Belle from Beauty and the Beast, fan design by Hannah Alexander
Photos by Studio Zahora
Model, costume: Sylvie Kirkman
This was a very long-term project that kept being pushed back – in total it spanned about 4 years start to finish, largely because I’m not really a princess sort of person! The design is beautiful and I enjoyed working on it, but other deadlines unfortunately kept getting in the way. I eventually completed the outfit to take to Pixelmania 2018 in Poland.
The dress is silk chiffon over a base garment of cotton sateen, dip-dyed by hand to achieve the gradient effect. The base dress is boned with spring steel through the bodice for support. The godets in the skirt are half circles, so there is a huge amount of fabric in the whole dress; over 10m from memory.
The embellishment on the bodice is venice lace hand trimmed and coloured to form the base “belt” with seed beads and pearls applied by hand. the upper vertical beading is applied directly to the dress, the lower loops are strung onto tigertail and can move freely.
The wig is a lacefront and was styled by me, the crown is a base of worbla scrap shaped into a circle and the flowers were applied and beaded later.