Cinderella

I always wonder: what was the real costume the animators drew from?

That may need a little explaining… I feel like most of the time, when people cosplay animated characters, the animation itself is the source material. Of course that makes sense. “What does this dress (or whatever) look like in real life?” A good question, which has helped so many cosplayers arrive at really beautiful designs.

This post is not to denigrate those cosplays. But every time I watch an animated film, especially Disney films, I wonder, what was the original garment? I know most of the time there wasn’t actually an original - the drawing is the original - but what if it really existed? What if the animators were drawing from real life?

I’ve never been more fascinated by that question than when watching the original Disney Cinderella. What does this dress really look like?

Credit to the Walt Disney Company

People have done wonderful versions of it, but I felt like there was more there to explore. I’ve been pondering this particular costume for awhile, and during the 2020 pandemic, I finally figured it out. On accident, in fact.

My little nieces (age 2 and 4 at the time) discovered Cinderella. They wanted their own Cinderella dresses, and of course I had to oblige. Two blue dresses later (don’t get me started on Cinderella and blue…), I just really had to explore this for myself.

When I started working on my own dress, I stared at the film for a long while before determining that it’s gray - but gray is too flat. I don’t know if I can explain this epiphany, but somewhere during my many film viewings, it dawned on me that it couldn’t possibly be one layer. It is a warm gray, but it has depth to it that doesn’t exist in just one fabric. At least, as far as I can tell.

And folks, this is the first time I’ve ever found the fabrics I needed in my stock. Let me just tell you, I’m a fabric hoarder. I have a ton of fabric. Still not sure where all this came from, but I have way too much. And every time I go to do a project, I still don’t have the fabric I need. In this case, through a series of accidents, I found a dark metallic gray that looked fantastic under a semi-sheer white fabric with slubs in it.

Once I had the fabric, it was mostly a simple project. Some effort was put into creating as much of the ballgown shape as I could without wearing a crinoline. Side note: crinolines create such a lovely shape, but they cause issues too. In another post, I’ll talk about lessons learned from Cons… one of them is no crinolines if you can help it. I ended up building a separate petticoat that I’m able to use for any ballgown I want in the future, so the effort is so worth it.

I had random Christmas grosgrain ribbon, so there ya go - that’s my waistband!

So here’s what I arrived at for the final dress. I’m really happy with this project - I think it might be the best one I’ve done. I was able to walk around (in a mask!) at a Halloween event at my church, and it was so fun. I can’t wait until I can take this to a con. I’d love to hear what you think!