Saturday Night Fever Costume Ideas
1977's Saturday Night Fever was a cultural phenomenon. More than thirty years later, we still see evidence of how important this film was. The movie earned John Travolta an Oscar nomination. The music in the film, mostly performed by the Bee Gees, is equally iconic. The song "Stayin' Alive" is considered the Bee Gees "signature song", due mostly to its position at the opening of this classic 1970s movie.
There
are really only two standard Saturday Night Fever costume ideas --
people usually want to dress up as either the super hip Tony Manero
(portrayed by none other than John Travolta in the film) or his girl
Stephanie played by Karen Lynn Gorney. The fact that the two most
recognizable characters from the film are a couple makes this a pretty
popular "couples costume".
A standard Tony Manero costume involves six basic parts: a white shirt, a white vest, flared white pants, two or three gold chains or necklaces of different size, black platform shoes, and a fitted white jacket. Ideally, you'd find a perfect "Tony Manero" suit -- one with a shirt with a black collar, and perfectly pointy collars. Basically, you want to make yourself look like a disco freak.
Saturday Night Fever Deluxe Adult Costume
It is a little harder to find the perfect costume to portray Tony's girl Stephanie. Her clothes in the iconic "disco" scene and the movie poster for "Saturday Night Fever" are fairly unremarkable. Here's an image of the movie poster from Karen Lynn Gorney's personal website -- she's wearing a pretty boring red dress, strappy heels, and some outrageous makeup. Duplicating that look would be easy but it wouldn't necessarily be an easy costume to identify. This still from the film shows a more characteristic 70s "look" (the ruffly dress and big hair) but still not something that just screams "Saturday Night Fever".
Your best bet for a female "Saturday Night Fever" costume is to dress like more of a stereotype than the female lead in the film. This means high heels, glittery jewelry, and a short (and usually tight) dress. Remember that disco costumes are made to move in -- nothing too loose that would get in the way of cutting a rug.
A "Saturday Night Fever" costume is fun because Tony Manero is easy to recognize, and there are plenty of sight gags you can add to the costume, like a disco move or two on the dance floor, a fake "hair chest" spilling out of the shirt, etc. His and hers 70s disco costumes are popular choices for costume competitions mostly because this is still considered a seminal film, one that many people remember, and one that is easy to parody.