Halloween 2010: Year of the Ringleader

This Halloween I decided to be a ringleader.

Let me throw out there that I have no plans for Halloween

I wanted it to be my own so I decided to do my costume from scratch.

Hat & Whip

Purchased from a Halloween costume shop in Orlando. Could not find these items down here in Miami so I figured that I needed to look while I was visiting and voila I found the perfect accessories. Without them, this outfit would be nothing. The hat has a birdcage on it. 

Shorts.

Forever XXI. I found these babies in Plato's Closet. 

They were my size and everything. They're a pair of pinstriped minishorts :) My other option was to wear black tights but I ideally wanted to wear fishnets & shorts for this costume.

Fishnets.

WalMart. They're coming up on their Halloween game with accessories, shoes, and the like. 

Don't sleep on WalMart!

Boots.

Alloy. Actually purchased from a friend to be a winter option but the main objective was to have them for burlesque purposes. Since they're knee-high, I thought they'd be perfect for a ringleader and will also try another option with heels as well.

You say DYI? How is this DYI? The vest was where most of the work really came in.

Vest.

Forever XXI. A lot of work had to be done on the vest since I found it all abandoned & alone in the clearance section. (F21 went through this whole circus phase that benefited me greatly & anyone else trying to be Minnie Mouse this year lol) The vest was a large when I found it so that was great for my bust, by horrible for my shoulders since my shoulders are really small. There was a lot of work to be done & I knew that when I bought the vest but saw great potential & thought I wouldn't find another one like it so I purchased it and got to work.

Here are some process pictures because I spend a lot of time doing work on it so that it would fit me as best as possible.

 This photo is of where I had to cinch the bust a second time to make sure that the vest contours correctly to my figure. I had to do this by eye since I'm not a seamstress or anything, this is just a hobby for me.

When I bought this vest from the store, it only had 3 widely spaced apart, poorly attached hooks fasten it. They looked as if they would pop if they exprienced any slack so I headed to JoAnn's & got a package of hooks to fill the gaps & some thread to reinforce the hooks already present. I added 4 new hooks between the gaps so that the vest looks uniform and closed when fastened.

Will upload an update when I wear it this Halloween.