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AC Slater Costume – Saved by the Bell [DIY]

Hey preppy!

As a brown-ish skinned guy (half white, half Filipino), there are some costumes that work better for me than others. For example, we’ve talked about doing a family costume of A League of Their Own… but I’d make a lousy Tom Hanks. On the flip side, I could probably pull off a Bruce Lee costume better than the average white guy.

I grew up on Saved By The Bell, so for a recent Halloween party I decided I wanted to dress up as one Albert Clifford “A.C.” Slater. It’s a tough one because of his peak masculinity, but I figured if I could hit a few key pieces in the outfit, I could get a close enough resemblance to Mario Lopez’s breakout role of a high-school jock.

The first thing I wanted to do was look at a bunch of pictures of A.C. After getting a good sense of his look, I settled in on one photo that I think encapsulated his look.

Inspiration Shot

My A.C. Slater Costume

Here’s a bonus shot with my wife, who dressed as Jessie Spano (but didn’t fully commit on the curly hair part, which would have truly sold it)

Putting the Costume Together

Once I had a sense of the look I was going for, I started sourcing items. This look is truly early 90’s, so I quickly learned finding one-to-one matches wasn’t gonna happen. Here’s where I landed.

Tank Top

I felt at least one piece needed to scream “Saved by the Bell”, otherwise the overall look might just be “90s guy”. So I went with this Bayside Tigers tank-top (on Amazon).

Bonus: Its a super comfy tank top that I wear to the gym to work out in occasionally. Always gets a comment from a fellow SBTB fan.

Pants

Oh how I wanted to find the perfect pair of acid washed, hammer pant style jeans, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

I felt the fit was most important, and luckily I found Otomix pants on Amazon. These Blue Stonewash would have been perfect, but unfortunately they didn’t have my size at the time I needed them.

I went with these pattern instead, which I thought worked for that 90’s look:

I also loved that this style of pants reminded me of the Karate instructor from Napoleon Dynamite.

Shoes

I looked around for a while to find the right shoes for this costume and settled on these clean Reeboks (again, from Amazon).

Hair

A.C. had an exquisite curly mullet. I didn’t have that, and actually couldn’t find one that did justice to his look. So what I did was I bought a curly hair wig (this one is actually labeled as a Kenny Powers wig), then I put it on and had my wife trim it up until it was a close approximation of AC’s mullet.

Here’s the wig on Amazon.

Pose

Perhaps the most important thing for capturing AC’s look in photos you’ll take is that you hit a single or double bicep pose. It’s a non-negotiable requirement.

Shopping List

Here are all of those items in one place:

The Costume

That’s pretty much it. It worked to about $150 or so. I can still use a lot of the pieces in some way or another, so it wasn’t a single purpose purchase. It also isn’t super cheap stuff from a costume shop that is uncomfortable and immediately falls apart, so that’s a win.

If you dress up as A.C., I’d love to see it and add it to this post. Just shoot me a note or tag me on Insta @supbrian.

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