09/13/2026
Did you know that a majority of student costumes sold on the USA market are cheap junk costumes that you can find in Egypt for $20-$50? They are more of the Halloween/Lingerie/Tourist fantasy you find on the streets. Websites then sell them to teachers who have never been there for $100-300 due to shipping costs and markup. A lot of these are also made in horrific conditions.
These can also bring a certain reputation to educated audiences and people from the culture of being exactly that: cheap knockoffs. Lingerie. Fantasy. Even though your dancers will match, imagine showing up to a country line dance group performance and everyone is wearing lingerie or country halloween costumes and expected to be taken seriously? A lot of these also don't fit all bodies well either.
One way to avoid causing unintentional harm is to not wear these things or costume groups with them. Trust me, I know how hard it is to costume groups. I used to have to buy 5 to 10 sets a year, over 100 costumes. It was cheaper for me to go to Egypt and work with designers and bring back suitcases (shucks ;) ).
When you can, help your students grow their wardrobe so they have nice professional pieces and buy directly from designers. Good basics they can use over and over again. They usually offer great group rates that are the same or cheaper than ordering off websites that don't care if your dancers are being represented well.
If you don't see dancers or their students in the countries wearing these costumes, can we start to retire things that we use that could be actually perpetuating the wrong stereotypes?
One of the funny things I see when I'm in the market is that they put these costumes in plastic bags to keep the dirt from the streets off of them and then photoshop famous dancers faces on the bodies so people can see the costume on a dancer. I always giggle and send photos to dance friends and tell them, congrats, they've made it! Their faces are now on the costume bags to help sell them to unsuspecting people š¤£
If you ever need introductions to the makers, happy to help. Troupes too!
