How to Stage a Dress-Up Fashion Show at Home

The last Saturday Mia and Eli spent at my house, the television stayed off all afternoon and nobody complained. It was the second Saturday in March and it had rained since Thursday, the kind of weather that makes an indoor fashion show less a craft project and more a necessity. Mia is seven. Eli is four. The coffee table got shoved against the wall, a strip of blue painter's tape ran from the hallway to the front window, and my living room became a runway. I am sixty-six, retired after thirty years working the front office at a school in Fort Worth, and I have learned one thing about grandchildren who announce they are bored: give them a job and a costume and they forget the tablet exists.

The costumes live in the closet of my spare bedroom, in a box I bought two years ago for Mia's fifth birthday. It is the Disney Princess Dress Up Trunk from JAKKS Pacific, twenty-one pieces, and it is the best thing I have ever bought for this house. Not because it is fancy. Because it is an entire afternoon in a box, and because it works just as well with one child as it does with three. What follows is how we actually do it, step by step, including the part where Eli wears the tiara.

Step 1: Clear a runway before anybody puts on a costume

Do the boring part first, while the kids are still in the car or still finishing lunch. Push the coffee table and the armchairs back against the walls. Roll the rug if it slides. I use a roll of blue painter's tape to mark two lines about three feet apart, twelve feet long, running from the doorway to the front window, and that is the runway. Blue tape lifts off hardwood without a mark, which matters when you are the one who has to clean it up.

The first time I did this I used masking tape, because masking tape was what happened to be in the kitchen drawer. It held for about ten minutes, rolled up at the edges, and when I pulled it off the baseboard it took a patch of paint about the size of a quarter with it. Now I buy the blue painter's tape in the wide roll, the kind made for trim, and I press it down with my thumb along the whole length because a corner that lifts will trip a seven year old in a long skirt. I keep a tape measure in the drawer next to it. Mia wants the exact length of the runway, and I have learned to have the number ready before she asks.

The tape does two jobs. It tells everybody where to walk, which cuts down on the running, and it makes the room feel like an event before a single costume comes out of the closet. Mia takes the taping very seriously. She stands at the end of the strip with her hands on her hips and informs me the runway is too short, and we make it longer. That argument is already part of the fun.

One more thing about the room. Move anything glass and anything breakable off the low shelves. Not because the costumes are dangerous, but because a seven year old in a long skirt doing a spin does not look where she is going. I learned that with a ceramic frog.

Step 2: Let the child run the costume department

Open the trunk and then step back. The whole point of twenty-one pieces is that the combinations belong to the child, not to you. The set has mix-and-match tops and skirts for Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, and Snow White, so Mia can pair a Belle top with a Cinderella skirt and it looks like she designed it herself. She has never once asked me which pieces are supposed to go together.

One year I tried to be helpful and sorted the pieces into four neat stacks, one for each princess, before she came over. It lasted about six minutes. Mia looked at the stacks, thanked me very much, and mixed all four back together, because the mixing is the game and I had missed that. Now I leave the trunk open on the floor with the lid back and let her build whatever she is building. The only thing I insist on is that the pieces go back in the trunk and not on the floor, because I am sixty-six and my knees have opinions.

The pieces are sizes 4 to 6x. Mia is seven and small for her age, and after two years the skirts still fit, though they are shorter than they were. The fabric is polyester and wrinkle resistant, which in plain English means it comes out of a closet squashed under a pile of dress-up shoes and still looks fine. There is a sticker sheet in the trunk that lets her change the picture on the necklace pendant, and that is the piece she fusses over longest. The trunk is one of the few things from JAKKS Pacific that has survived this long in a house with three grandchildren in it.

The jewelry is where the arguments happen, so I count it out loud before the show. Three bracelets, three rings, one necklace, one choker, three headbands, one tiara. Everyone gets something to wear. If two children both want the tiara, we flip a coin, and the loser gets first pick of the headbands. I have run that negotiation more times than I ran the school front office. The piece that goes missing is always a ring. It is small, it slides off a seven year old's finger during a spin, and it ends up under the sofa. I keep a flashlight in the side table drawer for exactly this. We have found every ring so far, and I still count them out loud.

Step 3: Give the little ones a job backstage

Eli is four and he does not want to wear a skirt, which is fine. What he wants is a job with a title. He is the stagehand. He opens the closet door, he carries the basket of jewelry to the end of the runway, and he decides when the music starts. He also wears the tiara at some point, usually backwards, gets his laugh, and goes right back to being stagehand.

Backstage in my house is the hallway by the bathroom. I set a chair there and lean a mirror against the wall so the kids can see themselves. Nothing fancy. A laundry basket holds the pieces that are in play and the trunk stays open beside it. When the show is over, everything goes back in the basket first and the basket goes in the trunk second. That one habit is the reason we still have all twenty-one pieces after two years, and it is the first thing I would tell anybody who asks me about a JAKKS Pacific dress-up set.

Sophie is two and lives in Oklahoma City, so most months she is not here for the show. When she does visit, she gets the job of handing out the tickets. I tear strips of paper from the pad by the phone and she hands one to each person in a chair. She takes it very seriously, and she hands one to herself as well. The trunk will go to her when Mia outgrows it. That is already decided.

Step 4: Pick the music before the first walk

Do not wait until a child is standing at the end of the runway to ask what she wants to walk out to. Pick the song first. We use the little karaoke machine on the toy shelf in the grandkids' room, with the songs playing from my phone over Bluetooth. No app, no subscription, and the kids know how to work it, which is half the appeal.

The first time we tried this, I spent eleven minutes crouched over my phone trying to get the music to play while a seven year old stood at the end of a strip of tape in full costume waiting, and the whole show lost its air. Now I do the dull part first, before anybody is dressed. Phone connected, volume up, first song queued, phone face down on the kitchen counter where nobody will knock it into the sink. Eli presses play. That is his favorite thirty seconds of the entire afternoon and it costs me nothing to give it to him.

Mia's choices run to whatever she heard at school that week. Mine run to Elvis. There is a version of this show that ends with me singing along to a slow song while a seven year old in a Belle top walks very slowly down a strip of blue tape, and I recommend it.

Rehearse the walk once with the music off. Heel to toe, all the way down, stop at the end, turn, walk back. That is the whole thing. Mia adds a spin. Eli adds a run. Both are allowed. The rehearsal is not about getting it right. It is about getting the giggles out before the audience sits down.

Step 5: Keep the show short, then do it again

The first show lasts about four minutes. That is the correct length for a four year old stagehand and a two year old ticket taker. Mia comes out twice in two different combinations, Eli walks the runway once wearing the tiara, and then everybody takes a bow. I clap like it is a Broadway opening. My neighbor has heard me do this through an open window.

Then we do it again, because the second show is always better. By then the kids know where the tape is and I know which song to play. The second show is when Mia starts announcing herself in a voice she borrowed from somewhere, saying her full name and the name of her character, and it is the closest thing to theater that happens in this house. We start around two in the afternoon and the last bow is usually before four, which leaves the whole evening free and everybody in a good mood at supper.

The finale is the part I would not skip. Everybody walks the runway together, including me, and including whatever stuffed animal Eli has decided is the guest of honor. Then the costumes come off, the basket gets packed, the tape comes up, and we have a snack. The whole afternoon runs about ninety minutes. That is about right for a Saturday.

What Else Helps

A mirror at the end of the runway, even a small one leaned against the wall, changes the whole production. Mia stops mid-walk to check the necklace. That is not vanity at seven. That is costuming.

The sticker sheet is the one thing I would handle differently if I had it to do over. The first month, Mia put all four pendant stickers on in a single afternoon and then wanted different ones, and I had nothing to give her. Now the extras live in a sandwich bag in the trunk and she swaps them out when the mood strikes. A damp washcloth takes the old adhesive off, and I keep one in the kitchen for exactly that. A seven year old's hands are a seven year old's hands, and the pendant gets handled a great deal.

Snacks after, never during. Cheddar crackers and a juice box at the kitchen table, with the costumes already packed away by then. I made the mistake of putting the crackers out during the show once, and I spent the next morning picking orange dust out of a polyester skirt.

And a word about buying one for a grandchild who lives far away. The trunk from JAKKS Pacific is one box with everything inside it, which is why it mails so well. Sophie will get Mia's when the time comes, but if she were not in line for it, I would send her one of her own along with a strip of tape and a note telling her mother to push the coffee table back.

The skirts are shorter than they were two years ago. Mia is seven, small for her age, and she still walks that strip of tape like she owns the room.