Hoop skirt — made with real hoops!

Eleanor and I spent this weekend working on her Halloween costume.  Part of what she planned was a ‘hoop skirt’, but as you can imagine no commercially available hoop skirt met her exacting standards of design and quality — and also my exacting budgetary requirements.  Naturally, we decided to take the DIY route!  And, we pondered, what goes into a hoop skirt? HOOPS, obviously!

We picked up a used dress at The Garment District (our local vintage/costume/cheapo clothing mecca), a set of three hula-hoops, and some leopard-print duct tape.  The smallest hula hoop became the bottom (largest) hoop for the skirt; the other two had to be dramatically resized smaller (via pliers, dremel, duct tape).  We started construction from the waist down, with a nylon web belt with a parachute snap buckle.  From there, we hung each hoop with repositionable blue painters tape, and balanced each one until it was level.  Then Eleanor secured each hoop in place at the right height with duct tape.

And presto! A hoop skirt made with real hoops! (and duct tape, of course!)