A Mary Poppins costume is great for any musical theme parties. The Walt Disney film of Mary Poppins was made in 1964 and starred Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins, and Dick Van Dyke as Bert.
Mary Poppins became the nanny for the Banks’ children when she came down from the clouds in response to an advertisement placed by the children that their father had actually ripped up.
She is firm and authoritarian with the children but very kind and caring as well. The film is so popular and well loved because of the fantastic imagery throughout and the now well-known songs.
Now also a stage musical, Mary Poppins is as popular as ever and Mary Poppins’ costumes are very distinctive. Mary Poppins herself generally wore an ankle length skirt and matching suit jacket, with a hat, in turn-of-the century style, and she always carried her umbrella and bottomless carpetbag. Sometimes she wore a long knitted scarf with her overcoat. When in the nursery she wore a white pinafore apron over her clothes.
The film is set in London in 1910 so think of the late Edwardian era fashion of this time, but remember that Mary Poppins was quite strict and somber in her dress, unlike the more frivolous Mrs. Banks, the children’s mother.
If you wanted a costume for any of the other characters in Mary Poppins then Mrs. Banks is an easy one, as her main costume is a blue and orange Edwardian-style dress with a white and blue sash saying “Votes for Women” in black letters (she was a suffragette). She also wears white gloves in the film, as did most Edwardian English women.
For a male costume Bert is one of the main characters and he has several costumes throughout the film. An obvious and fairly easy one to make is his chimney sweep costume. If you can’t picture any of the costumes in your head, do a search on Google for Mary Poppins images and you’ll see lots.
If you want a Mary Poppins costume for kids the Banks’ children were both blonde and wore Edwardian style clothes for children (these were pretty much the same as adult’s clothes but smaller!). The little boy Michael wore a grey suit with a cap and the little girl Jane wore a brown coat over a red dress with white tights, and a boater hat. You could carry a kite to identify yourself as one of the children from Mary Poppins, as in the opening scene of the film the children were brought home by a policeman after losing their nanny because they were chasing after a kite.
There are loads of other really great costumes from Mary Poppins as there are lots of different scenes, characters and adventures within the film. The best thing to do is watch the film or have a look around the internet for some images on which to base a Mary Poppins costume. Whatever you come up with it will probably be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!