DIY Carmen Miranda Costume

I teased this Halloween costume DIY quite a bit on Instagram and most of you guessed right: Carmen Miranda it is! (If you guessed Chiquita Banana that totally counts too. 🙂 ) The irony of this costume is that if I were to remove the hat and squiggle on a unibrow, I would totally be back to being Frida. I can’t seem to escape my favorite lady – LOL!

I’ve been excited to do this DIY for a while, and it’s truly an easy one to put together especially now that I’ve done the research for you. I first tested out Oh Happy Day’s DIY instructions, which includes glueing the fruit to a paper plate and securing it under your chin with string or elastic. But those grapes. Oh those darn grapes. They just weren’t sticking. Not to mention a strap under my chin just didn’t feel very elegant — though it’s darn cute in kid costume form!

I teamed up with my best gal-tographer, the one and only Becca Siegel, to take some silly photos of the finished Carmen Miranda costume in the wild. (The wild being an NYC street fruit stand, naturally.) Big shoutout to the kind fruit vendor on the southwest corner of 34th and 8th who let us pose in front of his stand and play with his fruit. If you live or work in the area, get your morning bananas from this nice guy! (He’s the one in blue in the photo above!)

So, are you ready to give this costume DIY a go?? Let’s do it!

DO IT YOURSELF

Supplies:

• Gold turban
• Faux fruit
• Glue gun + glue
• Thin hoop earrings
• Plastic fruit beads
• Straight pins (optional)
• Long skirt
• Ruffled blouse
• Piled-on necklaces and bangles

Steps:

1. Start making your hat by stuffing the turban with bubble wrap, t-shirts, or any other soft materials you have lying around. This gives the turban shape and enables you to figure out how the fruit is all going to fit on.
2. Plug in your glue gun and begin playing with the fruits to figure out how they’re going to fit together to form a fruit mountain on your head, much like a puzzle. The best advice I can give is to see which pieces sit nicely on the surface of your turban and keep stacking upwards. Use your glue gun to secure the fruit to the turban and to one another everywhere the pieces touch one another. (Note: you’re going to use a LOT of glue.)
3. For any parts that don’t seem to want to stick to one another, you can keep them in place using straight pins. This works especially well if your fruit is foam. I had a ton of trouble with the grapes on my hat, as the slick surface of each individual grape kept peeling away from the glue. The straight pins where an excellent fix.
4. For the earrings, simply add the beads to the hoops in whatever order you like!
5. Pull the outfit together with a long skirt, ruffly blouse, piles of necklaces and bangles, and a red lip. You can find lots of Carmen Miranda outfit inspiration here on Pinterest!

And that’s it! This Carmen Miranda Halloween costume DIY is as easy as banana cream pie. Let me know if you try out this costume idea by tagging @theneonteaparty on Instagram!

Peace, love & neon,
Marisa

< photos by Becca Siegel Photo + The Neon Tea Party >