1930s Silver Belly Dance Costume

For your viewing pleasure, I give to you this incredibly beautiful 1930s belly dancing, bedla costume that appears to be handmade in immaculate condition with no dry rot, No pinholes, no rips or tears. The fabric of this costume is strong because it was stored well, probably in a climate controlled space and it came to me wrapped in tissue paper. It’s the perfect way to store a costume like this.

If you do not have tissue paper where you are, white towels or sheets work perfectly. Make sure that you wash and dry them first and roll your costumes in them. I prefer to keep desiccant packets in the boxes I keep my costumes in and in the rooms where my costumes live I have a dehumidifier running at all times. Out here in the Puerto Rican tropical air, I have to change the dehumidifier every day. This will help  prevent dry rot and other moisture issues such as mold and mildew.

Normally I would recommend storing each of your costumes separately in an archival box. However out here on the island, we have major concerns with hurricanes, flooding and humidity.

Since the weather out here tends to be particularly hard on fabric I store them in plastic bins. But normally nothing goes in a plastic bin before the desiccant pads and everything is rolled up in soft clean  white fabric.

The reason I keep stressing white fabric is because with these old costumes, often times the color lot will still dye out onto other  clothes, you can easily spot this and mildew and mold if you wrap  everything in white. You can see if you need to move items around so that dye is not deposited on another costume accidentally.

I find it troublesome to constantly keep switching out tissue paper because I move these costumes around a lot in the process of documentation and I do still like to wear these rare costumes and my rare vintage clothing. And I absolutely hate having to replace the  tissue paper each time because it tears so easily.

Unfortunately I don’t have any history for this costume but I did come across this wonderful 1930s belly dancing gossip column. I thought it was pretty cute to read. So I’m going to include it for your entertainment and education. 

Photo edits by Madison Hurley aka Rosa Lee Bloom.