One Costume, Three Ways: DIY Renaissance Mulan
Last week, Alia posted about our fun day on opening day of The Original Renaissance Pleasure Faire. You may remember that we went dressed as Renaissance versions of our favorite Disney Princesses and my favorite happens to be Mulan. Here’s how I got my one-of-a-kind DIY Disney Princess Renaissance Mulan Costume!
Visualizing
I scoured the internet as well as our website for the right costumes and accessories and used those images to create a vision board and came up with the above.
Dress
The base of the costume is our Renaissance Peasant Dress by Leg Avenue. I got it in ivory but it was really easy to dye it with Rit Dye. For more details on how to dye your dress, see how Alia dyed her dress green for Tiana and how Amy was able to achieve a two-toned look for Ariel, which is what I did to get Mulan’s pink top and burgundy skirt.
Underneath the peasant dress, I wore a long white peasant skirt that I already have. But if you don’t happen to have a long white skirt, you can always use our Long Hoop Skirt.
A blue corset over the dress completes the basic look. Now, onto my favorite part of any look, the accessories!
Accessories
Of course the base of your costume is the most important part. If I left my outfit as just the dress, skirt, and corset, I’m pretty sure people would still recognize me as Mulan. But I think accessories are a great way to have a little fun and make your costume just a little extra special.
Belt
The first accessory I knew I had to have to get the right look is a red belt bag. This was easy to find as belt bags are incredibly popular at the moment. This was perfect for mimicking the waist tie that Mulan has. So not only did it make my costume more recognizable as Mulan, it was great for holding my money and chapstick in an easy-to-reach spot.
Charms
The holes on the belt were perfect to hanging my smaller charms. I had sword and arrow keychains, a Mulan bracelet with Mulan-related charms, and a Mulan pendant. I liked hanging the charms on my belt because it really gave my outfit more of a Renaissance feel.
Cage
The bag part of the belt came with a ring on it. From there, I hung a little cage that’s meant for tea lights. It was the perfect size to hang there for my imaginary lucky cricket (I did attempt to find a cricket toy or charm, but had no such luck).
Medallion
I knew I had to recreate the medal that Mulan received from the Emperor of China. In the movie, it’s a pretty basic round medallion with a cartoon-ish looking dragon on it. But I decided to make mine a little nicer. I found a really large round gold pendant. It had some kind of bird design on the front of it so I used the back instead. Then I found a gold dragon pendant and hot glued it to the round one. It was super simple, super easy, and it ended up looking really cool.
Flower
Of course I had to add a flower in my hair. There are some licensed Mulan flower hair combs but since I wanted to keep costs down, I went with a simple white flower clip (that I stole from my daughter) that worked just as well to get the look. I considered putting my hair up in Mulan’s updo look, but since I hate putting my hair up, I decided to leave it down for the fair.
Fan
It wasn’t too hot the day we went to the fair but I brought a hand fan with me just in case. I made sure to get a yellow one to look similar to the ones Mulan used in the movie. It’s a good thing I brought it because towards the end of the day, the sun did start to beat down just a bit harder so I made good use of it.
And that concludes my DIY Renaissance Mulan costume! It really was worth putting in all the extra little details because so many people gave me (and Ariel and Tiana) a bunch of compliments throughout the day. 10/10 would do it again!
Lisa
Lisa plays the role of the Fairy Godmother on the Pure Costumes team.
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