Meg Stalter Style: Four Costumes This Year, No Rules, and Jorts at London’s Biggest Queer Halloween Night

Meg Stalter style can be summed up in a phrase she offers herself: “There are no rules, really.” The comedian, who has turned up to events this year as an astronaut, an Emmy statue, an orange latex-clad Kylie Jenner and a BDSM-lite Carrie Bradshaw, spoke to British Vogue in London about why getting dressed should be as playful as her work.

A year of costumes and a Halloween dilemma

Halloween has become almost as competitive as the Met Gala, with celebrities trying to outdo each other. For someone who is “always wearing costumes,” that raises an obvious question about what comes next. Stalter’s answer was unexpected: “Sometimes the answer is… no costume at all.”

She was in London as a guest at False Idols, billed as the city’s biggest queer Halloween club night, held at the Tottenham venue Drumsheds. Her look there was low-key by her standards: jorts, a tank top, ankle socks and Mary-Jane flats. She added hair in rollers and skinny, ’90s Madonna-style brows, so it was still hardly a standard jeans-and-T-shirt outfit.

Why the red carpet should be fun

The principle behind Meg Stalter style is that creative work should carry over into how she dresses. “Our jobs are so fun and exciting and silly, why wouldn’t we take that to the red carpet and not be so in a box?” she says. Her one condition is that people respect others and be kind. Within that limit, she argues, artists should be free to “go off.”

The same attitude shapes her career. A veteran of Chicago comedy and improv, she built her profile with viral Instagram sketches during the pandemic. She then joined HBO’s Hacks in 2021 as the deluded talent agency assistant Kayla, and later played the lead in Oh, Mary! on Broadway. Her latest move is music. Her debut album, Crave, arrives with the lead single “Prettiest Girl in America.”

She says even the idea of her making music is “out of the box,” and in the next breath insists she has “always been a pop star.” Her influences include Britney Spears, Dolly Parton and Addison Rae. She also lists herself, without apparent irony, at the top. Watching Spears’s 2000 Live in Hawaii performance of “Baby One More Time” was formative, she says, because it showed how much could happen on a stage.

Chic Brits, beans on toast and the perfect scare

London is familiar territory. Last year she starred opposite Will Sharpe in Lena Dunham’s Too Much. She says she has had little free time here because of the shooting schedule, though she compares the city to “a less chaotic, cleaner New York.” On Britons, she is complimentary: “absolutely chic and fabulous,” with “beautiful voices.” She also says they are kind, whereas “Americans are loud and can be obnoxious.” On stage at Drumsheds she announced that she “loves beans on toast.”

Her test for a good costume is whether it makes people a little nervous. She knows an idea is right when her team is excited but slightly anxious about pulling it off. “Something that scares everybody a little bit,” she says. Her Hacks co-star Paul W Downs, who has been involved in some of her best-loved red-carpet moments, may feature in whatever she does next. Judging by this year’s run of costumes, Meg Stalter style will keep surprising people, and the surprise this Halloween was a toned-down outfit of jorts and rollers.