While upgrading my live-action Cinderella cosplay with a wig, I decided I also wanted to upgrade the dress to something better and more screen-accurate. I did love the dress I already had, but it was more of a Cinderella-inspired dress than a movie-accurate gown, and it didn’t have the same structure or silhouette as the dress in the movie.
The dress that Lily James wore in the movie was actually a two-piece dress, with a separate bodice and skirt (mine was an all-in-one), not to mention all of the undergarments, which consisted of a chemise, corset, crinoline and many layers of petticoats.
In order to get the same kind of silhouette as the movie dress, with the huge skirt and tiny waist, I knew I needed to get a corset and crinoline. I decided that the best thing to do would be to get a corseted bodice custom-made for me, which I (stupidly!) thought would mean that I wouldn’t also need another corset to go underneath the bodice (for some reason I thought that having another corset underneath might cause extra “bulk” under the bodice). I actually looked around to see how much it would cost to get the whole dress custom-made with a steel-boned corseted bodice, but it would have worked out hugely expensive, so I decided to just go with a custom-made bodice.
I saw a corseted Cinderella bodice on Instagram which looked exactly like the kind of thing I was looking for, and it was made by Anastasia Lion, who I had actually been following for a long time. Her costumes are brilliant and I decided I wanted to get the bodice commissioned by her. It turned out gorgeous!
She also sent me lots of extra butterflies, which I eventually decided to add to the bertha, to make it more like the movie version.
She also kindly sent me a spare white corset she had, which I realised I definitely did need after seeing how much all the skirt layers weighed!
Moving on to the skirt layers, I needed an elliptical crinoline cage with a bustle in order to get the same shape as Lily James’ dress in the movie. I found this one on AliExpress which is perfect!
It needed some minor adjustments when it arrived, which included slightly shortening it as it was too long for me (more details below), but it’s a really good crinoline, and the hoops are actually adjustable, which is perfect!
Next, I needed to make the petticoat. The petticoat used in the movie had tons of layers of beautiful frills in different colours, some of which were attached to the main petticoat layers with godets.
I wanted to get a skirt that I could use as a base and attach the frills to, as opposed to trying to tackle the gathering of all the skirt layers and the creation of a waistband by myself. I found a light blue tulle skirt on AliExpress which I thought would work well.
I then found some frills on AliExpress which I could attach to the skirt. I chose white, lavender, blue, and turquoise frills, some of which were iridescent, just like the iridescent frills on the movie petticoat.
I then hand-sewed all the frills to the tulle skirt.
I think the petticoat turned out quite well. It wasn’t as full as I would have liked, which was due to the fact that I didn’t add godets and my base skirt didn’t have enough fabric in it to create a fuller effect, but I think it still works well for the moment, despite not being entirely screen-accurate. I read in this blog post (written by someone who worked on the movie dress) that the inside of the crinoline also had various layers of frills added to it, so that when the camera showed Cinderella’s slippers, the frills were visible in the background. So I guess I might need to eventually buy more frills to add to my crinoline, too, if I want to be even more screen-accurate!
With the petticoat finished, I needed to make some adjustments to the crinoline to ensure that everything looked right. I did some calculations and worked out that the crinoline needed to be approximately 101cm long. I also read on a cosplay site that, ideally, the bottom ruffle of the petticoat should start just above the bottom hoop. With this in mind, I shortened the crinoline accordingly until I was happy with it.
The final part of the ballgown was the outer skirt. For this, I initially ordered Angel Secret’s “S343 cinderella gradient skirt”.
The skirt is stunning! It has so many layers and so many different shades in it, and it is very poofy. It has iridescent fabric layers too. My only complaint is that it has shiny silver sequin-like gems, instead of proper crystals, but other than that it’s perfect!
When I put the skirt next to my bodice, the blues didn’t quite match, as the bodice was lighter than the skirt, so I decided I wanted to buy some paler blue sheer fabric to lay over the top of the Angel Secret skirt, in order to make it match the bodice better. My boyfriend kindly offered to help me make a top skirt layer (I don’t have a sewing machine and couldn’t have done it all by myself!), so I ordered 14 metres of sheer organza fabric in pale blue on eBay. I also went to Hobbycraft and bought some metallic silver thread (since that was the colour used to sew the top skirt layer on the original movie dress), some elastic for the waistband, and some light blue bias binding to bind together the elastic and the raw, gathered top edge of the fabric.
The skirt was tricky to make, but we did it in the end. First, we gathered the 14 metres of fabric together using a method shown in this video. Then we cut the elastic so that it was the right length to fit around my waist and attached the gathered fabric to it. We sewed the two sides of the skirt together with the silver thread and then attached the bias binding to the waist. The bias binding wasn’t wide enough to cover all the raw fabric edges as well as the elastic, so we had to cut two lengths of it and then stitch them together along the long edge to make a wider piece of bias binding that we could use.
I also bought 310 Swarovski crystals on eBay to attach to the skirt once it was finished, but left the sequin gems on the Angel Secret skirt so that they could still shine through the new top layer. All the crystals I bought were Aurora Boreale (AB) crystals, just like the ones used on the real movie dress. I bought them in varying sizes (120xSS10, 100xSS12 and 90xSS16), as the real dress did not use just one size of crystal. I chose hotfix crystals, as they’re much easier to apply than ones that would need to be individually hand-glued on, so I bought a hotfix applicator tool from Amazon.
Adding 310 Swarovski crystals to the skirt took ages. I can’t even begin to imagine how long it must have taken the costume makers to add 10,000 crystals to the original movie dress!
While I was working on getting the dress more screen-accurate, I decided to work on a few other aspects of the cosplay, too. I had noticed that Cinderella wore very pale lilac/blue tights with the dress, which seemed to have a slight shimmer to them.
I couldn’t find any tights in the right colour that had a shimmer effect, so I bought some regular, opaque tights in a lilac shade very close to the colour of Cinderella’s tights.
I also needed some undergarments for the costume. I bought some blue bloomers on Amazon and a white chemise on Vinted. I chose a chemise that had tie straps just like the one Bella Mae made for her Cinderella dress replica, as I liked the idea of being able to untie the shoulder straps once the corset was on so that they could sit under the bodice easily.
I had also been looking out for the Disney Store Cinderella dress up shoes for a while, since I wanted to buy them so that I could use the screen-accurate butterflies on them to replace the ones on my glass slippers. I finally found someone selling the shoes together with the Disney Store dress on Vinted and bought them.
Removing the butterflies from the shoes wasn’t easy! They were actually very well attached. In the end, I managed to remove both of them from the shoes, and also removed the old butterflies that were on my glass slippers so that I could stick the new ones on.
I then glued the new butterflies onto my glass slippers with the same shoe repair glue that I had used to attach the first ones.
Finally, I decided that I wasn’t actually happy with the wig I had for Cinderella, as it was too red and not blonde enough, and the Swarovski crystals I had stuck on it were too big.
I decided to sell the wig and buy a new one. I bought the “Wavy Golden Blonde Lace Front Synthetic Wig LF119” from Wig Is Fashion.
The new wig is a much better colour than my old one!
I styled it and added another 130 AB Swarovski crystals to it (120xSS10 and 10xSS12) with the hotfix applicator tool, and it was perfect!
The finishing touch for the costume was some golden sparkly eyeshadow and rosy lipstick. In the movie, Lily James wore MAC’s Antique Gold Pigment on her eyelids and a Moroccan terracotta jar lip stain, but I went with e.l.f.’s Liquid Glitter Eyeshadow in the shade “Copper Pop” and MUA’s Creamy Matte Lipstick in the shade “Agenda”, which I purchased from Superdrug.
Ready for the grand reveal of the new and improved cosplay? You’ll have to check back soon, once I’ve returned from MCM Comic Con…
Meanwhile, always remember to have courage and be kind!
Poppy x
Pink Blossom Cosplay 