Disney Princess Leia Cosplay

Disney+ launched this month which has a lot of us rewatching our favorite Disney classics. As a child my favorite was Cinderella. I watched it so many times that I wore out more than one VHS tape of it and had to wait for it to come out of the vault again before we could get another one. Along with Cinderella, my other favorite princess was—and still is—Princess Leia. 

I don’t remember what exactly made me think that making ball gowns was a good idea but I saw a Disney Princess style Leia drawing on Pinterest and I knew I needed to cosplay my own version of that.

Starting the Base

I started with the base of the skirt. I knew that since I was doing a Disney Princess spin on Leia I wanted a very princessy skirt. I found a cheap hoop skirt on Amazon and a cheap tulle crinoline on eBay to cover up the hoops. These along with a corset made up the structure of my cosplay. Next up was the dress. 

The Dress

Finding a pattern wasn’t too difficult since I was doing my own interpretation of a concept instead of a screen accurate cosplay. I already had a ball gown pattern from another cosplay I was making, so I decided to use that as my base and alter it as needed. The pattern is a vintage wedding dress pattern from Simplicity that was extremely difficult to track down, but any basic ball gown style wedding dress pattern will work. What you want is a simple design that you can modify as needed.

The bodice was straightforward to make as I didn’t need to alter the pattern at all. I used fairly stiff interfacing since I wanted to give it structure. I knew I would be wearing a corset under it but anything I could do to make the white satin stiffer and have more structure was a good thing. 

The skirt is where things started getting complicated. The pattern I was using is technically for a wedding dress and the skirt isn’t nearly as big as I want it to be. I added extra panels of fabric in the seams. The pattern also called for side puffs, which were gathered pieces of fabric that you add in between the skirt fabric and the lining at the waist. It adds a little bit of puff to the skirt where it meets the bodice, and I decided to add extra puff by stuffing the puffs first.

I also added a layer of sparkly tulle over the skirt to up the princess factor. Needless to say, with so many layers it was tough to sew the skirt to the bodice but it was worth it once it was all together. 

Next it was time for the sleeves. The pattern itself had two options, sleeveless or skinny full-length sleeves. I knew I didn’t want to do either one of those but I went with the sleeveless pattern as it had a more elegant neckline. I created short puffed sleeves for the dress and that was when I discovered that I was making a Princess Leia/Cinderella cosplay. 

Accessories

The belt was the most essential part of the dress to make it look like Leia. I crafted it out of white upholstery fabric that looked enough like leather to work. For the metal pieces, I cut them out of white craft foam which I spray painted silver. I angled the V of my belt far more than Leia’s from A New Hope because I wanted it to match the shape of the bodice. To lean into the Cinderella-like quality of the cosplay I added a pair of sparkly heels and some white gloves. 

Hair and Makeup

I kept my makeup classic and princess-like with a neutral shimmery eye. I added white eyeliner to my waterline to make my eyes look bigger and a wing with black liquid eyeliner on my lid. Some blush gave me the rosy tone I was looking for. I knew I should have finished it off with a pink lipstick as that’s what both Leia and Cinderella wear, but it just didn’t feel right. The moment I applied red lipstick, I knew my makeup look was complete. The finishing touch was a brown wig styled into Leia’s classic buns. 

What’s Next?

I’m not done with this cosplay. That’s the beauty of cosplay. You can always change and grow. One day I’d like to add some more Cinderella touches to it. I’d like to add a black ribbon choker with the rebel alliance symbol on it. I’d like to add puffs of fabric over the sides of the skirt to make it more like classic Disney Cinderella. I’d also like to have R2D2 and C3PO as tiny crocheted sidekicks instead of mice. 

I love how cosplay can inspire such creativity. I never would have thought I was going to mashup two of my favorite characters when I started this, but I’m so happy that’s what it turned out to be. Long live CinderLeia!