Secret Honey Belle Tale as old as Time Cosplay

Hello everyone and welcome to a new post 🙂 Today, I would like to show you this gorgeous Belle Tale as Old as Time Cosplay from Secret Honey. I adore every single one of Belle’s dresses and yellow is one of my favourite colours to wear 🙂 So, I needed this dress in my collection. A little note upfront: This is a remake of Secret Honey’s design. Just keep that in mind, there may be differences to an original Secret Honey dress. So do not use my photos as your only reference 🙂 

I showcase one of my Disney pieces every two weeks, you can check out my other posts if you like. Last time I showed you my Secret Honey Frozen Fever Anna Maxidress.

If you would like to know more about the brand and about how you can get these dresses, I have got you covered in several posts. Here are some resources to start your very own Secret Honey collection.

• • How to buy Secret Honey: A brief overview on several ways to get your hands on Secret Honey casual pieces and costumes. Including recommendations for resellers etc.

• • How to buy Secret Honey with Buyee: Detailed post with many screenshots detailing how to use the service Buyee to buy Secret Honey (or other stuff, of course) from Japanese websites such as mercari.jp

• • Of Remakes and Fakes: There are remakes of Secret Honey (costumes in particular) that are being sold. In this post I share some thoughts about the topic as well as a photo comparison of an original Secret Honey dress and a remake (spoiler: they are different).

I also sometimes sell dresses from my collection, check out my shop or my Instagram, I usually list them there.

The Belle Tale as Old as Time Cosplay

Voilà, the dress in all it’s glory on my dress form. Unfortunately, my dress form has no shoulders/arms, so the sleeves are not presented in the best way. But, the dress looks wonderful anyway:

Obviously, there is a hoop skirt underneath, I think the circumference is 3.5 metres, if I remember correctly. It is perfect for this dress in my opinion. Although it could look a bit more like a cupcake at the top in my opinion… Here you can see the dress on me. I had to photoshop the background a lot… And I did a bad job 😉 

In total, I think there are 4 different yellow fabrics used for this dress. The bodice fabric does not repeat anywhere else, but all the other fabrics are used in two places. Here is the dress from the side:

And here is a picture on which you can see the dress from the back as well:

The Bodice

Let us have a look at this gorgeous bodice and all the details! As you can see, it is made from a beautiful yellow jacquard that is decorated with trim and rhinestone buttons. The sleeves are made from some type of organza I’d say.

Here it is on my floor. 

Here is the bodice from the back. The sleeves go all the way around the bodice until the zipper.

Sizing and Closure

First up: This dress is on the smaller side, both bodice and skirt. The size chart says the skirt allows only 71cm in the waist which is very small, normally it’s around 75cm. Here is a look at the inside of the bodice first. You can see the lining as well as the shirring panel on the back side:

And here is the shirring panel from the outside. There is a lace up detail to prevent the elastic from stretching too much and getting loose.

The Functionalities

There is a hook at the bottom of the front of the bodice. You can hook the skirt onto it, so the waistband will not show when you move. But, you need to be quite small to be able to do that. I could not, I am too tall.

There are also loops sewn on in the front and back that you can use to attach invisible straps it you do not have enough hold without them:

The Fabric and Other Details

Let’s start with the most obvious, the three rhinestone buttons. The outer two are a bit smaller then the centre one. They represent the yellow buttons on Belle’s gown. I like this sparkly version very much.

There are two different trims used to decorate the seams of the bodice, a “braided” one in the centre front and then this twisted white and cool gold one for the princess seams and also in the back.

The white and cool gold trim also decorates the edge of the bodice. There is a bone running down the centre front seam of the bodice as well to keep it from wrinkling when it’s being worn. This is the only bone though. But the fabric is quite stiff, so it is not that prone to wrinkling.

The Sleeves

Here is a look at the sleeves as well. They are pleated into shape. the width is not very wide. I do not know if my shoulders will ever fit this dress, i may have to alter it a bit to fit me. But that should not be too complicated.

The Skirt

The skirt of this dress has a lot of details and uses many different materials. it is almost too much, I never know where to look first 😀 But that is what I love so much about this version and why I went for this over the Greeting dress. Here is the skirt lying on the floor.

Sizing and Closure

As I mentioned above, the skirt is quite small around the waist. There are two elasticated panels with lace up details though to adjust the size. The skirt closes with a hidden zipper in the centre back. You can see on the left side very well that they added a protective little band so the zipper would not tear the gathered fabric apart. The fabrics used for the waistband outer and lining are repeated in other elements of the skirt.

Here is a closer look at the shirring panel. As you can see, the elastic will not extend very much, the panel is quite small.

In the centre front there is the eye that you can hook to the bodice. On this shot you can also see how nice and textured that golden fabric is, I love it very much and I am sad, it wasn’t used more and is not visible when the dress is worn.

The Layers

The skirt has three different layers. The first one is a tulle layer, so you will have to have a hoop skirt underneath or wear it with tights to protect your skin from the scratchy fabric. the second layer is the underskirt that peeks out under the scalloped and gathered overskirt. Then we have the overskirt that technically looks like two layers, but it is just one.

Let’s have a look at each of the layers individually now.

The Petticoat

I do not know how to feel about this tulle petticoat underneath the two layers of the skirt. It definitely helps to not show the hoops of your hoop skirt, but it also is very squished from shipping and I do not know if I will ever get it to be nice. There are quite unnice folds everywhere that potentially show on the outside because they are so pronounced. They also did this for Winter Belle and Christmas Belle, if I remember correctly.

The Second Layer

The second layer is lining and fashion layer at the same time. The upper part is made from the same lining fabric as the bodice used. At the bottom we have the same golden patterend fabric that was used for the waistband outer. It is decorated with beautiful lace. That unfortunately means, that you do not really see this beautiful fabric though.

Here is a closer look at the lace used for the hem of this dress. It is very pretty with the flowers and tendrils in white and golden yarn.

Since I love this warm golden textured fabric so much, here is another look at it for you. I do not know, what this pattern is… I think it is just lines intertwining? I don’t think it should be something specific.

The Rushed Overlayer

The Overskirt is made from two different fabrics, but they are joined in the seams that gather the fabric. So although it’s technically two layers, it is sewn together to one layer:

The bottom of the scallops is decorated with beautiful golden lace butterflies.

Here is a close up of one of the butterflies. They seem to be stitched on by hand, but I could be mistaken.

Then, we have this beautiful patterned warm yellow fabric. It actually reminds me of lining fabric in the weight and texture… I do have a very similar piece of lining fabric in my fabric stash.

The upper part of the gathered layer is made from the same shiny organza as the sleeves are made of. At the bottom of each gathered section, there is another one of these pretty rhinestone buttons.

The Gloves

The dress comes with a pair of gloves made from a shiny yellow fabric. The yellow is lighter and cooler as the yellows used for the dress:

The fabric is quite stretchy and the gloves fit me well all the way up my arm. Very strange, that the dress itself is so small but the gloves are rather big 😉

I have one last shot of me in this dress that I do like quite a lot: 

And that is already it my friends. I hope you enjoyed having a look at this pretty Belle Tale as old as Time Cosplay together with me. Do you prefer this one like me? Or are you more team greeting dress? I do not really have a connection to the park dresses, so I guess that might be why I prefer Secret Honey’s own designs? Who knows, anyway. Thanks a lot for reading and i hopefully see you in my next post.

Love,
Ella