Halloween = LOVE
Not suprising for a crafter and costume lover and enjoyer of themed parties. I'll have a lot of Halloween stuff to post on here, and since I happen to have last year's party photos on my computer right now, I'm starting with this one.
The theme for my Halloween party last year was "A Hollywood Halloween" and I encouraged people to come as celebs, movie characters, classic Universal monsters, etc. I had tossed around a few ideas and finally came up with one outlandish enough to be worthy - BJORK! Her iconic Oscar's dress is instantly recognizable, infamous, and hillarious. It was even fun to make, if a bit costly.
Feathers are expensive. In most any form. I went with feather boas in an attempt to make it somewhat reasonable time wise to feather the majority of the dress, but boas are $3-8 each, even on sale. Let's not count how many are on the dress :) I tried to nab them on sale or with coupons, meaning I was in Joanns & Michaels almost daily and cleaned them out several times, but it was worth it.
The base of the dress was a button down white cotton dress by Target that I picked up at Goodwill for under $6. I'm not much for building things from scratch when its cheap and quick to come up with a shell, so this was perfect. I opened a few buttons and created a v-neck, and then got to work hand sewing the boas to the waist. The top is covered in maribou for a slightly different look and less bulk. If I had to do it over again, I would have hung the boas slightly lower - they created a lot of bulk around the middle, probably not that flattering, though it still felt flouncy and fun. And I would have flared it out with a square dance crinoline to give it more shape.
I made my own template for the swan's head pieces - basically a circle with a triangle beak, and a rectangle neck. I made the base of it out of white cotton (just one of those "fat quarters" sections Joanns sells for $1 on sale). The black and orange are felt, also just the cheap 8 1/2" x 11" sheets they sell at all craft stores, and the eye was a silver plastic button.
I think it came together really well! It did shed feathers all night, but that's probably to be expected, and it was fun to wear. I topped it off with a cheap pageboy wig I found on clearance for $7 = PERFECT!
I didn't go for total authenticity with this, but more in terms of capturing the iconic nature of the image. Bjork's original dress was on flesh mesh, with a lace braw showing through. I thought that looked tacky and unflattering, so I improvised, and I really liked the result.
If you're interested, the costume is now in my etsy shop - fits up to a size 14, or take it in/belt it for a smaller size. It's pretty versatile.