She-Ra – Princess of Power

Made for: MidSouthCon 2002

Background: I’m an 80s kid who loved She-Ra; I had my own version of a She-Ra costume for Halloween one year when I was little – although I decided I wanted a blue cape and a silver lightning bolt on the front. (Sadly I have no pictures of this…). I thought it would be fun to make.

Journal Entries: Read more at my She-Ra tag

Related Costumes: Glimmer, Teela

Patterns Used:
None

Dress:

I started out by buying w white skating dress from our local dance store – it wasn’t exact, but it worked. The gold design on the chest I made by blowing up a picture of She-Ra and tracing the design, then using that as a pattern for the gold fabric. Unfortunately I ran out of time and still didn’t have it attached to the dress the day of the convention – so my mom hot glued the whole thing to me while I was wearing it. Ouch. But it worked – hasn’t come off in 9 years. When I finally got this out to shoot on the white backdrop in 2024, it was still pretty well attached, 22 years later! I did heat it up with my iron to be able to pull the “spokes” of the design off and reglue them down flat because they’d gotten a little wrinkled over the years.

Boots:

This was my first time making boot covers – I had to go back in between conventions and keep tweaking them. I started out by laying the boot down on my fabric and using it as pattern to cut out my fabric, then glued it up the front and back – I originally didn’t have the foot section attached in any way, so it flopped around. I had to go back and fix that by adding a section that went under the foot. When I got this out to shoot in 2024, I was shocked at how messy these were LOL. But they got the job done back in 2002.

Tiara:

The tiara I made by started with a headband. I again blew up a picture of She-Ra and traced a picture of her tiara, then used that to cut pieces out of thick foam. Each piece was covered in the gold fabric, then glued them all together, and then glued them around the headband. It’s a little too big but I always liked it a lot because it was lightweight and there was pretty much no chance of it breaking in transit. It’s basically like a giant plushie tiara LOL.

Accessories:

I bought the wig on ebay. The gauntlets, neckband, belt, and little “wings” on the top of the dress I made by cutting the shapes out of some heavy vinyl, and then covering it in the gold stretch fabric. The neckband, belt and gauntlets velcro close. The “wings” I ended up just safety pinning to the dress, and when I got this out in 2024, they were still pinned on, 22 years later. I finally unpinned them so I could iron those pieces, and then hand-sewed them back in place.

The cape was just a square of lightweight red fabric, attached to the back of the dress. I decided not to cut or hem it into a square shape, since I liked the drape of it as it was, with the longer sides.

History:

I’ve reworn this a few times since then, making little upgrades – mostly to the boots – each time. It’s last appearance was for Comic Con 2004. In 2013 I made a Glimmer costume for a massive He-Man/She-Ra group for Dragoncon, and I’ve been playing around with the idea of making a new She-Ra costume sometime soon…

In 2024, I shot 4 costumes from 2002 on the white backdrop including this one! Wow it was a trip to go back to this costume to clean it up for the shoot. So much hot glue! And the gold lame had faded so much it looked more silver than gold. The tiara held up well. The boot covers were a glued-together mess LOL But I’m actually really pleased with how well it shot despite the amount of glue and raw edges on this thing. (Also, the original sword I carried with this got cannibalized into Fionna, so I just used my Valkyrie sword here. Another reason to do a remake… i want a real sword!)

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