Monday, October 4, 2010

My First Encounter with Design


When I was younger, my mom used to sew me and my sister costumes for Halloween. I loved the costumes because they were so original, and always turned out better than their store-bought counterparts. This was one of the first moments that I got to see designing first hand.
One of my favorite costumes was when my sister and I wanted to be Mulan for Halloween. My sister wanted to dress up as Mulan when Mulan had to meet the matchmaker, and I went as the soldier Mulan who impersonated her father and went to fight in the war. After my cousin heard about the costumes, he wanted to join us as General Shang.

My cousin as General Shang, my sister as Mulan when she went to see the matchmaker, and I'm dressed as Mulan when she went to war.

My mom couldn’t find a pattern for my sister’s dress, so she used a basic dress pattern. In the movie, Mulan’s matchmaker dress has extremely long sleeves, so my mom altered the pattern for the sleeves so they would be long, just like what Mulan had. I thought it was so cool how she could deviate from a pattern to make it better. Plus, the shades of pink, blue and green on my sister’s costume matched Mulan’s dress perfectly.

For my soldier costume, she used a basic robe pattern and made it shorter so it looked like the soldiers’ uniform from the movies. This was for what the soldiers wore under their armor. The armor on my costume was made of black, green, and grey fun foam that was hot glued together.

For the final touches, my sister and I had our hair put in a bun, I had a plastic sword that I stuck under my belt and wore around, and my sister carried around a plastic crickee we got in a McDonalds happy meal.
What I loved most about the costumes (besides the fact that my mom put lots of effort into them) is that they looked EXACTLY like what Mulan had in the movies­—much more so than what the Disney store had. What do you think?

Disney's Mulan costume 

3 comments:

  1. I was wondering if I could please have a more detailed explanation of how your mother made the outfits. Especially any information regarding the armour, because I have tried 4 times so far (very unsuccessfully) to make the armour itself. I am making all three of these costumes for halloween this year and a head start would be amazing as I only have 2 months left!! Regards. Billy.

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  2. I was looking for the mulan soldier costume and came upon your site bc its the only one with it. This is awesome though. All of the costumes. I wanted to make one for my daughter next yr for Halloween but I don't know how to sew so we will see lol. Love this though!!

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  3. hi Michelle,
    please let me know if you are open to selling the Mulan as Ping costume, I'd love to buy it for my four year old as she is obsessed with Mulan in training! your mom did an excellent job making it. please contact me via email, thank you!

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