So, I would say that my first ever really big and complex cosplay project is Lucrezia Borgia dress from Borgias. I missed one year of Animatsuri due to being in Japan duing my research for PhD but as I came back in the end of 2015, I knew I can come to Animatsuri in 2016 and I really wanted to take part of the cosplay competition now when I had seen the event once (2014).
Back then I did really simple cosplay just to wear (and blend in more - as I felt totally out of place) - Irisiviel from Fate/Zero. (The first blog post in this blog is actually about this costume.. I never actually finished that series )
I loved the char, I loved the anime and I loved the costume but it taught me a lot about cosplay. It does not matter so much how precise they details are if the costume itself is very simple. More elaborate the costume, more attention it gets. The first event taught me that attention actually matters and details matter a lot. So, for my first real try with cosplay I decided to go with Lucrezia.
Why her? First of all, anime is actually not my thing. Animatsuri and all the anime fests, they are great places to wear costumes but that's it. First I thought that you can only cosplay anime but more I learned about cosplay I realized I can do whatever I want. It doesn't have to be anime nor connected with Japan at all nor from game. I can also cosplay movies and shows.
I have always wanted to do renaissance dress almost as badly as I have wanted to do English Elizabethian time period costumes. When I had made up my mind that it will be one of those time periods, I knew it is going to be Lucrezia from The Borgias. I always loved that show for the costumes. Even when I knew the characther and show, the exact costume was much more complex.
Lucrezia wears so many fancy costumes during the shows three seasons that I had hard trouble finding my favorite. You can see and read about all the costumes here. My choice in the end was down to three dresses (the one I chose, the wedding dress and I am not sure what was the third one.. blue dress from season2 maybe). The main factor was that I really liked the ribbon sleeves. So, in the end, I went with the dress she wears in the end of season 2 and the start of season 3. It is this kind of mint green dress (I think) with lovely sleeves and lot of pearls as decorations.
So, now when i knew which dress I want to make, the next step was finding the pattern and fabric. Pattern was easy. I went with simplicity's Renaissance pattern.
I used the main pattern (on the left on preview) as a base but to be honest, I needed very little of it and I could have done it without it. The bodice was the only thing where I used the pattern and I modified it heavily to fit the pattern of the Lucrezia's dress.
The next step was the fabric. The problem was the color of the dress. There are three good quality stills:
So those were my reference images. In the top images, (season 3) the dress looks goldish, in bottom image (season 2) it looks greenish. There is another dress that looks to be the same dress with slightly modified sleeves worn also in season 2 that looks totally blue (shot during the day). So I had no idea should the dress be blue, green or golden. Also, as green is hard color to photograph and the silk reflects a lot of light, I did a little trial and error with different fabrics and light conditions and took photos until I got a fabric that gave me the most similar result to the dancing image (that i think as yellow but more neutral lightning than season 3 images).
So, I had my green fabric but the pattern was problematic. I tried to find something with similar pattern. I actually even found something but it was silver fabric. So, it would have gone with bluish tones but not with the nice warmer mint green I had. So, I decided to make the pattern myself and I do not regret that at all! This is the only way I could get exact copy of the pattern used on the show.
So, I just used the middle reference image as it had largest resolution, zoomed in and recreated the pattern in Photoshop. I used a company that can print your own fabrics. Its not very cheap but much better than using the stamping method I used with Jacob Frye costume. The result was amazing but...
Drawing the patterns was just time consuming and despite having good resolution sometimes it was quite hard to see the exact details and figure out the exact size. i think I managed to get close enough. (Also, in the end, I needed to transform the drawing to vector so there was extra task of learing how to use vectors and modify them)
It took me two tries to get the right color. I used the exact same kind of fabric for the base of the pattern than the mint green. It is not pure white but has slight warm yellowish tone. So, thinking of printing technology, I first made the pattern slightly more bluish (after testrun that gave me brown instead of green) thinking the yellow will have an effect. The answer was - the yellow had minimum effect but the blue came out so so strong that it did not fit at all. I had just printed almost 3 meters of fabric that I could not use. I was not happy at all.
So, I had to go back (that was effort by itself as the company was off the beaten track) and the lady there did many trial prints to get the right color. Despite having the color guidance and printout on paper, they looked different on fabric. Anyway, in the end I had the right color. It was maybe slightly stronger than I would have liked but the printing machine had limits and as I have seen so many times with design works before - printing green is nightmare.
Anyway. Now I had both green and pattern fabric and I was ready to make the dress:
Back then I did really simple cosplay just to wear (and blend in more - as I felt totally out of place) - Irisiviel from Fate/Zero. (The first blog post in this blog is actually about this costume.. I never actually finished that series )
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| Photo: Kristiina Saar |
Why her? First of all, anime is actually not my thing. Animatsuri and all the anime fests, they are great places to wear costumes but that's it. First I thought that you can only cosplay anime but more I learned about cosplay I realized I can do whatever I want. It doesn't have to be anime nor connected with Japan at all nor from game. I can also cosplay movies and shows.
I have always wanted to do renaissance dress almost as badly as I have wanted to do English Elizabethian time period costumes. When I had made up my mind that it will be one of those time periods, I knew it is going to be Lucrezia from The Borgias. I always loved that show for the costumes. Even when I knew the characther and show, the exact costume was much more complex.
Lucrezia wears so many fancy costumes during the shows three seasons that I had hard trouble finding my favorite. You can see and read about all the costumes here. My choice in the end was down to three dresses (the one I chose, the wedding dress and I am not sure what was the third one.. blue dress from season2 maybe). The main factor was that I really liked the ribbon sleeves. So, in the end, I went with the dress she wears in the end of season 2 and the start of season 3. It is this kind of mint green dress (I think) with lovely sleeves and lot of pearls as decorations.
So, now when i knew which dress I want to make, the next step was finding the pattern and fabric. Pattern was easy. I went with simplicity's Renaissance pattern.
The next step was the fabric. The problem was the color of the dress. There are three good quality stills:
So, I had my green fabric but the pattern was problematic. I tried to find something with similar pattern. I actually even found something but it was silver fabric. So, it would have gone with bluish tones but not with the nice warmer mint green I had. So, I decided to make the pattern myself and I do not regret that at all! This is the only way I could get exact copy of the pattern used on the show.
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| Pattern tile cretaed in Photoshop |
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| Two size tries and first test-print - totally too brown so I added more blueishness |
Drawing the patterns was just time consuming and despite having good resolution sometimes it was quite hard to see the exact details and figure out the exact size. i think I managed to get close enough. (Also, in the end, I needed to transform the drawing to vector so there was extra task of learing how to use vectors and modify them)
 |
| First print - it was brown on test run and now it is totally blue. Nooooo.. But it was so nice to get a block of your own designed fabric. Loved it :D |
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| The mint green I used in the end and another jade color fabric at right. I considered using the jade fabric but it did not fit with the blue either. So - I spent twice the money to do another print (fabric was cheap but the printing :S Lesson learned: do test prints until you are happy despite it takes time) |
It took me two tries to get the right color. I used the exact same kind of fabric for the base of the pattern than the mint green. It is not pure white but has slight warm yellowish tone. So, thinking of printing technology, I first made the pattern slightly more bluish (after testrun that gave me brown instead of green) thinking the yellow will have an effect. The answer was - the yellow had minimum effect but the blue came out so so strong that it did not fit at all. I had just printed almost 3 meters of fabric that I could not use. I was not happy at all.
 |
| Plenty of test runs and final fabric with right kind of green |
So, I had to go back (that was effort by itself as the company was off the beaten track) and the lady there did many trial prints to get the right color. Despite having the color guidance and printout on paper, they looked different on fabric. Anyway, in the end I had the right color. It was maybe slightly stronger than I would have liked but the printing machine had limits and as I have seen so many times with design works before - printing green is nightmare.
Anyway. Now I had both green and pattern fabric and I was ready to make the dress:
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