Costuming a Village Amazon from Wonder Woman

Like most women who saw Wonder Woman this year, I wanted to be an Amazon. I wanted to be all of them. Originally I chose Diana Prince’s blue silk dress worn at the gala to make and wear at DragonCon in Atlanta this year. But as DragonCon was rapidly approaching and I was frantically working on costumes, I found myself running out of time (naturally). So I decided to throw in a simple Amazonian dress seen in the village during an early Themyscira scene juuuuuuuust in case I didn’t finish my blue dress in time. If I managed to finish both this and the blue dress in time (I did, no thanks to Hurricane Harvey), I’d let my niece Brittany wear it at DragonCon.

Amazons from Wonder Woman (Images found on Instagram left: @joliestandford right: @oliviadeanne)

Scouring Pinterest and finding some lovely images of Amazons in the village, I chose Jolie Stanford and Olivia Deanne’s dress style in the left and right images above, but with Tenika Mahoney’s outfit’s green color (although I love the blue, I already had a stack of old curtains in that pretty sage green just begging to be cut) in the right image above. With a leather belt cinched at the waist, this would be a comfortable and casual dress that would fit either my measurements or my niece’s.

Our fellow Amazon sister, Tina, shared with me a perfect pattern that was easy to find: Vogue 1410. I am not kidding when I say this was the easiest article of clothing I’ve ever sewn. Without the finishing steps that gather the sides to the middle, it was just two pieces sewn together and hemmed. It took about a half hour of sewing…seriously, I’m not kidding. Easy!

One modification I did make was adding 1″ wide tie straps to the sides, as I noticed Jolie’s dress had the same. Crisscrossing the straps in the front and tying in the back helps reduce garment movement under the belt, and it’s a nice visual detail.

Since my niece is a vegetarian who prefers to not wear leather, I made her belt (and bracer straps) with padded pleather. I traced out the simple design on paper and used that as a pattern to cut/sew/hot clue the pleather as a two pronged belt.

I also sight-sketched the wrist bracers on paper and used that as a pattern to cut 2mm foam.

One of my personal favorite costume making techniques is spray painting (not sure why), so just sprayed to my heart’s content. I used different paint textures and colors to make the pleather look weathered, and to make the bracers look like weather pewter. On the pleather, I used Mod Podge matte, grey spray paint, and a light dusting of Rust-Oleum gold spray paint. On the bracers, I used Rust-Oleum silver, nickel, and FlexiDip, also with a light gold dusting.

Though the belt looks like it is being secured by brass round head button screws, I glued in strips of Velcro so the belt would be entirely adjustable.

I also added the button screws to the bracers, but the closure is heavy duty dual lock fasteners (think Velcro, but stronger).

My niece was pretty cute and comfortable wearing this at DragonCon and she will most likely wear it again next year when I wear my Amazon warrior costume from the beach scene (oh, it’s happening!).