Secret Honey Belle Winter Costume
Hello everyone, welcome back to another post. Today, I would like to show you this Belle Winter Costume (Dress and Cape) from Secret Honey. Upfront to be transparent: This is not an original dress or an untagged dress, it is a remake of Secret Honey’s design (eventhough there is a Secret Honey tag).
I am no fan of Pink, but this dress has something very special. The embroidery is stunning and I love the design Secret Honey did for this dress so much.
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 Jasmine Greeting Dress.
If you would like to know more about the brand and about how you can get these dresses, I have got you covered in this post. I also sometimes sell dresses from my collection, check out my shop or my Instagram, I usually list them there.
The Belle Winter Costume
I finally bought myself a hoop skirt so I can show you my costumes properly. Unfortunately, I need to shorten it a bit it peaks out from under the dress in the front, I’m very sorry about that… I also couldn’t photoshop it properly… So we have to live with it. Let’s first have a look at the dress:

Here it is from the side. Since my dress form has no arms, I stuffed the shoulders with two of my t-shirts. But I still had to pin the pleated overlay to make it look nicely. I think it would look good on me, since I have a bigger shoulder circumference than the dress form. But it is something to keep in mind.

And here is the dress from the back:

This dress with the matching hair accessory was released in September 2017 and the original price was 54000 yen plus taxes. Just for the dress and bow.
The Bodice
I loooooove the bodice of this dress, it is absolutely gorgeous! I wish that Secret Honey would have used the jacquard of the bodice for the skirt too! The fabric might have been a bit too stiff for it, it is very sturdy. Here is the bodice from the front on my floor:

And here it is from the back:

Sizing and Closure
The bodice closes with a zipper in the centre back. It is no hidden zipper, just a normal one. On both sides we do have a shirring panel with lacing:

Here is a closer look at the shirring panel. You can see the Secret Honey tag, but this dress is a remake, no original. If you want to know more about Secret Honey Remakes, you can read this blogpost. I compare an original dress and a remake for you to show you that there can be differences.

Here is a closer look at the lacing panels. For once, the satin band is long enough to extend the shirring panel to it’s maximum, I have to give the remake that 😉 All my originals have very short laces.

Here is a look at the zipper, no hidden one, as I already mentioned, but it is not so obvious between the shoulder pieces.

The sleeves do have a lace up detail too so you can adjust the size of the sleeves:

The shoulder parts are thankfully elasticated and the shoulder pieces over the sleeves are quite wide. Definitely wider than the Ariel Dingelhopper dress or Belle’s Tale as old as Time dress.

The Embroidery and Decorations
I mentioned the beautiful jacquard Secret Honey used for the bodice already. Here is a close up for you:

In the centre front, we do have beautiful embroidery in a cool gold tone. There is also a pink satin band running donn the centre front that is decorated with trim and lace around the edges:

Here you can see the fine and delicate golden rose embroidery:

The same band, trim and lace also run around the waistline of the dress:

Here is a closer look on the trim and lace. The trim is actually gold and white which gives the light cool golden colour from afar:

The Sleeves
There are sleeves and two shoulder pieces going over them. The shoulder pieces are attached at some points but mainly loose. I really like them. They are made from this pretty dusty rose chiffon like fabric that is laid in many tiny pleats. And at the bottom, it is decorated with lace. The shoulder pieces are made from one layer of fabric that is folded in half.

Here is a closer look at the pleats and the pretty lace around the bottom:

Here you can see a button and a loop which attach the shoulder pieces to the sleeves:

The sleeves are made from the same pretty jacquard as the bodice. They are pretty 18th century inspired 3/4 length sleeves with a bell shaped extension. It is not as voluminous as I would like for 18th century, but nice 🙂 Around the top of the extension, they sleeves are decorated with lace and a velvet band is woven through it. The extensions are made from the same fabric as the shoulder pieces and are also pleated.

A closer look at the lace and velvet band. There are two different types of lace used here:

The ends of the extensions are also decorated with two types of lace:

And here is a look at the layers of the extensions: A tulle layer and the pleated fabric layer.

The Skirt
The skirt is very pretty, made from a pink taffeta like fabric with a front opening. I wish they would have used the Jacquard for the skirt too, that would have been epic!
Closure, Sizing and Layers
This skirt is very small, I think only around 71cm around the waist. What I do not like, and this goes for almost all the Secret Honey costumes with a skirt: The waistband is very broad, but the size of the circumference stays the same at the bottom and the top. Your body however, has the smallest circumference around the waist and then the circumference increases. So the waistbands should be wider at the top than the bottom, to accommodate that. Or it should be less broad.
Here’s a look at the hidden zipper and the shirring panels inn the back of the skirt:

I couldn’t close that zipper up to the top on my dressform. Where the skirt and waistband meets, there is a lot of bulk and i couldn’t get the zipper closed over it, eventhough my dress form has a waist that is small enough for this dress.
The skirt does not have a slippery and nice to the touch lining layer. Instead, there is a tulle layer with a ruffle at the bottom underneath the fashion fabric. It is supposed to be some kind of petticoat over your hoop skirt I guess. It does function nicely, but you’ll need help from somebody who can adjust the layers over the hoop skirt.

The Pleats
The skirt is not gathered into the waistband, it is pleated which is a nice detail:

The Embroidery and Skirt Opening
In the centre front, we have an opening that is decorated with embroidery, lace and a velvet and. “Underneath” the opening is a layer of pleated dusty rose coloured satin. “Underneath” in quotation, because the skirt is one layer, not two.

Let’s zoom in a bit. You can see the golden rose embroidery with the ornamental leaves and stems as well as the rose lace used around the edges of the opening.

Here is a close up of one of the rose motives next to the opening. It is the one right at the top. There are three different motives going down the skirt, this one is the smallest.

Here is the motive that goes around the edge at the bottom.

Let us also take a closer look at the eyelit lace with the velvet ribbon laced through it:

The bottom of the pleated piece in the centre front is decorated with lace as well. it is the same lace that was used on the bodice around the pink stripes:

The Ruffles and Lace
The bottom of the pink layer is decorated with a ruffle as well as some beautiful lace. The ruffle is made from the same fabric that was used for the pleated layer beneath the front opening:

The ruffle is actually made from a layer of fabric that was folded in half, so there is no seam around the edge and we have a perfect finish, I love that:

Here is a closer look at the lace that hides the seam between the pink skirt fabric and the ruffle:

The Bow
The dress comes with a matching hair bow. It is made from the same pink fabric as the skirt:

Here is the back:

The Cape
At the same time in September 2017, Secret Honey also released the matching cape for the Belle Winter Costume. If you wanted to complete Belle’s Winter Outfit, you had to buy this coat on top for 30000 yen plus taxes. The whole outfit would have cost you over 90000 yen including taxes… I don’t remember exactly what I paid for my remake, but it was significantly less (which is only fair since it is not an original).
Here is the cape on my dress form. The hood is quite heavy and pulls the cape up in the front, which is a bit unfortunate and also not as comfy to wear. I draped the cape nicely but you can see that at the time I took the photos, it already slid up again building folds in the centre front:

Here it is from the side:

And here you can see the cape from the back.

I do like this cape a lot but I think it would be a bit annoying to wear with the cape as it would be tight around your neck. But at least the fur is super soft, so it wouldn’t be scratchy 😉
Sizing and Closure
Here you can see the front opening of the cape. It is a hidden zipper that you can open to get the cape over your head:

The sides of the zipper are decorated with red trim:

The Hood and Capelet
The hood is nice and oversized which is both good and bad. Good, because it will look super cute when you have it on. Bad because it pulls the cape up in the front when you let it hang down in the back which I already mentioned:

There is beautiful pink rose embroidery on both sides of the capelet, that take up the embroidery designs on the dress:

The fur is nice and thick and it is one layer folded in half, so it looks nice from the outside and the inside.

The whole cape is lined with a polyester fabric that reminds me of dupioni silk in texture and how the colour shifts.

The Cape
The coat itself is nice, long and wide enough to go over a hoop skirt. The edge is decorated with the same trim that was already used for the capelet. There is also embroidery running down the opening with different rose motives. They too take up the motives that are embroidered on the skirt of the dress:

Here is a closer look at the delicate embroidery and the trim:

And a little zoom on one of the motives specifically:

A smaller motive from the middle of the length:

And here is the embroidery around the bottom edge. The bottom of the cape is decorated with more faux fur.

Here is a look at the inside around the bottom. There is a facing running down the opening of the cape but not around the bottom. The fur is folded in half and also pretty on the inside:

And that you guys is everything that I can show you about this dress. I want to remind you one more time that my dress and cape are remakes (the bodice has a Secret Honey tag and washing label, the skirt only a washing label and the cape has no label at all), not originals or untagged dresses. A Secret Honey tag doesn’t mean, it is actually an original Secret Honey dress unfortunately. There may be differences to the original. I cannot point them out however, I never owned an original. But you can use these pictures to decide wether the quality of the remake is enough to justify it’s price on the market for you.
I hope you enjoyed having a look at this Belle Winter Costume together with me. Thanks a lot for reading, I hope to see you in my next post.
Love,
Ella