From Turban to Toe Ring

Title From Turban to Toe Ring

Author Dawn Devine Brown & Barry Brown

ISBN 0-9678170-1-3

Publisher Ibexa Press

Category Nonfiction: Costume Instruction

Shira's Rating (On a scale of 0 to 5)

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What It's About

This 96-page book introduces the tribal style of belly dance costuming that originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Rather than adhering strictly to the American Tribal Style that FatChanceBellyDance made famous, this book looks at the pre-FatChance look that flourished in the decade before FatChance arose. In doing so, it offers a wider range of ideas for dancers who love the tribal look but want to create their own distinctive costume that doesn't strictly mimic FatChance.

As an introduction to the style, the book touches on a variety of costume themes. It provides an ethnic and historical perspective on the ethnic jewelry and textiles favored by tribal-style dancers. It then talks about the different costume components (head wear, choli & bra, hip wraps, skirts, pants, and one-piece garments) that are used to achieve the tribal look. For each, it describes how it can fit into the overall tribal motif, and offers instructions on how to make it. The instructions for making the garments are not very detailed, so you would need some solid sewing experience in order to understand what they're trying to tell you and make an actual garment. The book contains many line drawings to show how each garment would be worn as part of a total tribal ensemble, including instructions on how to wrap a turban. At the end, it provides a little information about the facial tattoos, bindis, and good henna instructions.

Several appendices cover additional useful topics, including how to do appliqué, how to make tassels, how to do embroidery with shisha mirrors, how to care for tribal costumes, and recommendations on how to do your own research.

Dancers who love to do historical re-enactment through Society for Creative Anachronism, Renaissance Faires, or similar organizations will find that this book provides an excellent starting point for helping their costume research even if they want to re-create a specific look from a particular time and culture rather than the fusion that makes up tribal costuming. The information about ethnic jewelry and textiles helps clarify the region and ethnic fit for each item. Several ethnic garments suitable for use in such events are described with information about which culture they come from, and the bibliography at the end lists a large number of books to provide a starting point for doing one's own historical clothing research.

Its Good Points

I liked this book a lot, and I think it's a great starting point for a dancer who doesn't have much experience with tribal costuming but wants to embrace the look. I definitely recommend it. Even if you have already designed a tribal costume that you're satisfied with, you may still find value in the information about ethnic jewelry and textiles, as well as ideas for alternate ways to combine your pieces that might be fun to try for a change of pace. And if you have a passion for learning more about historical garb, the bibliography at the back of the book is a wonderful guide to valuable resources.

Specific items that I liked about this book include:

The section on historical textiles and jewelry, with background information about each and information on which region each came from. Now I understand my own collection much better!
The overview of the different garments used in tribal costumes with recommendations on how to bring them together for a finished look.
Overall, the book was very credible. Dawn herself has been using tribal-style costuming for many years, and the tips she offers on considering how the garment will be used (whether it will be close to fire, worn in hot weather, etc.) were clearly the voice of experience. This is someone who truly understands tribal garb and re-enactment events.
The varied lists of books that Dawn suggests provide valuable resources, whether you need sewing and pattern-making education, historical research, jewelry information, henna help, or other costume-related information. For any dancer interested in doing her own research, this book will point you in the right direction for additional sources.
If you're new to historical re-enactment, the costuming tips for surviving such events will prove to be very valuable.
The drawings that illustrated how different garments could be used together contained nice detail and shading in showing the line and drape of the garments.

On The Negative Side....

Although I liked this book very much and I do recommend it as a good resource, it does have some issues that can be a bit frustrating. Areas of concern included:

Although it does provide instructions on how to make most garments, they were not very detailed. You would need some solid sewing skill, patience, and willingness to adventure into drafting your own patterns to make the instructions work for you.
Drawings illustrating the pattern pieces needed to make ethnic garments were not drawn to scale.
It would have been nice to have some drawings providing suggestions for the facial tattoos. This section was tantalizingly brief. If you're looking for facial tattoo ideas, don't look here.
I wished that Dawn would have included some photos of herself or other tribal dancers to illustrate how it looks when it all comes together. Her drawings admittedly conveyed the idea, but some photos would have greatly added to the value and credibility of the book.
The spiral binding, although keeping the book in an affordable price range, makes it inconvenient to store on the bookshelf, especially if that shelf is holding several additional spiral-bound books. However, the spiral binding makes it easy to keep the book open to a certain page for reference when actually working on a costume, so it isn't all bad!

As you can see from the fact that I gave this book four stars on a scale of one to five, I obviously felt that strong points of the book greatly outweighed these issues. I definitely recommend it.

To contact the author:

Dawn Devine Brown
P.O. Box 221
Roseville, CA 95678-1312

Email: davina@davina.org
Web Site: http://www.davina.org