Costuming Reconstruction - Transforming a Dress into a Costume

Troupe costuming is always a challenge.  People have different levels of comfort as far as how much coverage they want, different styles, but the troupe director wants the group to look unified and cohesive, identifiable as a group of dancers, and not simply a bunch of individuals who got together to dance.

For our studio recital a few years ago, we purchased similar "goddess dresses" to perform in, and then we customized the dresses to fit our different styles, while retaining the look of "a troupe."  These dresses all had a slight animal print to them, in different colors and slightly different patterns but they were uniform enough to look very troupe-like.

Upon examining the original dress, my idea was to cut the top from the bottom under the bust, and then take apart and re-cut the bottom in a mermaid-style skirt to make it fit in a form-fitting way, as the skirt was rather baggy.  It was a lovely dress on it's own but it needed to fit like a costume would to allow movement but be flattering on stage.

  This was a bit scary, taking the dress apart, but I could definitely see it starting to take shape, almost instantly.  The top was pretty much done once it was separated from the bottom - it just needed hemming and a little bling to finish it off.

The skirt was more challenging.  I opened the seam so that I could see how much fabric I had.  I used my custom made pattern for a mermaid skirt that I made from Mao's Sparkly Belly tutorial online at her costume blog and was able to squeeze out a 3 panel skirt from the existing skirt fabric.  I even had enough material left over to make matching arm gauntlets.  Here is the finished result!



The other troupe members had their costumes altered by a seamstress.  Below is the photo from our studio recital.

Jessikah photo by Pink Heart Photography; troupe photo by Visioneuse