Fantastic Halloween: Wes Anderson's Mrs. Fox Costume

I'm a big fan of Wes Anderson's movies. As far as I'm concerned, "twee" isn't a bad word, and Fantastic Mr. Fox, his adaptation of the 1970 novel by Roald Dahl, is a stop-motion masterpiece. This year for Halloween, I decided to dress up as Fantastic Mrs. Fox (aka Felicity, voiced by Meryl Streep).

To make this costume I needed four things: a yellow dress, a mask, a tail, and a brooch.

I made the dress using the now-discontinued New Look 6000 pattern (note that it is still available as a download). I used a yellow double-knit, which I hand printed with homemade stamps before sewing together. It turns out that kindergarten-style potato stamping doesn't work very well, so I made my stamps out of some Dollarama foam sheets, with random bits of hardware glued on as handles. I decided to curb my OCD tendencies and just freehand the stamping, rather than measuring out the exact spacing.

Potato stamps: they don't work very well.

Next, I sewed up the pattern, using Dress E with the flat front, 3/4 sleeves, and collar. I interfaced the collar and ended up cutting out the neck facing, which was bulky and annoying. I also added a simple square pocket on the front, for Mrs. Fox's scissors and paintbrushes.

The final part of the dress was to make the fox cameo brooch. This I made out of three layers of felt. First, I painted an oval piece of brown felt with yellow, bronze, and black to look gold. Then I stitched on a smaller oval of white felt, and finally a black silhouette of a fox. I secured a safety pin to the back to attach it to the dress.

My finished fox cameo brooch.

The original.

To make the fox mask, I bought a simple plastic mask from eBay. I then cut five pieces of fake fur to cover the mask. Two for the ears, one for the top of the snout and back over the top portion of the face, and two pieces for each side, making sure that the direction of the fur brushed out and away from the nose. It was easiest to cut an approximate size piece of fur first, glue it down and then trim away the excess. When this was complete, the mask looked more like a teddy bear than a fox, so I got out my paint once more. A paint sponge was helpful to smooth out the face, but I used brushes for the finer details, like the ears, eyes, and mouth.

The plastic base mask.

The completed mask.

The tail was very simple. I used more fake fur and sewed a single-seam tube shape, which I stuffed with polyfill and then painted to match the mask. I secured it to the dress with a couple of safety pins (and then lost it later that night when I went dancing. Sigh.).

Here's the completed costume:

I had a couple of parties to attend that night, so I knew my evening wouldn't be complete without a bottle of Bean's finest alcoholic cider. 

Let's just say: it was a good night.