A SoCal Girls Costume Outlet @southerncalcostumes - Tumblr Blog

Amber Adren as Villager Belle

I had the honor to have Amber Arden model my Villager Belle dress a couple weeks ago.

Well this turned into something far bigger when a sect of Disney asked her to model in the dress for the new Rose Souvenir Cup that came out in the Disneyland California Park on the 24th!

She did a whole shoot with Disney in Carthey Circle Restaurant with the gorgeous Rose Cup. I couldn’t believe it!

Here is Amber’s Instagram and Facebook. Go follow her if you don’t already! She's a true star!

#amber arden #villager belle #costumes 2017 #beauty and the beast #princess belle

enchantedseastudio

Actress Tara Strong in the Lace-Front Long Length “Degas” wig by Enchanted Sea. Get your own version of the wig here! [Tara Strong’s IMDB | Enchanted Sea’s Website] (and check out videos of her singing POTO songs here!)

operafantomet

Wig by @enchantedseastudio and dressing gown by @southerncalcosette… This phandom has some seriously talented folks around!

southerncalcostumes

Thank you so much! It was such an honor to make a costume for someone I have such a huge respect for!

#replies

I had the honor of making Tara Strong’s Christine Daae dressing gown! Tara is the voice of Raven in Teen Titans, Melody in The Little Mermaid II, Timmy Turner in Fairly Odd Parents, Bubbles in Power Puff Girls, and the list goes on and on!

I like so many others grew up hearing her voice everywhere! It was such a huge honor making this piece for her!

Isn’t she absolutely stunning?!

#christine daae #tara strong #the phantom of the opera #dressing gown 2016 #costumes 2016

yournewfoundpopularity

Details of the UK/German Glinda Bubble Dress

#wicked

revolutionary-threads

A good tutorial explaining how to make fabric look as if it has been through hell and back with a myriad of different techniques. Tutorial includes: weathering, tea-staining and blood/ burn effects…

#video #costume help

melanaegis

Rey Concept Art The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Phil Szostak

#rey costume #rey 2016 #costume help #concept art

a-faeryschild

padme picnic skirt pattern - scaled slightly up from Natalie’s 5″2 to my 5″5 frame

starparticles

Thank you for this!! So incredibly useful!

#padre meadow costume #costume help

legit-writing-tips

Legit’s Historical Fashion Masterpost

All right guys, I’ve decided to put together another masterpost for you - this time on historical fashion. This could get lengthy so… bear with me. (Forgive me also if some of the dates are a touch inaccurate - I’m not a historian and I’m going with what Google gives me.)

Prehistory -

Neolithic Clothing - The beginnings of textiles, some woven materials, leather, etc. Circa 102000 BCE - 2000 BCE

Bronze Age Britain - The development of more sophisticated textiles, including wool and some ornamentation, including brooches. Circa 3200 BCE - 600 BCE

Iron Age Clothing (Europe) - Even more sophisticated, ornamented clothing, textiles, hairstyles. Dyed clothing arises. Circa 1200 BCE - 1 BCE (in Europe)

Fashion of the Ancient World

Clothing of Mesopotamia - i.e, Babylon. Also Mesopotamian jewelry. Circa 3000 BCE - 300 BCE

Clothing of Ancient Egypt - All eras.

Clothing of Ancient India - An overview.

Ancient Greek Clothing + Wikipedia for Definitions

Ancient Roman Clothing + More Rome

Ancient Celtic Clothing

Vikings!

Biblical Clothing - i.e., Primarily Ancient Hebrew

Byzantine Clothing

*Note: I’m not including many cultures here (such as Asian/South American) simply because of my own lack of expertise + time and space limitations in this masterpost.

Medieval Clothing

Wikipedia Overview

Anglo-Saxon Clothing - (Pre-Norman Invasion)

England 1066-1087 - Ish

1100 - 1200 in European Fashion - Wikipedia

1200 - 1300 in European Fashion - Wikipedia

*A Note on Women’s Fashion - Tight lacing did NOT appear until about 1340, which means that shapely, comely bodices would not have appeared in fashion before this time.

14th Century Women’s Fashion - The stereotypical “medieval” look with wimple, long sleeves, etc.

Sexy Sexy Knights

Suits of Armor & Their Component Parts

Suit of Armor - Labeled Photo for Reference

15th Century Clothing

The Renaissance

History of the Corset - Italian in origin. Introduced to France in the 1500s.

15th Century Florence

*Note: For the Tudor and Elizabethan eras of fashion it’s important to note that there were laws in place which dictated what clothing you could wear due to your social class.

Tudor Era Clothing - King Henry VIII, et al

Tudor Dress & Its Component Parts

Elizabethan Clothing

Tudor/Elizabethan Corsets - Corsets during this time created a shape with a flat chest and narrow waist.

Jacobean Era Dress - 1603 - 1625

And Beyond

Baroque/Rococo Fashion - France 1650 - 1800

What to Wear in the English Civil War

The “Naughty” Side of 18th Century French Fashion - NSFW. Ooh la la.

Pilgrims in Murica

American Revolutionary War Costumes

Colonial Clothing - 18th Century Murica

Colonial Men - Colonial Women

Overview of Native American Clothing - *Note: Please use this as a starting point only and do your own research. Remember that different groups have fashions specific to their cultures. This is more to know what NOT to do than to know what TO do.

Fashion Under the French Revolution

Regency Fashion - 1800-1845 England

Regency Corsets/Underthings

History of Victorian Fashion

Victorian Men’s Clothing

History of the Victorian Corset

Victorian Women’s Clothing By Layer - All 5 yo.

American Fashion - 1830s

Women’s Fashion During the Civil War

Twentieth Century

La Belle Époque 1895-1914

Edwardian Fashion - 1900-1919

Men’s Edwardian Fashion

Flapper Fashion

More 1920s - 1920s Hairstyles - 1920s Makeup

1930s Fashion - 1930s Hats and Hair - 1930s Makeup

1940s Fashion - 1940s Hairstyles - 1940s Makeup

1950s Fashion - 1950s Hairstyles - 1950s Makeup

Early 1960s - Mid/Late 1960s - 1960s Makeup History

1970s in General - 1970s Makeup - 1970s Hair

Punk Fashion

And I’m stopping here. You should have it after this point, kiddos.

You better appreciate this.

#masterpost #costume help

angelafriedman

My business is worth more than an hourly wage + materials

I am often told “that’s so expensive!” or “that only cost you $10 to make!” I think this is due to a lack of information on what it actually takes to manufacture clothing and sell it. Running a fashion business requires much more than the funds to pay the designer a wage and cover the cost of direct materials for the garment sewn.

Some of the invisible costs of running a fashion business: studio rental and monthly bills, capital purchases like machinery and tables and computers, business and trademark registration fees, banking fees, creating catalogs and lookbooks, shipping of materials or transport to pick them up, building up and maintaining inventory in advance of sales, losing money on garments that didn’t sell or sold on sale, payment processing fees, designing new collections and creating new samples, legal fees, researching trends, art supplies, web design, website domain and hosting fees, SEO services and consulting, packaging materials, marketing materials like postcards and business cards, office supplies, workers’ comp and unemployment insurance and other taxes, sending free samples for review, hosting events like pop up shops or trunk shows, garment labels and hang tags, logo or artwork design, inventory storage, stock supplies like hangers and garment racks, phone and internet bills, software purchases like Photoshop or Quickbooks, training new interns or assistants, meetings with editors and stylists and photographers, hiring photographers / models / hair stylists / makeup artists / wardrobe stylists / assistants for photo shoots, photo shoot venue rentals, producing fashion shows or presentation shows, the cost of creating and mailing catalogs and marketing materials to boutiques and retailers, business classes… The list goes on.

These invisible expenses add up to tens of thousands of dollars a year, even for a small business owner who is prudent and does most operations like sewing, marketing, and selling for herself or himself. For small businesses who outsource sewing or who hire sales agents or who have a team of employees, these costs quickly add up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This means that it requires an enormous amount of revenue (and lots of sales) for a business to even break even before the designer can consider paying themselves a salary at all.

Also bear in mind that many of these things also require time to complete, even if most of the labor (such as accounting) is outsourced to another professional. Someone still has to collect receipts, input data, write the social media posts, keep count of inventory, plan photoshoots, etc. An hourly wage that only covers sewing time, for example, would ignore the countless other hours that it takes for a designer to stay in business. For my business, Angela Friedman Inc, I do most everything myself in my studio. For every 1 hour that I spend sewing, I spent approximately another 5-6 hours doing all of these other things like social media, writing emails to customers and retailers, planning events, designing new styles, and paperwork paperwork paperwork. If I counted say $15 an hour for my sewing time in each price, but didn’t increase the prices to reflect these other expenses, I would in effect be earning $3-$4 an hour. In the US, at least, $15 is barely a living wage. $3 means that either you burn out or your business goes bankrupt.

Consider the example of one of my silk and French lace robes, the Iris Robe priced at $325. If you think that is expensive, sure, maybe it is. But I’m not putting $325 in my pocket. After the cost of materials directly associated with the garment and packaging and payment fees, I’m left with about $253. It takes me about 3 hours to cut and sew one start to finish (there are a lot of details like lace applique that take longer than a standard robe might). Remember how I mentioned that I spend 6 hours doing “other business stuff” for every 1 hour I spend sewing? Take that into account, and now this robe takes me 21 hours to make. Divide the $253 left, and I’m now earning $12 an hour to sew the robe. (In reality, I earn less than this due to other unexpected expenses that I simply can’t count on.) But I think we can all at least agree that an artist earning $12 an hour is not “too expensive.”

Of course I realize that there are many who can’t afford a $325 robe anyway. I’m in no way implying that you don’t exist or your needs aren’t important. If you can’t afford clothes that are ethically manufactured, it’s also because our economic system is broken. If you can only afford clothes manufactured in sweatshops by oppressed peoples of the world, then you too are oppressed. Your wages are probably also unfairly low and your expenses are probably also unfairly high. And of course, our trade quotas being screwed up in the 90s didn’t help, but that’s another discussion for another day. (For the record, I also can’t afford to buy my own work, which is another indicator that our economic system is broken.)

My point is, please be kind before accusing small businesses of price gouging. We’re trying to earn a living the same way as you, and most of us are just barely scraping by regardless of how high our prices may seem at first glance. There are so many unseen expenses that go into running a fashion business. My business is worth more than an hourly wage + materials.

angelafriedman

Of course I forgot to mention one other thing… Please also consider that it takes an enormous amount of practice and training to be able to create quality beautiful garments. This is not the kind of sewing they teach in a semester home ec class. This is the kind of high-end, highly skilled design and manufacturing that I’ve been doing for over 10 years, I have a degree (from a not-inexpensive 4 year university), and I’ve been sewing since I was a little girl. I think that there is a lack of understanding also for how many years it takes to develop these skills, none of which I was paid for. I would love to see those years of advanced training reflected in my salary, like you would see for a dentist or software engineer or lawyer. But I don’t. That’s just the reality of handcrafting in America, unfortunately.

If you would like to see more of my work or support my business, please visit my website at www.angelafriedman.com. I would love your support so much. <3

megushie

This is why I’m so much more willing to spend a lot of money on one object made by an individual (or set of individuals) than something in a department store. Support local artists and craftspeople.

angelafriedman

Yes!! If more of us made an effort to buy local (or just buy quality over quantity), we really could change the structure of our economy. We could bring back a reverence for craftsmanship and the joy of beautifully and ethically made clothing. Let 2016 be the year that we all try a little harder!

redthreadedcostumes

This. All of this.

#IMPORTANT

cosplayhelpwithdecember

I spiffed up this tutorial I made a while ago. And by spiffed up I mean I added the text to the pictures.

december-wynn-deactivated202211

Look I finally made this tutorial tumblr compatible

#I've always wondered how they do this #costume help

mademoiselleeuphrasie-blog

Was looking at some ballet costume sites and came across this pattern, which would be a great pattern for a Hannibal Slavegirl bodice if you’re not up to draping or drafting a pattern!

viscountess

Reblogging because I get questions about patterns for this costume a lot and the panels on this bodice look great Really, awesome find @mademoiselleeuphrasie!

#hannibal bodice #the phantom of the opera #costume help

enchantedseastudio

UK (RAH) Star Princess Skirt Plan.

Enchanted Sea is on Facebook | Instagram | Etsy | devART | Main Website. For commission inquiries visit this page!

#star princess #long post #costume help #the phantom of the opera

crafts-chicks-and-cats-deactiva

people be like

#$500+ just for the fabric alone...#easily a 2000 dollar dress

After two years looking for star princess fabric and finding something like it but it was sheer, then looking around 5 more years I finally found some! One side looks like the Germany version colors and the other side the London version! Whoo! Quite a bit of it will probably end up on my etsy!

#star princess #christine daae #the phantom of the opera

miho-orion

This is a tutorial/review on using fabric softener to remove shine form a wig. Since I used a curly wig, I’ve included steps to untangle and re-curl a curly wig.

Before: