The Costume Goddess Tells All:
Cabaret Belt & Bra for Bellydancers

Title	The Costume Goddess Tells All, Volume 3: Cabaret Belt and Bra for Bellydancers
Author	Dina Lydia
ISBN	None
Publisher	Dina Lydia & Blair Johnson
Category	Nonfiction: Costume Instruction
Shira's Rating	(On a scale of 0 to 5)

What It's About

This is Volume 3 in a series of books about belly dance costuming written by Dina Lydia, The Costume Goddess. It provides detailed information on how to make a bedlah (bra/belt set) suitable for nightclub-style belly dancing. (Bedlah is the term Egyptian dancers use to refer to their bra/belt/skirt costumes. It's the Arabic word for "suit".)

The book opens with a photo gallery showing pictures of 12 different dancers wearing 20 different bedlah costumes. Many of the pictures show both front and back views. There are a couple of additional costume pictures elsewhere in the book.

Next is a section that talks about the basics of belly dance costume design: color, design lines, and fabric. Since this topic is covered in great detail in Volume 1 of the Costume Goddess books (Flattering Costume for Bellydancers), this section of this book addresses just the most crucial points.

The third major section focuses in on designing the belt. It provides ideas for a variety of belt shapes to stimulate creative thinking. Dina provides excellent detail on how to create a personalized belt pattern that will really fit the curvy female figure, without unsightly gaps. I found that it took me a great deal of time to work through the overall belt section because it contained a large amount of information. You may find it best to read a few paragraphs, then go off and implement what they taught, then return to read some more. Otherwise, you may find it hard to retain everything in there. Since I sometimes make my own belts, I read the section carefully, and the advice it gave was quite valid. If you follow Dina's detailed advice carefully, you should end up with a finished belt that fits well and looks great.

The costume bra section opens with a good discussion of how to shop for a bra that will be used as the foundation for the finished costume, including good advice for generously-endowed dancers. The section on how to cover a bra with costume fabric was full of good advice, and also offered useful tips for creating a decoratively-shaped top edge that makes the bra look more like a costume, less like lingerie. A large number of drawings show a wide range of ideas for designing the straps.

The decoration section addresses use of coins, beads, tassels, fringe, jewelry parts, and drapes for decorating the bra. It emphasizes the glittery nightclub look, rather than the more folkloric coins & chains look. A series of drawings show ideas for drape and fringe placement on both bras and belts, and includes information on how to make your own bead/sequin appliques.

The tummy covers section is just one page, and shows pictures of six tummy cover options with a brief phrase identifying how each was made.

The book ends with comments on caring for the costume.

Dina is very opinionated, and it shows. My advice: if she says something you disagree with, stop and give it some thought. Consider whether she might have a valid point. If you conclude that you still disagree with her after thinking about her logic, then go ahead and make your costume the way you want it to be. But if you don't have much experience with belly dancing costumes in general, you might want to stick close to her advice for your first one because it could be devastating if your first effort doesn't turn out well. You can always experiment with your own ideas after you have gained more experience as a dancer and a costume maker.

Its Good Points

All in all, I thought Dina did a great job of producing an excellent book that provides valuable detail on how to make a bedlah-style costume. Based on my own experience in making my own costumes, I can say with confidence that the instructions for fitting, cutting, and constructing these costume items contained good sewing technique, valuable details, and enough illustrations to demonstrate each step.

The entire book is beautifully illustrated with many detailed drawings. All the drawings provide a useful function of helping clarify whatever the text is explaining. Since the drawings are all done by the same artist, they have an appealing consistent look and feel throughout the book.

The suggestions for various strap designs, belt shapes, fringe and drape approaches, and decorations offer a nice variety of ideas to inspire your creative energy so that your own bra/belt set won't look like it came off the same assembly line as everyone else's.

The opening photo gallery illustrates a variety of costumes that utilize several different decoration approaches. Seeing how these finished products look should make it easy for costuming newcomers to make good choices in developing their own creations.

The book provides some good ideas for bra/belt sets that look attractive but don't require the many hours of beading required to make the Egyptian and Turkish-style ones.

The text is well-written. It is easy to read, and explains its points well. I found the humorous approach to be entertaining.

On The Negative Side....

All photos in the book were of slender and medium-sized models - there were no photos of plus-sized dancers in the photo gallery. It would have been nice to have more diversity in body types, especially to show how a plus-sized dancer can look good even in a bedlah costume with the right accessories. I realize that it's very difficult to find plus-sized dancers with flattering bedlah costumes that they made themselves, especially ones who have high-quality photographs of themselves wearing the costumes. But still, it would have been nice....

The advice that the book contained for larger dancers was appropriate, but in many cases could have gone farther. I did like the advice for large-busted dancers on how to choose a suitable bra. But one example of an area that I felt could have used more "coverage" was the section on tummy covers. The ideas it gave were good ideas, but it was just one page with brief comments, and would probably leave a queen-sized dancer hungry for more. In another example, the bra advice did appropriately warn against the discomfort of using a halter style, but could have gone farther in emphasizing that avoiding halters is especially important for full-figured dancers to avoid neck injury. I could give other examples, but this is sufficient to illustrate the point.

Like many other belly dancing books, this one is bound with plastic spiral binding. Although this binding does help keep the cost of the book down, it takes more space on my bookshelf than other binding types and it's hard for me to tell which book is which when I'm looking at the spines of several spiral-bound books side-by-side.

In Conclusion

If you don't have much sewing experience, I wouldn't advise doing a bra/belt set for your first effort. Although Dina does provide a large amount of detail in her instructions and explains things well, these projects are not easy. Start with skirts, veils, simple sleeves, and other easy items first, and don't tackle bedlah until you have more sewing confidence.

To contact the author:

Dina Lydia
P.O. Box 30878
Seattle,WA 98103-0878

Email: dina@costumegoddess.com
Web Site: http://www.costumegoddess.com/

Reviews of Other Books by the Same Author

Disclosure

Dina is a significant contributor of information to this web site. She writes the Ask the Costume Goddess column, which contains many articles about belly dance costuming. I consider her to be a friend.