Wednesday 25 April 2012

An All-American Party and a Marilyn Monroe Costume


Hey there!

It’s been a long time since I last updated, what with moving etc., but I’m back now and I’ll be posting regularly from my new location in County Durham.
(Although I will still be visiting Brighton and London occasionally!)

So my first update from the North East is to talk about my leaving party – a joint event with my friend Ann-Sofie who was leaving for new frontiers in the USA (I also need to give her credit for almost everything in terms of organising this party!) so we decided to have a USA theme party and attempted to encourage people to dress up as American icons.

I decided to use this opportunity to dress as an American icon I have been a fan of for a while: Marilyn Monroe



Marilyn, even though she has a very classic look, is actually fairly simply styled – classically 50s style, bombshell hair, 50s makeup and ideally the white dress from The Seven Year Itch (of course being a brunette I would require a wig!).

To complete my costume I turned to the website Theme Party Fancy Dress UK to provide me with a Marilyn dress and wig.

When they arrived I have to say I was very pleased with the wig while the quality may not be as good as that of a real hair wig, I found it very affective, and for £12.99 who can complain. It was adjustable for comfort and brush-able so I could attempt to tease it into an appropriate style.

The dress was a little more difficult as it was a generalised size medium, or 12-14, and in order to achieve this the dress needed to have an elasticated back so it could stretch to fit. This meant that the front of the dress provided very little bust support, something that was a real problem for me.

To counteract this problem I needed to sew the strap over the halter neck so that it pulled the neckline up, this spoiled the bist line a bit, but it meant that I could wear a strapless bra with it which made it much easier to wear.

Unfortunate compromises, but I feel that the overall effect was quite well put together.



For the make up I did a simple 50s style flick and red lips. Annoyingly my eyeliner ended up quite a bit heavier than anticipated and my brows, as ever, were too dark I really had to hope that it didn't spoil the illusion too much. Then as I said previously, I loved the wig, I think I’d quite like myself as a blonde occasionally.



The party itself was great fun! It was held at JB's American Diner on the Brighton seafront (I can really recommend their root beer floats!) and there were some really innovative costumes, for example the White House, a hot dog, Minnie Mouse, Catwoman, Rambo, Lucille Ball, Napoleon Dynamite and even a sexy astronaught!





I will miss the fun times in Brighton a lot, but I look forward to my new future in the North.


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