Convention Fans

I received a message today from Amy, the owner of WizardUniforms.com, letting me know that after being in business for more than 6 years, and being one of the first sellers of Wizard House Sweaters over the internet (which started from her own cosplay fandom), she is closing down the website and liquidating the rest of her sweater stock.

She also noted that…

More importantly, in celebration of the 6th Harry Potter movie releasing next month, I have reduced the price of each sweater from $55 to $12.95. There are less than 50 sweaters left, so I don’t imagine there will be much left soon.

So if you’re a Harry Potter fan still looking for a sweater, head on over to Wizard Uniforms and pick up one before they are gone! Link: http://www.wizarduniforms.com

A few months ago, I posted a link to a Star Trek corset available on Etsy.com. I also posted it to Reddit.com, and the page views at the Etsy page jumped to a whopping 70,000 in a number of hours. Needless to say, it was a popular little item on the Internet for a while. In fact, my blog still gets hits from it too. Well, the same talented lady who brought you the red command officer Star Trek corset now offers them in all department colors. But wait, there’s more! She has Star Wars corsets as well!

The prices for the corsets are as follows:

Galactic Trooper (a.k.a. Star Wars Stormtrooper) Corset Costume: $500

Galactic Lord (a.k.a. Star Wars Darth Vader) Corset Costume: $600

Yellow/Red/Blue Trekkie Corset: $200

Yellow/Red/Blue Trekkie “Shrug”: $50

The Star Trek corsets take about two weeks, where as the Star Wars corsets can take six weeks.

I’ve been to a few conventions since these corsets became available, and I’ve yet to see anyone wearing one. So if you’re looking for a unique costume that gets you some serious attention at a convention, this would certainly do the trick. There is no doubt in my mind that a lady wearing one of these at a convention would not go back to her hotel room alone if she so desired (in fact, one of my friends said any lady friend of his who wore one would get an instant marriage proposal). And you can bet that her picture would end up all over the internet after the convention.

For those of you who lack experience wearing corsets, I’d like to point you to an article at The Costumer on corset safety: Corset and Bodice Safety Tips.

Here’s the link to the corset website, where you can purchase these amazing costumes: Evening Arwen - Custom Costumes & Corsets

As my regular readers may recall, a few months ago I stumbled upon an article called the Top 20 Sexy Science Fiction Costumes (link no longer works). I disagreed with a lot of the choices. But it occurred to me that it wasn’t really fair to just feature the sexiest sci-fi costumes for the ladies, without doing a list for the men as well! I solicited some feedback and additional opinions (from girls and guys), and I am ready to unveil the list!

Note: The original ladies’ list included live-action comic book costumes. A good argument could be made that they are their own genre and shouldn’t count, but since the original list included them, I will do the same here. As with the other list, I also did not include animated costumes. It had to have been worn by someone in the flesh!

And remember, we’re talking about the costumes here, not the men wearing them!

(more…)

With the new Star Trek movie being a box office success, I’m sure plenty of fans are going to be wanting the Starfleet uniforms from the film. When I wrote my original Star Trek Uniform Costume Guide, the movie wasn’t out yet, so I hadn’t included the new uniforms in it. Now that the film is out, I felt I should go ahead and try to lend a helping hand to those looking for some Star Trek XI costume resources.

First of all, to my knowledge, no official patterns for the new Starfleet movie uniforms have been released or announced. However, I would imagine that Paramount will realize that fans will be wanting these, and (perhaps) eventually produce them. After all, there are official patterns for older uniforms.

If patterns come out, the hardest part will probably be selecting a fabric that will be 100% screen accurate, because there is a delta pattern in it (see the picture below). Using a full red, blue or gold fabric simply will not give the exact same look as the fabric used in the 2009 movie.

(more…)

One of the great aspects of the World of Warcraft (WoW) community, is that it is global. You can find WoW players all across the world, and that means you can also find WoW cosplayers from all over the world. I had an opportunity to talk to a German Warcraft cosplayer who calls herself °Kamui°, who has some absolutely incredible Druid costumes. Thanks to some translation assistance from her boyfriend, we were able to have a chat about her costumes, and what the cosplay scene is like in Germany.

Note: I have done a bit of editing to this transcript for language clarity, which is designated by brackets.

°Kamui°, how did you get into cosplay?

°Kamui°: I first came in contact with cosplay by reading AnimaniA, a German anime and manga magazine and later the community of animexx.de. Later, when I ordered my ticket for AnimagiC 2003 I was already determined to try it myself. I didn’t know many animes or mangas at that time but one series got me hooked. Dragonball. My favourite character was The Great Sayaman, so naturally I was eager to cosplay him. I’ve never sewed before, nor did I know how to start, so what I did was buy some cheap cloth, take my fathers sewing machine and just start.

(more…)