Star Trek Borg: No-Sew Children's Costume

Although every kid dresses up for Halloween, some kids just really like the old fashioned childhood pastime of "dress-up." When my son was younger, it was one of his favorite ways to play.

We had a big dress up trunk filled with vests, plastic swords, belts, vintage store-bought costumes from the thrift store, cowboy hats, masks-all kinds of great stuff. He even went to our friends' informal midnight millennial wedding dressed as Batman. It was great. Costumes are fun, and even empowering for kids.

So, you would think with all our love of costumes, I would be one of those moms who spent hours fashioning and sewing costumes for Halloween. Not quite. I don't own a sewing machine, and I've never sewn a thing. Over the years, I've found various ways to put together great costumes with a simple "assemblage" method.

My son went as a Borg one Halloween, and it was a big hit. The instructions and guidelines for creating your own Borg costume for a child are below. At the end, you will have hopefully only spent a few bucks on some basic clothing that your child will be able to wear in his/her normal wardrobe.

The great thing about a Borg costume, is you can make it as simple or complicated as you like. If your child is dressing up for fun, simple black clothes and some knee pads and body armor are enough. Also, it can be tailored to the weather.

I learned a long time ago the best Halloween costumes for young children include a coat and gloves. This costume is an ideal Halloween costume in that sense, as well as because of the incorporation of a flashlight--always a safety recommendation.

Basic Outfit

Black turtleneck
Black pants or thick leggings
Black shoes or boots, socks
Black, tight fitting knit cap
White and black face make-up/paint
Optional for weather conditions: Black jacket, coat, and/or insulated/snow jumper/ski pants

Accouterments: mix and match

Flashlight
Headlamp (spelunker style-found in camping sections of department stores)
Black tubing
Utility hoses
Various knee pads, elbow pads (such as used for skateboarding)
Elements from other costumes (plastic breastplates, toy body armor, helmets, etc.)
Lunky belts

Assembling the costume

The idea for assembling the costume is an all black clothing base, pale face, with Borg-ish embellishments-- even only a few will signify the costume as Borg. Overall, the Borg outfit is organized chaos-like Borg themselves. Over the black base clothing, simply strap on and apply tubing, toy armor, utility hoses, knee and elbow pads.

If you have the time, tubing and hoses can be glued with a hot glue gun to breastplates. Pieces of Styrofoam (odd shapes that come as packaging materials) can be spray painted silver or black and glued to toy body armor. Tubes and hoses can likewise simply be fastened under belts at one end, and under a knee or elbow pad at the other.

Dollar Tree usually has toy body armor like breastplates in their regular toy section. They can be worn upside down, sideways, or backwards. On the front of the body, and even on the back.

Individual Borg drones all look a bit different, because of their particular physiology and function, so there's lots of room for customization. Think industrial, mechanical, and organized chaos as mentioned before.

A note of common sense caution-if you're using tubing and hoses, make sure they are away (and that they stay away) from the neck area. If the costume is part of a dress up trunk, make sure to keep any tubes or hoses out of reach.

For the makeup, it couldn't be simpler. A pale face, and sunken eyes, zombie style, are all that's required. The Borg costume is perhaps the easiest costume to put together that gets the biggest results-it's instantly recognizable, uncommon, impressive, and cool.