birthdaypartyprincess:

So, Frozen.  That’s a thing.  That’s a thing right there.  Definitely something we’ve all mostly heard of, if not seen.

I don’t know what it is, guys.  It’s just not something we’ve ever seen in party princessing before.  Used to be that even when a new Disney princess debuted on the big screen, there was still plenty of call for other characters.  The monthly rotation would fill up with more Rapunzels than Snow Whites, but the regular costumes still saw plenty of action anyway.  But that was before now. 

We are, as many party princess companies have come to realize, firmly clutched in the icy, wintery grip of the Elsapocalypse. 

The Frozen madness is outrageous.  We’re talking EVERY PARTY.  I need all my fingers and toes to count how many double-booked days of parties we’re doing in a month, but I only need one hand to count how many of them aren’t Elsa-themed…and even then, I’d have at least one finger left over to flip off Idina Menzel.

Don’t get me wrong, “Let It Go” is an awesome song.  It’s just not so awesome when you aren’t legally allowed to sing it and literally NOTHING you can do will persuade children to hear something else.  The kids know all the words.  ALL THE WORDS.  We’re not talking seven-year olds with good memories…we’re talking four-year olds who can’t even grasp chewing with their mouth closed.  We’re talking a long tradition of kids never really knowing the words to songs, or being too shy to sing along, and only wanting to hear the princess sing for them.  But you can’t get the word “let” out of your mouth in idle conversation, before they’re busting the entire song, beginning to end, no stopping and all the hand-waving and motions.  You cannot stop them from singing the entire song. Not even with force.

Our “Snow Queen” characters have been in and out of the depot so often that I don’t think the costumes themselves have stopped moving for the last 5 weeks.  It’s to the point where I offered to make my own Snow Queen costume to add to my private stock of work outfits, just to help out my boss, because she doesn’t have enough costumes available for enough girls to wear to cover the parties.

Yes, we are literally calling in reinforcements.  The Elsapocalypse is upon us.  And it will only get worse as we head into winter.

So now I must, against my better judgment, make my own version and start booking those parties.  I’ve been waiting in vain for my boss to book some non-Frozen parties, because I just didn’t feel like making a Snow Queen, and it’s too inconvenient for me to wear her stock of costumes (like I mentioned before, I live more than half an hour from where they are kept, so add actual party driving to that and it’s easier to just keep my own versions.  Plus I like mine better).  But it’s looking pretty desperate and we now need all the Snow Queens we can get.

One nice thing about this is that we seldom have to really try to distinguish ourselves from the Disney characters now.  You don’t need to emphasize calling yourself “The Snow Queen” at parties.  You don’t need to say anything, because no one will hear you over the avalanche of screaming that begins when you walk in.  You will, however, need earplugs.  Do I want to build a snowman?  No, no I do not.  I want to go home and rest this massive Elsa headache.

But it also introduces the age-old question of how to design the costume, which is something I’ve brought up a couple times on this blog.  How do you go about making a Brand X Princess?  How close is TOO close to the design you want to mimic?  Elsa’s costume is fairly simple and, so long as I have a pale blonde braid and a blue outfit, it doesn’t need to be very close.  Here is the original design, contrasted with my sketch:

You can see that I use different colors, attach the cape to the back of the dress instead of to the sides of the bodice, make it a more voluminous skirt, split an overlay skirt across it, add shoulder swagness to the top, add beading and an oversized blue snowflake brooch to the front, etc.  For all intents and purposes, it’s a different dress.  But the color scheme sells it, at least to little kids.  They won’t know the difference.

These are tricky things we have to consider when we make our costumes.  We can’t use the same design and structure as Disney, we can’t use the same exact color schemes and we definitely can’t use the same names.  I can’t sing Let It Go if you put a gun to my head…it’s not my song.  But I can tell the kids the original story of the Snow Queen, which I think they’ll love to hear.  It’s all about keeping it in the public domain.  YES, we ape Disney’s designs…not by choice, but because we’ll get booed out of a party for not being “the really real Cinderella”, because Disney has succeeded on making sure kids only believe their version of the characters are legitimate.  Believe me, I’m a costume designer and I would LOVE to go crazy coming up with my own designs for fairy tale characters!  But unless we at least mimic the colors and the overall silhouette, the kids will not accept it.  We’ve tried.  If Disney has a problem with this, well, all I can say is that it’s a problem they themselves created.  So stick it.

Anyway, one really awesome upside is that I don’t have to go through with my hated ritual of putting on self-tanner the night before a day of gigs.  With my irish background, combined with being incredibly anemic, I have a ghastly white complexion.  Nine days out of ten, it bothers me to no end that I look half-drowned in most of my costumes and need to go super heavy on the tanner and bronzer, just to look like a regular, non-tanned human being.

But it all pays off when I look at pictures of some cosplayers with tons of paling powder and makeup on their faces, trying to get that wintery complexion Elsa has.  On those days, I can smugly adjust my new Snow Queen wig across my paper-white forehead and toss the Summer Beach Sun Bahama tanner in the trash.  

Don’t need no summer sun.  The cold never bothered me anyway.

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i swear to god i’m going to be so annoyed if disney doesn’t even bother putting elsa in a different outfit for that frozen short. what do you bet they’ll just keep using her impractical ice dress? aughadlafkj i hope not.