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Utena - school uniform and duelist
"The princess vowed to become a prince herself one day. But was that really such a good idea?"
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Utena
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Made by: Melissa Quinn - January - July 2005
Appeared: Otakon 2005, One Day At Ohtori Photoshoot, Otakon 2006 (duelist version), AnimeNEXT 2014 (school version)
Status: Active |
As soon as I started watching Revolutionary Girl Utena, I knew I had to cosplay her. Everything about her reminded me, not so much of who I am, but who I always wanted to be: the girl who, for more than one reason, doesn't want to be the damsel, but who wants to be the prince who rescues the damsels--without actually sacrificing her femininity. Her reactions in the series were very much what I imagine mine would be--though goodness knows I can't wield a sword the same way she can! I just fell in love. Many people warned me that the series would not quite turn out in a way I would expect, but I didn't care, and to tell you the truth the series was everything I could want and more.
I'm not sure if Utena will turn out to be one of those characters I want to do EVERY costume of, the same way I feel about Mars, but I was having a hard time deciding whether or not I wanted her school uniform, or her duelist uniform, especially since, the more I studied it, the more I realized how similar they were.
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I was sure it was possible--not for me, with my poor alteration skills, but for someone who really knew what they were doing--to make the two costumes in one.
I selected a costume maker by viewing all of the Anthy Rosebride dresses I could. In my opinion, so few had gotten the proper "hoop" feel to Anthy's skirt, that that would be a good trial. Finally I stumbled across Faerie Fingers and Melissa Quinn and e-mailed her my ideas about a convertible costume. She wrote back really excited--it was something that had occurred to her, too, that she had never had the opportunity to try. I can't imagine what all she had to do to accomplish it, but I do know that she had a lot of fun figuring out how to make the various pieces detachable--without compromising the look of the regular school uniform--and that she did a WONDERFUL job.
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I had other help on the costume as well. I bought the rose crest ring from Pikmin Link, and after trying to make my own Sword of Dios and failing miserably, I bought the one you see in pictures from Amazon Mandy. About the only thing I did on my own was make the shoes, and Louis helped me out a lot on that. The wig was bought off of eBay, and I trimmed the layers around my face (and tried to curl them, but as you can see it didn't take very well.) I bought pink mascara online to lighten my eyebrows for photos.
The best part about wearing this to Otakon, however, was that I somehow managed to convince a bunch of people to cosplay other characters from Utena with me: Louis made one of the sexiest Tougas I've ever seen, Jamie was an adorable (and height and weight accurate ^.~) Wakaba, Selphie was entirely too convincing as Miki, Avian was also too entirely believable as Kozue (and had a ball, I believe), and the other cosplayers I met on Sunday were all lovely.
In the summer of 2014 I ended up buying a new pair of yoga shorts off of eBay to wear with the costume; somehow my original shorts became too...short. |
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Photos
Otakon 05
Otakon 06
AnimeNEXT 2014
CGs and Fanart
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