Lucrezia Borgia dress - start

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 )

Photo: Kristiina Saar

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.

Pattern tile cretaed in Photoshop

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...

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

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:

• Start
• Main dress
• Sleeves
• Decorations: Wig, jewelry and pearls
• On convention 

First post

So, let's make few things sure first. No, I am not huge anime fan. To be honest, I had really bad assumption about animes but that has changed a little. I like sewing. I like making nice costumes and wearing them. I am seasoned larper and that used to be my reason and excuse why spend sometimes hours behind sewing machine. To be honest, when I started larping, I was horrible at sewing. It was the need for make my own costumes that made me try and like with everything else, you learn while you do. So, I learned and I think now I feel myself quite at home in the sewing world (except button holes.. they trouble me).

Anyway, my boyfriend is huge anime fan and is actually in organizing theme for local largest anime festival and I think there came the idea that mm.. if I am going to that convention, maybe I could do a cosplay (and hide that I do not belong in that world). That gave me the push to go on and try something new.. trying to copy something from animation and transform myself into anime char. I have no idea what comes out of it.. Let's see.

Anyway.. I decided to go with Irisviel from Fate/Zero (mm.. maybe because there are only very few animes I have seen and somehow I liked her, quite a lot to be honest.) Then there were few options for different outfits but I liked the casual one with red blouse the most. Also, when googeling around, it did not looked that too many people had tried it. The one with white coat seemed to be the most popular one.

So, the first thing I did was ordering myself few things I cannot do myself: that includes wig and boots.

As I have no idea how things are done in cosplay world (and I actually did not told at first to my boyfriend that I am going to do it), I just went with my own gut - searched for the wig in ebay and got myself cheap wig from China. To be honest, it looks awful currently but then I googled for few tips and I think I might be able to salvage it.

The other thing I ordered were the boots. I found quite many online shops offering those fancy looking boots but one actually looked great on the picture and they took into account all your measurements (I was worried that might be the problem.. I never find boots easily).

So, I was actually really excited when the boots arrived. They look gorgeous and fit super well... but.. I have no idea how but they had very weird black spot on them. I contacted the seller, tried to remove them but nothing helped. So, they promised to make a new pair of boots for me. Okei.. that should work.. Another month of waiting and new pair of boots arrive - one boot is brilliant - no marks. The other one - even more uglier black spots.. Like what? Anyway.. I gave up. The quality and the fit was brilliant but I think it was the packaging that hurt and even if I mentioned it specifically that I suspected the marks came from that, they packaged the boots the same way second time.. So.. I have two sets of boots and only one boot that is okey.. I will see what I can do with it, later..

Next thing I need is the brooch. That was actually I think the hardest thing. I googled around (again) and there was somebody selling those brooches made out of clay. I thought that might be little too heavy and I most say I did not liked the images they showed me of the same broach made previously.. So, I thought about some other options. One of my friends studies leather work and I asked her if she is willing to do that commission for me. So far, so good.

So, my next step was to come up with a design so that she could work on it. Some screenshotting from the anime and some time working with photoshop (maybe not the best tool for it but I'm very handy with that program) and I had design, measurments and did some mock printups to see if the size is correct.

Mock printups.. First one had too small sides. Second one looks perfect

Final design

So, I sent the final design to my friend and I will see what she says - I hope it will be possible for her to make that kind of brooch.