Last Saturday I went to a Wes Anderson themed evening at my local independent cinema (Cinema City). The film was a surprise and dressing up was encouraged. Now, my friends and I don’t need much encouragement to dress up, so we jumped at the chance to put costumes together. I’d recently watched Moonrise Kingdom so decided to go along as Suzy Bishop.
I’m on a super strict budget at the moment as I’m saving for an exciting holiday so I only had a maximum of £20 to spend. Here’s how I did it.
Shoes – Total: £3
Suzy wears saddle shoes. I don’t have any saddle shoes and buying a pair would be WAY out of my budget. I spent a little bit of time on pinterest and found a couple of saddle shoe cheats. Basically, buy a pair of cheap plain white pumps and colour them in to look like saddles shoes. It was really, really easy. I used a Sharpie pen, however, in hindsight I would use acrylic or fabric paint next time as the Sharpie did bleed into the fabric a little bit.
Dress – Total: £5.99
I spent quite a long time looking for a dress. I wanted to get something as close as I could to Suzy’s cute pink dress. If I’d had more time I probably could have made something, in the end I went for this pink dress from Ebay . It’s kind of the right colour and has a collar. When the dress arrived I realised hemline was a little odd, but because of time restrictions I left it as it was. The sleeves were very long, but I just cut them down to the length I wanted. I added cuffs, which I cut from an old pillowcase and added a pink belt which I already owned (coincidentally, exactly the right colour).
Suitcase – Total: £9.42
Suzy carries quite a few bags, including a yellow suitcase. Like everything else for this costume an actual yellow suitcase would be way out of my budget (although I did see some nice ones on Ebay). I ended up improvising with a paper mache suitcase from Ebay. It was just over £5, but postage pushed it up to £8.42. I also had to get some more yellow paint which was £1.
Other bits:
I already had white knee high socks and a basket bag and my friend lent me a pair of binoculars. That was all I really needed! Suzy’s hairstyle is really simple, although she doesn’t have a fringe like I do. Makeup wise I just used blue eyeshadow and a bit of eyeliner.
Grand total: £18.41
Here’s my final outfit. I was really pleased with it! Doing a budget costume really helped me get over my “costumes have to be exactly right” thing.
and here are my friends costumes….
I think they look awesome!
p.s. The cinema showed The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
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