Why Elena?
When I first heard about Elena, I was super excited to finally have a Latina princess in the Disney family to relate to! Although I'm still a little salty that she's not a feature film princess, and thus won't be appearing in the Disney Princess franchise for the short term, it's nice to see them expanding their diversity with TWO princesses of color premiering in one year- Elena and Moana! Well Moana is more of a heroine, but does follow the "princess mythology" despite that.
A lot went into this costume despite the simple appearance. If the wig weren't so darn heavy, I would really like to wear it a lot more! Perhaps I'll have to revisit this, because I really do adore wearing this cosplay. It feels great to have a Latina princess at last!
Costume Stats
Started: June 2016
Completed: July 2016
Status: active
Wig by: Arda Wigs
Worn at: Anime Expo 2016
Awards: none
Related Cosplays
About This Costume
I designed my Elena costume very similarly to my Topsy Turvy Esmeralda in that it has a leotard with a separate skirt. In the case of Elena, she actually has two skirts os I can wash the white one without having to worry about the red bleeding into it, and also, the white skirt by itself makes a nifty skirt liner for other cosplays like Odette!
The body of the leotard is made of a sort of piqué knit, and lined with a peach heather jersey. I got these fabrics on clearance from M&L Fabrics in Anaheim, California. I was also extremely fortunate to find a watermelon red lace on clearance also! I layered the lace over some matching cotton broadcloth from Joann Fabrics. Her skirts were a red sort of lining fabric, and off-white poplin.
The belt was done in leather and painted with leather dye, but I want to remake this in fabrics so I can do the gold embroidery on the brown parts. I was fortunate to find this amazing gold buckle in the LA Fashion District, and it was perfect for her! My shoes are just t-strap dance shoes that I still need to paint brown. Oh! And the rod is official Disney merchandise from the Disneyland Resort.
Originally I had bought some similar looking earrings but liked the accuracy of the Disney Store clip-on earrings, so I use those now. The bracelet from the package didn't quite fit me though, so I made my own by beading nine strands of beads, and braiding them together. As for the wig, I just found some similarly colored flowers from Joann that I mixed and matched and added different color parts for to look like hers!
Everything was patterned by me and either stretches or uses elastic waistbands to be put on, so it's super comfortable! The ruffles on the top and skirt are circle ruffles. The top has four circles, and the skirt has 14- wow! It took a very long time to narrow serge them all, and to get the color perfect, I had to use small spools of thread. The left two spools on my serger were nearly empty by the time I finished!
