The Costume Goddess Tells All:
Easy Costume for Bellydancers

Title	The Costume Goddess Tells All, Volume 2: Easy Costume for Bellydancers, 2nd Edition
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

For this review, I used the Second Edition of the book, which was published in the autumn of 2002. I never saw the First Edition, so I really don't know how applicable my comments below would be to it.

This is Volume 2 in a series of books about belly dance costuming written by Dina Lydia, The Costume Goddess. It focuses on how to create belly dance costume pieces that aren't very time-consuming to complete and don't require much sewing skill. It's a great starting point for belly dance students who aren't ready to invest the time or money in acquiring professional-quality costumes, and it also provides many good ideas for a troupe that wants a uniform look for its troupe costumes without spending a lot of money.

The book opens with basic information for people who don't know much about sewing. It describes the types of fabrics that are available, decorating materials, some basic stitches, and supplies. If you're already reasonably knowledgeable about sewing, this section will be review. But for people who don't know their way around a fabric store, it contains some valuable information.

The part of the book that provides instructions for specific garments is divided into several sections: tops, tummy covers, cover-ups, skirts & pants, hip scarves, dresses, scarf tricks, and accessories. In each section, Dina provides instructions on how to make several different simple garments, and includes photos of what many of the completed garments look like. Although most of the photos show the garment being modeled by Dina herself, there are also many photos of other dancers. I think my favorite was a page in the Baladi Dress section that showed the exact same dress being modeled by three different people with entirely different figure types.

Some of the costume items in this book are suitable for dancers who are proud of their figures and would like to show off their hourglass shapes or lovely legs. Others provide a more covered look, suitable for dancers who prefer not to show so much skin. Students of all sizes and shapes will be able to find ideas for flattering garments.

For each garment described in the book, Dina explains exactly how to make it. When appropriate, she includes details explaining how to size it to fit your own measurements, and the book is loaded with diagrams that illustrate exactly how to do things. Even if you've had very little experience with sewing, this book provides the information needed to create attractive outfits you can wear for class, home practice, and student recitals.

Its Good Points

Probably my favorite thing about this book is the enormous variety of garments that Dina tells how to make. I'm used to teachers offering their students tips on easy skirts and harem pants, but Dina goes on to show simple arm decorations, headbands, assorted tops, and dresses. In addition to describing the basic form of a garment, she offers many suggestions on how to vary the sleeves, neckline, and decoration for creating different looks from the same fundamental style. Everything is here to make a complete starter costume, from the accessories on the head all the way down to the fringe on the lower edge of the skirt.

Dina shows that "easy" doesn't need to mean "boring" or "cheap" looking. In the photos of herself and her models, she shows that many of the garments described can indeed look quite attractive if made from suitable fabrics and decorated with the right trims.

Although most of Dina's books generally focus on the nightclub-style costuming look, many of the garments shown in this book would be perfectly appropriate for inexpensive American Tribal Style costumes, if made from the right fabrics. She shows how to use coins, fringe, and tassels as decorations.

In using some of her fellow dancers as models, Dina shows how some of her garment suggestions look on different body types, including a more full-figured look.

On The Negative Side....

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.

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

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