really take the costumes from “good” to “great” is how inspired and clever they are.
He describes himself as a “Halloween enthusiast.” I’m not sure if you could parlay that hobby into a full-time career, but if you could, I’m pretty sure Josh Sundquist start an empire consulting people on their Halloween costume choices.
This year, he took on the guise of Lumiére from the Disney classic Beauty and the Beast.
Oh, and he hit up a certain Vermont senator to see if maybe Mr. Sanders would be interested in making it a couple’s costume. We haven’t seen a response just yet.
It might be a little late for this year, but if you’re wondering how you can copy this look (You still have a few hours!), he made a tutorial on creating the costume:
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As you’ll see from his quick Instagram retrospective of the previous five years of costumes, Sundquist has found that coming up one leg short actually opens quite a lot of doors when it comes to costume ideas.
He says that he specifically goes for goofy costumes that work with his body shape, but stays away from iconic or familiar “amputee costumes” like The Black Knight from Monty Python or “shark attack victim.”
Rather than object to them on principle, it seems like he would just rather conjure up his own unique ideas than go to tired costumes people have seen before. He says on his blog, “Halloween is the day I can be something else. I look for costume ideas that represent a creative twist on my situation, ideally something only I am able to dress as because of the unique shape of my body.”
