My daughter is 11 years old (so this shows how long ago i purchased this costume for her!), but after a recent de-clutter of our spare room, i found a whole host of her old dressing up costumes, with this particular one being among them!

The dress itself was purchased because my daughter was really into the Disney franchise, and in particular the princess's (Belle, Cinderella, Jasmine etc...), which most little girls go through!

The dress is like a ballgown and is supposed to represent the dress worn by Belle (Beauty and the beast), when she attends the ball for two halfway through said film.

The dress for a little girl is very fancy looking with the bodice part being a cross between a vest top and string top, making it both comfortable to wear but grown up to look at.

The skirt part is made up of swags of satin material, layered to give the skirt a very full looking effect, so when my daughter would wear it it would "swish" around her, making her look very regal! She would also match this look with her fancy plastic high heels, which to this day i don't know how she didn't break her neck in them!

The dress is a lovely canary yellow, and is made up of satin and what i would describe as a stretchy velour for the top, which makes it comfortable to wear (she would wear this dress for hours at a time, with her even trying to wear it to bed once!), but also leaves it looking like a minuature ball gown!

There are a few details on the dress, for instance there was (when first purchased) a rim of mariboo fur around the shoulder straps, and also a broach featuring a picture of Belle on the bodice (just to tie the dress to the film i think!), but the mariboo soon either wore off or got picked off over time, and no longer exsists!

Sizes available start from around the 4-5 mark, with me buying my daughter the next size up for her to grow into, which she did, then grew out of, but with how the dress is designed she was still able to squeeze herself into it well after she surpassed the age on the garment.

To clean i had to sponge it down rather than machine wash it, which i had to do a few times due to her majesty liking to have tea parties at the same time, and there was always some sort of jam stain down the front, but this did seem to come out reasonably well, except for a small grease stain on the back of the satin skirt, which remains to this day!
Wear and tear aside from the loss of fluff, and the small stain i found that it wore very little, maybe a little fraying of the seams around the bottom of the dress but that is about it, so little in fact that i have recently just given it to a work friend for her grand daughter who has just entered the Disney princess phase, and apparently she has yet to take it off!

Price wise i recall this being quite expensive at the time, but due to it being part of a "buy 2 get third free" deal being run that year in my local Woolworths, collected a fair few pieces of dress up stuff.

Via www.amazon.co.uk this costume is now available for around the £10 - £12 mark (increasing in price when increasing in size!).

This was a lovely costume that is now having a second lease of life with a new little princess, recommended!

Thanks for reading x