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You have your dance costume concept selected and illustrated-  Now it's time to choose fabrics!

Regardless of the look you are trying to achieve, the best fabrics for dance costumes incorporate spandex.  This ensures that your form fitting garment can MOVE with you when you dance.  The fabric you choose depends a lot on your costume concept - do you want something edgy and futuristic (think hologram accents!), or lightweight and elegant (think sheer mesh!).  

Below, we break down our go-to fabric options that most costume companies have available.  There are plenty of novelty and specialty fabrics out there that make amazing costumes - but here are a few of the tried and true basic favorites that will work for any dance costume!

One of the most common questions we hear is this: how long does it take to get a  custom dance costume?! There are a lot of different factors that can contribute to lead times for dance costumes, but generally speaking a design-from-scratch custom dance costume will take 12-18 weeks from gathering inspiration, to production, and to performance.   

A design-from-scratch custom costume is a great option for teams that want a truly one-of-a-kind look, and have greater flexibility with budget ($250+) and time frame (12-18 weeks). Instead of choosing between pre-stocked and catalog styles, this is your chance to become the designer yourself!

There are other custom options that can save you time, like customizing fabrics on a pre-designed style.  For more resources on costumes with quicker turn around times, check out the related post The Best Costume Options For Your Time Frame. 

If you decide a custom costume is right for you, we've broken down each step with time frames below, along with a few tips for saving time!  

 Green Bay South West High School found inspiration for their 2015 pom uniform in a Nike shoe!

Inspiration for your next dance costume can come from anywhere: the runway, your Instagram feed, a sneaker, or that gorgeous peach that's sitting on your desk. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to narrow down your focus, and create a performance concept that is unique from your competitors.  To help, we've rounded up some of our favorite resources for finding dance costume inspiration, as well as some tips to get it all organized! 

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As we head into competition season, we've gotten a lot of requests for the crowd pleasing Transition Costume.  Transition Costumes deliver that WOW factor to the crowd (and the judges!) that everyone likes to see. But they're also COMPLICATED! How do you even begin to design one? Find out what the most effective transition costumes are, and some tips for designing them below! 

Rhinestones are the perfect finishing touch to any costume, but often the biggest question we hear is: how many rhinestones do I need? It's a tough question to figure out especially when:

• 100 gems sounds like a lot, but is actually on the low end of the price spectrum,
• Design illustrations can be poor representations of a finished rhinestone design because it's difficult to represent gem size and placement accurately,
• Minor tweaks in spacing can drastically effect the quantity of rhinestones.

Planning the new upcoming dance season is SO exciting!  Many times this means designing a new costume, which means a design consultation with your dance costume design company. You will likely be getting a lot of information out of this design consultation- but how can you prepare beforehand? Find out here!

We know that planning for an upcoming season can be a challenging yet exciting time!  When it comes to your team's dance costumes, there are many questions. Where do you start?  What information do you need!  Luckily it's pretty simple.  All you need to get started with designing a dance costume are these four things: budget, time frame, quantity, and concept.  Read on to learn more!!