Struggling with your bellydance troupe costume options?
Different sizes and preferences, amount of work, limited budget…
Putting together professional troupe costumes is challenging!
Rukshana (also known as Gail), a professional costumer and a member of cARTel bellydance, has shared with me her secrets to making troupe costumes that look amazing and most importantly, everyone is happy with!
And she has generously allowed me to share them on Sparkly Belly.
I’ve always admired her creations shared in Sparkly Belly’s Facebook group, and the quality of her costumes (as you’ll see below) is fantastic!! I can’t wait for you to see!
Below are Rukshana’s words of wisdom. Keep reading and get inspired! 🙂
Troupe: cARTel bellydance
Members pictured: Rukshana (orange), Katara (green), Ryelle Janaki (pink), Hilary Moroven (turquoise).
Designer: Rukshana
My website: www.rukshanaraks.com
cARTel bellydance on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cARTelbellydance
I developed the pant pattern and built all of my costumes (orange) except for the hoods. Katara used her pattern and was kind enough to build all the hoods and I traded the armbands with her. Katara is also a professional costumer so I handed off the patterns and my bedlah as a sample for her to cut and build her out a costume.
How to Save on Costs
1. Build the bedlah ‘blanks’ and have dancers decorate their own.
Photo credit: Tammye Nash Photography
I built the bedlah ‘blanks’ for Ryelle and Hilary. They got together for a couple of days and figured out how best to bead their bedlah based on the sample provided and then went to town decorating. We do all our troupe bedlah’s this way to save on labor costs (I do this for clients on a regular basis too-it’s a great teaching moment!). I made their pants and handed them off to have the ladies add their own closures.
2. Use micro sequin fabric to reduce extensive beading.
The micro sequins under the assuit are very vibrant—think screaming holographic colors. The assuit mutes the hot colors down. When they are under the light they really flash color well. The micro sequin was resourced off Etsy and was not the expensive fabric used in the build—the assuit was the pricey stuff. I have a friend in Egypt who went out and shopped for the pieces for us. We paid a bit more per piece, but they were all inspected and selected by someone I trust.
The pant materials
Photo credit: Tammye Nash Photography
The pant opaque fabric is a cotton/poly blend with an applied silver finish. I usually avoid the applied finishes when it is going over wear points, but this fabric held up well when I tested it for abrasion resistance in the store. It also breaths pretty well despite the polyester content. We did a lot of floor work in the piece and we knew we needed to hide our knee pads. The opaque combined with the peek-a-boo quality of the assuit on the sides hit just enough of the bulk and still gave us a leggy look.
The Secrets to Making Bellydance Troupe Costumes that Everyone is Happy with
One of the things we try to do with our troupe costuming is to make them flexible in both sizing and use. cARTel is primarily a competition/travel troupe. We operate as a collective and invite folks to join us on projects so we want the troupe costuming to appeal to a wide range of tastes.
Each member was allowed to pick their base micro sequin fabric color. We knew we wanted a ‘stained glass’ look for the costume pallet. All the beading is designed to cross-pollinate between the colors and will allow us to add additional colors down the road.
We also think about being able to mix and match in the design process. I have worn my orange set with full skirts at my regular gig. Our troupe costumes are not just for the troupe—we all dance professionally and have been known to plug them into the rotation.
Another thing we do is a ‘racer back’ closure. The back closure we use on the bras is super comfy to wear for long periods of time.
The black velvet triangle is a piece of elastic. This gives size flexibility and keeps the pressure off of the wearer’s neck.
Two of us are very busty, one medium and one small, and the bras have been adjusted in the front to be flattering on each of us.
The bra adjustment is done by cutting the cups apart and adding in a piece of grosgrain ribbon (doubled) that has been covered with the fashion fabric. We use Le Mystere Infinite Possibilities bras as our bases because they are very firm cups and because they have an extensive size range (we go from small B to DDD cups in the troupe). I will include a pic of the pink undecorated where you can see the addition. The Le Mystere cups are set up as a deep V and are not conducive to gals that are not ‘close set’ with their breast tissue.
Hope you enjoyed Rukshana and her troupe’s creations and their tips on creating belly dance troupe costumes that everyone is happy with! If you did, please share this post with your dance sisters!
If you want to make similar looks…
If you want to make similar looks, here are some resources you can try!
For making pantaloons with peek-a-boo cut outs:
For making hoods and fusion style bra tops:
And if you’re curious about more Sparkly Belly tutorials, make sure to sign up for the Sparkly Belly newsletter below so you won’t miss them!
Thanks for reading, and keep sparkling!
P.S. Pin this image for your future reference 😉
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