Dressing Inspired

I love cosplay. It is so fun to make a costume from your favorite character. But I don't always have to time or money to create costumes like that. Also, how many places can you actually get away with wearing something like that? If you don't mind, that's great for you, but I wouldn't want to wander around in armor and carrying a battle ax on a normal day. However, there is another option between going full out and not doing it at all. It is: wearing clothes inspired by a character! I'm going to show you two methods of doing this. Let's get into it.

How to Do It

Dressing inspired by a character is extremely easy. What you do is- first, find a picture of the character you want to imitate. Study the colors, the types of clothing used, jewelry, hair, and make-up (if it's a girl). Then you're going to figure out how to take their look and imitate it with what you have in your closet, although this is an excellent excuse to pick up some new clothing or accessories if you don't have them. Allow me to show you.

Say I want to do an outfit inspired by Alice from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. On a side note, all of her outfits are awesome. Anyway, I'll type it into a search engine and pick which outfit I want to mimic. She has several outfits- two or three blue dresses, a black, white, and red ensemble from the Red Queen's court, a Turkish-like outfit from the White Queen's court, her armor, and a traveling outfit at the end. I'm going to choose the court dress, just to do something different. Here are a couple pictures.

This dress is beautiful, even if the Red Queen gave it to her. As you can see, it's mostly red, with black and white, heart printed material on top. Alice wears her hair loose and has no visible makeup on. In the full length picture, you can see that she wears a belt that appears to made of a curtain pull and strapped shoes.

Now I'll look in my closet and try to replicate it. I don't have any red skirts, but that would be a good piece for this dress. Instead, I'm going to use a black one. I'll add a red tank top, a red, white, and black button up shirt, and red flats. My hair isn't curly, but I'll leave it loose. If I wanted to replicate her belt, I might use a scarf or ribbon.

See, easy peasy. (Thanks to Cheshire, our cat, for being my replica rabbit.) It's not exact and most people might not be able to tell what it is. But if you like what you created, who cares. Don't be afraid to tell people who you're dressing as or you can make them guess. That's always fun. It would be a good idea for a party too. Have everyone dress as a character, but only allow them to do an inspired outfit. Then have a game at the beginning to guess who each other is.

The Alternative

If you don't have an eye for replicating things yourself, or don't have the time, here's a second, easier method. Open up Pinterest or a search engine. Type in "-character's name here- inspired outfit". Tons of suggestions will pop up. Look through them until you find one you like or you know you can replicate. If you don't have all the pieces they used, improvise. I get inspired just by looking at all the creative outfits others have put together. Here's a cute one I could easily pull off. P.S. All outfits by Disney Bound are adorable. She's always a good one to go with.

That wraps up dressing inspired. Remember, the most important part of doing inspired outfits is being creative. Do your own twist on outfits. Go out and have fun.