French Paper Halloween Costume
Posted on July 7, 2007 - Filed Under Frightful Fashions
An adaptation of a paper costume described in La Mode Illustrée 1926
What a delight to have found this fun and relatively easy-to-make Halloween party costume!
The skirt and headdress are made of strips of paper. Loops of paper (or streamers of crepe paper) are fastened to a belt or sash of fabric in alternating colors. The headdress is also of alternating colors, use a stiff paper so that the “feathers” stand up. Bend a few for a more realistic look.
The Tunic can be made from a cotton shirt, with various animal shapes to be stenciled on in fabric paint. Green elephants, red camels, yellow snakes.
They could also be cut from colored felt and glued to a shirt.
The accessories for the costume are bracelets of gilded cardboard, amulets made of wool, and a collar made of dry macaroni tubes with red, green, and blue round beads.
The original instructions suggest that the costume may be adapted to resemble a Sioux Indian, by adding a shirt and making the skirt shorter, painting the face brown, and adding blue war paint to the cheeks to give the warrior “a terrible air”. Rounding up a group of girls to put on a ballet dressed thus was reported to be a great interlude to the fancy ball, and boys could join in the fun with a similar costume and the addition of cardboard shields painted brown and gray.
