World Book Day may be over for this year (1st March) but many schools will celebrate a book week for their school at various times of the year. National Book day is being held next month on 23rd April, on William Shakespeare’s birthday, and Book Week is also celebrated during the first week of October.
Props & Frocks has a huge selection of kids book day costumes, if you need some book week costume ideas, check out this page which will give you lots of costume ideas for girls and boys. As all children can vary so much in size, why not give one of our team a call and they can measure any costume for you to make sure it will fit.
The Olympics is just a few months away, but today we focus on a different type of game, as we see the opening of the new movie ‘The Hunger Games’. At Props and Frocks we like to keep an eye on what’s going on in the cinema. Our customers expect us to know what’s happening in the big world outside, keep ourselves (and them) up-to-date with potential trends and generally be a fount of all wisdom and knowledge with special reference to costuming. Although we haven’t read ‘The Hunger Games’ series ourselves, word has it that this might be the next big Franchise thing to fill the gaps left by both Harry Potter (we have a huge range of Harry Potter costumes for Children) and the Twilight saga. From our point of view, the success/failure of a film is reflected in the requests we get for costumes. Given that the Hunger Games involves a kind of teenage ‘survival of the fittest’, we are not seeing to much potential on the costume front, although the movie fits well into the current run of films featuring feisty females.
After the manic last minute Book Day costumes yesterday, today we start to look at what other costumes your children may need for school.
Many schools use dressing up in a fancy dress costume as a way of bringing certain eras of history to life for their children. The most common areas are:
Victorians
Tudor
1940s
Egyptians
Vikings / Saxons
Props & Frocks has a wide range of kids school costumes at some really great prices. We do know that budgets are tight, so we have also expanded the range to include costume kits that allow you to put together a costume at home fairly cheaply.
Children’s fancy dress costumes are governed by very strict rules regarding flammability etc. For more information, take a look at our page that explain ‘Childrens Costumes & the Law‘
It’s World Book Day and also Saint David’s Day, the patron Saint of Wales. Here in Essex we don’t get too many people celebrating the Welsh national saint, but we do get a lot of children and teachers dressing up for World Book Day. Costumes and accessories have been flying off the rails over the last few days and we think there will be lots of different characters parading around several schools.
Now we do appreciate that not every school will be celebrating World Book Day today, and Props and Frocks keeps storybook costumes all year round.
Obviously in many cases the weather may be playing its part in deciding who to portray, and there may have also been some conflict between parent and child as to the choice, but in our experience it usually all works out well for all involved.
We’d love to see your kiddies all dressed up and ready to go to school, so why not send us in an image (images are shown on this blog, so please make sure you are okay with that first). Everyone who sends in an image gets entered into our monthly competition, you never know it could be you!
We have talked before about how black cats can be a popular fancy dress choice for Halloween. They are also extremely useful when it comes to school book days, as they crop up in a number of stories, although black is not necessarily an obligatory colour. As there are so many cat accessories on the market to purchase, it is a costume that is very easy to put together at home.
One of the most popular storybook characters that we have been asked to costume in recent years has been The Cat in the Hat. This was a series of books by the author Dr Seuss. There is a licensed costume available and the tall red and white striped hat is synonymous with the character. However, one of the things about storybooks is that the words themselves will often define how the character should look, although any illustrations tend to be more strictly adhered to. The whole point with World Book Day is about reading the story, so If you had never read The Cat in the Hat you might not know he is normally black and white and you could be forgiven for putting your own take on the character and just literally dressing up in a cat costume or accessories wearing a hat (although he also has a bowtie!)
Cat sets (including ears and tails), plus eyemasks and face-bops are available for those who want to give the impression of a cat, without going too over-the-top on the costuming front. For those who want to go a bit further we have a range of costumes for cats and other creatures for both child and adult.
Some Cat Book Character Ideas:
The Cat In The Hat
Puss In Boots (Figaro) – wear a cat costume with long boots
Meg & Mog
The Owl & The Pussycat
Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland – although technically very hard to do!
Crookshanks – Hermione Granger’s cat in Harry Potter
Salem – talking cat from Selena The Teenage Witch – originally a comic book character
Last week we mentioned the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen in connection with a Fairy Tales fancy dress theme. As World Book Day is this Thursday we thought we might look at these in more detail.
There are some children who find it ‘cool’ to dress as fairy tale characters, whilst others are of an age where it is just not the done thing. With a total of four Snow White films due out this year (one only two weeks away and two going straight to video) we are anticipating that 2012 will not see just the kids wanting to dress up in Fairy Tale Costumes. So, for today we thought we would give you a run-down of our most Popular Fairy Tale requests. We have included both male and female counterparts where appropriate.
Beauty & the Beast
Cinderella, Prince Charming, Ugly Sisters and Wicked Stepmother
Goldilocks & the Three Bears
Puss in Boots, Princess, King, Marquis
Red Riding Hood & Granny/Wolf
Snow White & the Seven Dwarves – Wicked Queen, Prince Charming, Woodcutter
Shrek & Princess Fiona – a more modern take on the classic fairytale!
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Alice, Mad Hatter, White Rabbit, Queen of Hearts
Dick Whittington & his cat
Hansel & Gretel
The Little Mermaid, Sea King, Prince & Sea witch
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion & Scarecrow – take a look at all of our Wizard of Oz costumes
Our range of Fairytale costumes is growing monthly, and we have some exciting new costumes that are going to make our fairytale costumes fantastic, so watch this space!
Sunday can quite often be a busy day for us here at P&F fancy dress and with World Book Day just a few days away, this weekend is all about the kids. We are open until 4pm today, and from 12 noon ’till 8pm Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday all week.
Our children’s section in the fancy dress shop is all set up and is full of Book Character costume ideas for parents and children, so, if you are local to our base in Essex, why not pop in & let us help you? But, it is still not too late to order online and have your items delivered to your home, or place of work.
We also know that kids come in all shapes & sizes, so do not forget that we will happily measure any item for you to make sure it will fit. Just have your child’s measurements handy when you contact us by phone or email.
We know that budgets are tight for many households, so aside from our standard hire and sale outfits (which we think are reasonably priced anyway) we also offer a range of accessories to help you create the right impression.
Although many primary schools do participate in World Book Day, we know that there are some who choose not disturb the curriculum on World Book Day itself, but instead will have children dressing-up on other dates. A classic example (particularly for very young children) is the anniversary of the birth of fairy tale author, Hans Christian Andersen’s on April 2nd. However, in 2012 this falls during the school holidays, so the chances are that dressing-up may be delayed instead to National Book Day, which is on Shakespeare’s birthday (and St George’s Day) on Monday April 23rd. Props & Frocks stocks Childrens Book character costumes all year round, so whenever you need to source a great priced kids costume, think Props & Frocks – THE fancy dress experts!
The Frog Prince – wear our brilliant Frog masks with Georgian style Prince costume
Snow White & Rose Red
The 3 Spinners
On this day in 1786 Wilhelm Grimm was born. He is one of the Grimm Brothers whom we have to thank as the source of many of our fairy tales. The brothers spent much of their lives collecting and writing down stories from around Northern Europe. Hollywood also has the Grimm Brothers to thank for the basis of several films we shall be hearing about (and perhaps even seeing) over the rest of the year. Central to these, as we have mentioned before, are two new versions of Snow White. The first of the new versions ‘Mirror, Mirror’ will hit cinema screens the middle of March – Lily Collins (daughter of rock legend Phil) stars as our heroine, Julia Roberts gets to be a baddie in some glorious gowns and the whole thing looks quite entertaining.
The other film ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’ is due at the start of June with an altogether darker take on the story: Quite apart from its starring Kristen Stewart (who has ‘form’ with the Twilight Vampire/Werewolf movies), we have Charlize Theron as a Queen whose take on beauty tips (new ways with hearts and human blood) is a little scary, even if this comes closer to the spirit of the original story as told by the Grimms. Both ‘Whites’ are spirited gals, up for a fight (something we didn’t see in the Disney version) and although we hope Kristen Stewart’s female armoured look doesn’t catch on (just like it didn’t when the same designer tried it for Tim Burton’s ‘Alice’), we are looking forward to a resurgence of enthusiasm for the fairy tale theme.
various times of the year. National Book day is being held next month on 23rd April, on William Shakespeare’s birthday, and Book Week is also celebrated during the first week of October.
