shaunapuff

I think if you asked me before the age of 5 who my favorite Disney Princess was, a brown haired brown eyed kid would smile back at you and say Belle, of course. After the Lion King, Beauty and the Beast was the first Disney movie I saw, and most importantly, the first Princess movie I came in contact with.

I couldn’t read yet, but I definitely remember trapsing around our NYC apartment with a basket in one hand and whatever book I could find in the other, pretending to ignore people and singing all of the songs (when I wasn’t pretending to be Dorothy, of course. The blue dress and basket were very versatile). My mom clearly noticed and ultimately took me to see Beauty and the Beast on Broadway when I was about 4, making it my first Broadway show and live theatre experience. I only remember little bits and pieces, but my mom remembers me being completely entranced by the whole thing, bouncing in my seat and mouthing every word to every song.

I was lucky enough to see the show again when I was about 10 with my fifth-grade class on Broadway, and I remember that production much more. At the time, I remember being bothered that it wasn’t an exact 1:1 adaptation from the film, but in hindsight the music from this adaptation is sensational and underrated as hell. After watching it, I bought a fake rose from the gift shop at the theatre that I cherished, and still have to this day. I remember being particularly drawn to the costumes in this variation, always hoping one day I could play this iconic character on stage.

Ultimately, I’ve actually auditioned for the show twice and never did end up playing her. The first time was in 7th grade when I got cast in the ensemble and ended up moving before rehearsals started; the second in 11th grade, getting cast as Babbette the feather duster (who I also love), to ultimately leave the production due to another show’s rehearsals conflicting. It always left a bit of a hole in my heart because of how deeply embedded the show has been in my life, but I can at least sing the songs on my own time and embody the character through costuming.

From what I remember in my childhood, Disney Princess costumes were a little hard to come by, so I actually never dressed up as Belle for Halloween either (as much as I desperately wanted to). The closest I came was dressing was Jane Porter from Tarzan when I was like 7— repurposing the dress when my friends would come over and pretend to be Belle because ✨yellow✨. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the desire to dress up as her never really left me, hence the reason I write this for you today.

At some point in elementary school, I saw the Little Mermaid which completely rocked my world and instantly moved Ariel to the top spot (a story for another day). Because of this, a lot of people don’t know how important Belle is to me or why I decided to make her dress. I feel that part of the reason is truthfully- she’s the brunette princess: the only one with brown hair and brown eyes in the lineup. Considering there is only one of her, and a looottt of people out there with brown hair and brown eyes, I think a lot of people naturally saw themselves in her from appearances alone. Because of this, she was many of my friends’ favorite growing up, which continued into our teenage years. To an extent, I subconsciously suppressed my love for her a little bit to be supportive of my friends, and typically opted for Jasmine, since she was no one’s favorite and I shared more of a resemblance to her than Ariel. I also am not much of a reader, so that immediately dispelled any comparison.

As many know, being a reader isn’t the only thing you can do to label you a weirdo in people’s eyes. Especially in elementary school and middle school, I’ve been labeled as weird for as long as I can remember. Between a childhood obsession with dressing up that clearly never went away, an anime obsession intensified only by a musical theatre obsession, I was as far from normal as you could get. And man, did people notice it. To be fair, I did very little to try to hide these things about myself— I was drawing anime characters on the sideline of every notebook in every class, and then performing on stage after school any chance I could. Because of this, I definitely felt alienated by most of my peers— especially growing up in a small town where everyone has known each other their whole lives. (I also recently learned that part of the film was actually written not 10 minutes from the town I grew up in here )

While Belle is seen as strange by her small town, all she really needs is to get out of there to realize her true potential. A storyline like that gives a kid hope that they just need to leave that small town and go to college and everything will be better. Additionally, in most of the media we grew up with in the 2000s, social outcasts were often depicted as unlovable and unattractive (see anything Dan Schneider ever made). It doesn’t really feel good when most of your representation in media are secondary characters like Stacey Dilson and Sinjin. But Belle is special. She might be weird but she’s beautiful, nerdy and worthy of love (even multiple love interests).

Truthfully, weird people come in all shapes and sizes. Believe it or not we can in fact be conventionally attractive, which flabbergasts most people. It makes dating people so difficult because so many Gastons out there just want you to be normal, but you’ve never lived a day in your life that way. From my time in the cosplay community, I learned that being hot and weird is not a unique experience, even if it was underrepresented when we were growing up.

While I was active in the convention circuit, I actually made my start mostly portraying Disney Princesses while simultaneously performing as a Party Princess to make a little extra money. For the first few years, I actually dressed as Belle a couple of times, a store-bought version of her gold dress for parties, and the blue town dress on my own time. It was ultimately the horrendous 2017 live action movie that made me fall out of love with Belle for a few reasons. Aside from the excessive use of autotune, (mostly) unnecessary song additions and plot points that went nowhere— that dress was an abomination. You know the one.

Something shifted inside of me after that movie came out that I couldn’t quite shake. I kind of distanced myself from the property almost entirely. It was easy enough as in any Disney group I did, Belle usually was one of the first characters to get snapped up. The idea of wearing this iconic dress always lingered in the back of my mind, but it was always on the back burner. It actually wasn’t until this year that my desire to wear this dress was reignited.

Ironically, I went on a Disney Cruise with my mom earlier this year- and one of the perks was Broadway caliber stage productions. Our ship had one production, which was of course Beauty and the Beast. But not just any production— but a rendition of the 2017 live action catastrophe. I was livid. Thankfully, the talent was better than the movie, and the staging of the production was SENSATIONAL. The very thing that turned me away from the movie to begin with, reignited a flame in me— I was gonna wear that original dress damn it. But not just wear it, no, this time I was going to make it.

Construction Notes

2026 marks 10 years of sewing for me. While I got my machine in 2014, my mom and I did a lot of projects together, and 2016 was my first solo project. I watched a few Tiktoks and delusionally believed I could make this dress. In some ways this was equal parts challenge and a repetition of things I already know. I’ve made a few corsets and did some extensive ruffles over the past couple of years, but I’ve never attempted a full ball gown. Not from scratch anyway.

Honestly, this was such a test of my skills and patience. Long straight stitches are such a challenge for me and my attention span, but I knew it was time to crush my fears and embrace my inner Shia LaBeouf. This whole costume was a bit of a challenge for me from step to step to be honest. (In the order I worked on them)

Fabric- I ordered my fabric from Fabric Wholesale Direct because I was having some trouble finding the exact color I needed in person at the right price point (RIP JoAnns). I was able to get gold polyester dupioni for a relatively cheap price. I took their suggestions and ordered my zippers and thread to match the gold fabric. I’m gonna be honest- the colors were so off. Nothing was right and I was beside myself because I bought so damn much of the fabric.

Top Skirt- After constructing the 12 panels in the skirt I tried dyeing the fabric with synthetic dye before doing the rouching, and it barely did anything. I think I used at least 4 bottles of dye and let it sit overnight and barely made a difference. The bottom fabric was less egregious than the top so I let it go. Honestly, I am so proud of this particular part of the skirt and how it sits. Essentially I had to iron and hem each of the panels, then sew all of the panels together, and then sew long straight lines of elastic all the way up. Trust the process but damn was this satisfying.

Corset- Unfortunately, the top fabric looked less like the color on the website so similarly, I constructed the entire corset, complete with fusible interfacing and decided to dye it once it was constructed. Horrible idea btw. It undid much of the fusible interfacing and also barely changed the color— maybe one shade different after drying. The outer shell was SO bubbly and awful, but since I bought a lot of extra fabric, I decided to use the extra fabric to do the whole thing over (psychotic I know). After the corset was done, the color still clashed tremendously with the skirt so I ultimately bought gold paint and painted the top layer after it was all sewn together. It was a subtle change but honestly so necessary. I used the original as the lining so it’s super extra clean. I used flexible steel boning in each boning channel and steel grommets to close it.

Bottom Skirt: the truest test of patience. Essentially it was a circle skirt with a ruffle at the base of the skirt that was about 12 inches high. I’ve done a large ruffle but never like this. I couldn’t even tell you how many feet of fabric this was but I finished the hard edge across the whole thing on both sides. After that I ironed down the entire hem and sewed it down. Once the entire thing was hemmed which I’m pretty sure took an eternity- I created a top layer with a sheer fabric for texture. The sheer fabric I chose had gold roses on it because I’m a lover of small the tails. I sewed both pieces together, and then I did a basting stitch on top and gathered the ruffle. I was able to achieve the measurements through ChatGPT to be honest.

Roses- because nothing about this project was easy, I ordered roses from Amazon to add extra details. The roses came and the gold clashed with the entire outfit (again). Since I had extra paint from the corset I was able to paint them petal by petal to be cohesive. For each flower, I had to cut the back part off and glue the petals together for security. I also originally started to hand sew each one to the dress but later had to move them around (and might still), so I glued gold flat backed safety pins to them so I could move them accordingly. This helped a lot because I am still not 100% happy with where they are sitting, so I may have to go back to the drawing board slightly to adjust them.

Drapes- I don’t really know what to call the little bits that drape from the sides but this was another near impossible fabric to find. I ended up buying this fabric from the garment district by swatching the painted corset fabric and trying to find something slightly darker. I ended up only finding spandex that was the right color so it weighed my top skirt down a lot. Because my zipper didn’t match, I ended up using a heavy 2-inch elastic braid for the waistband to compensate for it. I really struggled with these-especially because I went in thinking it was going to be easy. I ultimately didn’t order enough fabric this time and had to cut some corners overall, especially in the back. My original plan was to make the gloves from the same fabric but I ran out of fabric and time.

Wig- I had actually bought a cheap lace-front on Amazon a few years back that more or less fit the needs of this costume. It wasn’t curly enough so I used boiling water and some rollers I had on hand. Truthfully I wanted the curls to be a little tighter than they ended up but overall— I did re-attempt this 3 times haha but overall it ended up looking ok.

Accessories- To enhance the look, I bought a hoop skirt on Amazon that I can hopefully use for future projects as well. Since I wasn’t able to make the gloves due to a lack of fabric, I also purchased those on Amazon, and by some miracle they matched well enough (I was ready to return them and back them up with white ones if needed though). I still have my rose from 20+ years ago I brought to the shoot for sentimental reasons. It’s a little worse for wear, but I’d like to think of it as a testament of how far I’ve come and how much I’ve withstood. Additionally, I brought along my Lumiere I’ve been holding onto since 2014 which was a gift from Disneyland. I think he’s been on my shelf waiting for this very moment. I was sad I couldn’t find my usual mirror I carried around for her since childhood, hopefully next time. And I brought a hardcover book— of course.

One thing I did not factor in during my many try-ons was that I’d be wearing heels with the dress. This definitely threw things off a little bit because the dress ended up sitting slightly shorter than I wanted it to. I had to position everything just right and even still my shoes were visible. If I shoot it again I might just go for flat shoes, as I have a pair that would probably look better than the heels I ended up wearing. Through this process I definitely learned the difficulty of finding gold fabric that satisfies, and truly understand Alexandra Louise’s need to make 4 Belle dresses. While I am hoping to fine-tune what I have, I am hoping to bring the skills I’ve learned through this project into new future works. I definitely have more confidence than I’ve had in a long time.

Thank you to everyone who has followed along and cheered me on during this insane project. While I never got to play her on stage, walking around in public and taking the city bus and subway as her was enough of a performance to last me a little while. I even got to sing a little bit while we were shooting and a bunch of little girls gathered around to watch, it was so precious. I could think of no better, no more meaningful character to inspire such a whirlwind of an undertaking.