How to Dress as Leatherface

Halloween’s best costumes are the ones people recognise from across a crowded room, and few horror characters land faster than the man in the stitched leather mask.

A Leatherface costume is six pieces: the mask, a butcher’s apron, a collared shirt, a tie, dark flat-front trousers and heavy boots. Decide which film you’re copying first and every other choice gets simpler.

At Mad About Horror we’re an official UK stockist for Trick or Treat Studios, who hold the Texas Chainsaw Massacre licence, so everything named below is the licensed piece rather than a fancy-dress lookalike. Below we’ll cover which version to build, how to choose between the masks and the two aprons, and how to get through a full night in latex.

Which Leatherface Costume Are You Building?

Work out which film you’re dressing as before you buy anything, because the mask and the apron change with almost every one. The screen versions don’t share a wardrobe.

Go with the 1974 original unless you’ve got a reason not to. It’s the look most people picture, horror fans rate it as his best appearance, and it has by far the widest licensed product support behind it. The apron is goldenrod-dyed cloth and the mask is dry, leathery and stitched.

The others worth knowing about:

• The 2003 remake swapped the cloth apron for a brown tarp and added gauntlets.
• The 2022 Netflix film gives him a heavier, more recent-looking face and a different saw.
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is the one with the suit, the tie and the torn fac.

The community already sorts itself this way. On the build forums people identify their saw by model against the film, a Poulan 245A for 1974 and a 306A for 2022, and you’ll see them apologise for the 306A as close enough. If you’d rather see everything in one place, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre collection covers all of them.

Choosing Your Leatherface Mask

The mask does most of the work here, so it’s the piece worth spending real money on. Something that’s easy to miss: he wears three different faces in the 1974 film alone, and they read very differently on a person.

• The Killing Mask is the default. Dry, stretched and stitched, worn for the film’s most recognisable scenes. If you buy one, buy this.
• The Pretty Woman mask is the made-up face with painted lips and eyeliner from the dinner scene. Instantly clocked by fans, baffling to everyone else.
• The Old Lady mask, sometimes called the Grandma mask, is the most unsettling of the three and the one you’ll almost never see at a party.

We stock all three as licensed Trick or Treat Studios masks, alongside sculpts for the later films, so you can pick the face rather than settle for whatever a fancy-dress shop had left. It’s worth comparing our full range of Leatherface masks before you decide.

The Apron Is Half the Costume

Ask anyone who’s built this costume where they got stuck and the answer is the apron. It turns a latex mask into Leatherface, and it’s the piece people can’t find. There are two good routes, and they suit different buyers rather than being better and worse versions of each other.

The screen-accurate route is our Trick or Treat Studios Texas Chainsaw Massacre Leatherface Apron. It’s built from hundreds of on-screen and off-screen photographs of the apron Gunnar Hansen wore in 1974, and it comes with a real wrap-around chain so it sits properly instead of hanging like a pinny. On the build forums it’s what experienced makers point newcomers towards. Some swap the bottom chain for a cloth tie for comfort, which is an easy change and costs nothing on accuracy.

The premium route is The Butcher, a heavy apron from our own professional range. It isn’t a film replica. It’s hand-weathered, distressed and bloodied by our in-house costume designer, and it can be customised, which is why scare actors and haunt performers take it. If you’re working an attraction rather than going to a party, that’s the one, and it sits with the rest of our professional scare and haunt kit.

Less Blood Than You Think

Blood is where screen accuracy and the popular image part company, so it’s worth deciding on purpose. Builders working from film reference are blunt about it: there wasn’t a great deal of blood on the apron in the 1974 movie. The gore-soaked butcher’s apron is mostly a fancy-dress invention.

Ask a room full of horror fans, though, and they’ll tell you it needs a good slathering of blood. Both camps are right about different things. Keep it light and you’ve got the costume as it appeared on screen. Lay it on and you’ve got the version people expect. Either is fine, but make the call knowingly, because you can add blood later and you can’t take it off.

The Shirt, Tie and Trousers

The clothes under the apron are the half people skimp on, and they’re what makes the character unsettling rather than simply gory. Leatherface dresses like he’s turned up for a shift.

You want a plain collared shirt, dark flat-front trousers with no visible branding, and heavy work boots or plain black shoes. Most of that’s already in your wardrobe or a charity shop.

The tie is the hard part. The pattern the community used to share went offline and the boutique replicas price most people out, so it’s the item builders stall on. Even makers who’ve got everything else right will tell you the tie is the bit they got wrong. We sell the licensed Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 Leatherface Necktie, and it’s worth tying long rather than short. You’ll find it with our other Leatherface costume pieces.

One cheap extra: a set of fake, crooked teeth changes the shape of your jaw under the mask.

Chainsaws, Hammers and What You’ll Carry All Night

The chainsaw is the icon, so it’s the piece everyone asks about. It’s also the one most likely to spoil your evening, so think before you commit to carrying one.

• A lightweight costume chainsaw. Ours is a wearable prop with a trigger that plays the film audio, built to be carried rather than lugged.
• A full prop chainsaw with sound. Our Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974 prop has a toggle switch for the motor idle and a trigger that spins the chain and plays the film’s audio.
• A Vorschlaghammer. More scene-accurate than either, since the first kill in the 1974 film is a hammer rather than the saw, and much easier to carry all night.

Worth saying: some people take a real, running petrol saw out with them. That’s an actual chainsaw, at a party, in the dark, and no UK venue will thank you for it. A prop with the film audio gets the same reaction, and our replica weapons range covers the saws and the sledgehammer.

If you’re going further than a costume, our 6.5ft Leatherface animatronic mimes the saw with sound and packs down for storage.

Wearing It on the Night

A Leatherface costume is one of the less comfortable ones to wear all evening, so a little planning makes the difference. None of it’s complicated, it just needs doing before you leave.

• Take the mask off between rooms. Latex heats up fast and the eye holes cut your vision more than you’d expect, so don’t wear it on the journey either.
• Test your blood on a scrap first. Cheap stage blood dries stiff and sheds red flecks onto other people’s furniture. Use a fabric-safe formula and expect to top it up.
• Bag and stuff the mask afterwards. Latex degrades if you shove it in a box, and a badly stored mask never looks right again.
• Decide about the silence. Leatherface doesn’t speak, so if you commit to that you can’t explain your own costume. Bring someone who’ll do it for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

These come up most often once someone’s settled on the costume and started pricing it up.

Which Leatherface mask should I buy?

The 1974 Killing Mask, in almost every case. It’s the face people recognise instantly, it matches the widest range of licensed aprons and accessories, and most builders treat it as the standard. The Pretty Woman and Old Lady masks make good second buys.

Was Leatherface based on a true story?

Not directly. The film borrowed a few details from the case of Ed Gein, a Wisconsin murderer who made items from human remains, but the Sawyer family, the farmhouse and the chainsaw were all invented for the screen.

Do I need a chainsaw for a Leatherface costume?

No. The mask and apron do all the identifying, and plenty of people build the look without a saw. If you want a weapon prop, a sledgehammer is more scene-accurate and less awkward to hold all evening.

What’s the cheapest way to dress as Leatherface?

Spend on the mask and borrow the rest. A collared shirt, dark trousers and dark boots come out of your wardrobe or a charity shop, which leaves the mask and apron as the only real purchases.

Putting the Whole Thing Together

Settle the film version, get the mask and the apron right, and the rest of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre costume is a charity-shop shirt and a bit of patience. The 1974 build reads instantly and has the deepest run of licensed pieces behind it. Start with the mask, because everything else is chosen to match it.