Maui (Moana) Costume

How to Make Maui Costume from Moana

Tribal Tattoo Print Shirt Tribal Temporary Tattoo Sleeves, 6-Sheet Men's Ti Leaf Hula Skirt, Green Khaki Chino Shorts Bone Tooth Necklace Long Curly Black Wig Maui Fish Hook Costume Prop Face & Body Paint, Beige Brown SaveTap any item in the photo to shop itClick any item in the photo to shop it

#	Item	Description	Shop
1	Tribal Tattoo Print Shirt	Does double duty as Maui's tan skin and his tattoos in one piece — the print is a dense swirl-and-figure pattern close to the real tattoo panels on his chest and back. Much easier (and cooler in warm weather) than going shirtless with body paint.	🛒 Check on Amazon
2	Tribal Temporary Tattoo Sleeves, 6-Sheet	Carries the tattoo pattern down your bare arms to match the shirt. Apply to clean, dry skin and press down 20-30 seconds per section for the best transfer.	🛒 Check on Amazon
3	Men's Ti Leaf Hula Skirt, Green	Maui's lower half is a traditional woven leaf wrap, not fabric — this is the closest ready-made version, sized for adults and tied at the waist.	🛒 Check on Amazon
4	Khaki Chino Shorts	Worn underneath the leaf skirt for coverage and so the skirt has something to tie onto; pick a tan or khaki pair so nothing shows through the leaves.	🛒 Check on Amazon
5	Bone Tooth Necklace	Maui's necklace is strung with bones and teeth from the animals he's transformed into with his hook — this necklace's row of curved teeth is the closest match. It comes with a small skull charm at the center that isn't part of his design; tuck it under the teeth or snip it off.	🛒 Check on Amazon
6	Long Curly Black Wig	For his thick, loose black hair. Muss it up rather than combing it flat — his hair reads as big and a little wild, not neat.	🛒 Check on Amazon
7	Maui Fish Hook Costume Prop	An officially licensed, bone-colored curved hook with a wrapped handle grip that matches his magical fish hook closely. It's foam/plastic and unmistakably a costume prop — even so, check your event's policy on carried "weapon" props before bringing it in.	🛒 Check on Amazon
8	Face & Body Paint, Beige Brown	Blend the gap between the tattoo shirt's collar/sleeves and your actual skin — neck, hands, and any bare patches — so the tan tone is continuous.	🛒 Check on Amazon

Maui is built from pattern and silhouette more than tailoring: get the tattoo print covering your torso and arms, the leaf skirt bulking out your lower half, and the big hair and hook in place, and the character reads instantly even from across a room.

Start with the tattoo coverage, since it's the detail that sells the whole costume. Disney's artists hand-drew Maui's tattoos as a record of his deeds — pulling up islands, lassoing the sun, giving people fire — rather than generic tribal decoration, and the film's own cultural consultants (the Oceanic Story Trust, a group of Pacific Islander historians and anthropologists Disney brought on for the 2016 film) pushed back on early designs that didn't fit real Polynesian tattoo traditions. For your own costume, a printed shirt plus temporary tattoo sleeves gets you full coverage without a single real needle — that's the intent here, not a bare-chested paint job unless you want the extra effort. If you do go shirtless, use the body paint as a base and press the tattoo sleeves onto the arms and any temporary tattoo sheets you like onto the torso instead of hand-drawing anything.

The necklace and skirt are quick wins: tie the leaf skirt low on your hips over the shorts, and let the necklace's teeth sit high on your chest, close to the collarbone, the way Maui wears his. If you want to nod to Mini Maui — the small sentient tattoo on Maui's left pec who acts as his conscience and talks back to him — a simple temporary tattoo of a tiny figure applied to that spot is a fun extra touch, though it's not required to read as the character.

For the hook, keep it resting on a shoulder or held loosely rather than swung around; that's how Maui carries it in most of his scenes, and it keeps a large prop from becoming a hazard in a crowd. If your venue is strict about anything hook- or blade-shaped regardless of material, leave it home or swap in a smaller cosplay-style hook pendant instead.

Budget route: skip the printed shirt and go shirtless with the body paint and tattoo sleeves only, and swap the ready-made leaf skirt for a few large fake palm leaves safety-pinned to a plain brown sarong.

Maui Costume for Kids

Maui skews toward kids at Halloween, and there's a genuinely easy route: a licensed-style costume set that already bundles the printed tattoo top, leaf skirt, wig, and necklace, so there's no separate shopping list.

#	Item	Description	Shop
1	Kids Polynesian Hero Costume Set	An all-in-one set: a long-sleeve top printed with Maui's tattoo pattern, a green leaf hula skirt, a curly black wig, and a shell/tooth-style necklace. One purchase covers most of the look.	🛒 Check on Amazon
2	Light-Up Maui Fish Hook Toy	An officially licensed Disney Store toy version of the hook, with motion-activated light effects — it reads unmistakably as a toy, which is what you want for a kid carrying a "hook" around all night.	🛒 Check on Amazon
3	Face & Body Paint, Beige Brown	The same tan paint as the adult version — dab it on the neck and hands where the printed top's tattoo pattern stops, so there's no obvious break between costume and skin.	🛒 Check on Amazon

Check the set's size chart before ordering; it runs in the usual kids' small/medium/large bands rather than exact ages. If the bundled wig or necklace doesn't fit well or gets lost, either piece is easy to replace on its own — a plain black curly costume wig and any bone-look necklace will match fine. Bare feet or simple sandals finish the look the way Maui goes barefoot in the film.

Group idea: send an older kid or adult as Maui and a younger one as Heihei, the clueless rooster who tags along on the voyage — the size contrast between "muscular demigod" and "confused chicken" is most of the joke. A full group can add Moana herself and even Tamatoa, the giant crab Maui fought a thousand years before the movie's events, for a scene straight out of the "Shiny" sequence in Lalotai. More costume ideas from the film are on the Moana hub.

About Maui from Moana

Maui is a demigod of wind and sea and the deuteragonist of Disney's Moana (2016), voiced by Dwayne Johnson. In the film's telling, Maui was born to human parents who threw him into the ocean as an infant; the gods rescued him, raised him, and remade him into a demigod, granting him a magical shape-shifting fish hook and near-immortality. For the next three thousand years he performed feats for humanity — pulling islands up from the sea floor, slowing the sun's path across the sky, and stealing fire to give to people — seeking the approval his birth parents never gave him. Each feat is commemorated by a new tattoo that appears on his skin, including Mini Maui, a small animated tattoo on his chest that acts as a silent, expressive conscience throughout the film.

A thousand years before the story begins, Maui's hook is lost to the giant crab Tamatoa during a fight in Lalotai, the Realm of Monsters, and its absence has left Maui's powers unstable. He reluctantly teams up with Moana, a chief's daughter voyaging beyond her island's reef for the first time, to recover the hook and return the heart of the goddess Te Fiti — the artifact Maui stole centuries earlier, which set off the story's crisis in the first place.

Moana was directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, with a screenplay by Jared Bush, and released in the United States on November 23, 2016. Maui draws on Māui, a trickster and culture-hero figure told across many Polynesian oral traditions, though the film's version is Disney's own composite character rather than a retelling of any single tradition's stories; Disney convened a group of Pacific Islander historians, anthropologists, and cultural practitioners — the Oceanic Story Trust — during development to guide choices like his tattoos, hair, and dress.