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Cosplay

Rydia Drake, Final Fantasy IV

Worn At - London Expo, May 2008
Difficulty - 4/5
Time Taken - 3 months
Cost - £110GBP
Costume Status -Retired
Hardest Task - Sleeves
Easiest Task - Wig, boots

Favourite Aspect - The wig and the sleeves. The wig has been one of my best buys to date. It’s a wig from CosWorx and its perfect as far as I’m concerned. The sleeves, despite their length and how irritiating they can be make this outfit as far as I can see.

Least Favourite - The dress. Ugh. Just… ugh. It was a bad idea to try and do this by eye. The gold strip looks out of place, and the sprayed on stars look cheap and nasty. I didn’t like the dress at all.

Why? - Rydia is a bright and fun character from Final Fantasy IV who is a really wonderful character! When I saw designs for the new DS game I just had to try and cosplay it. It didn't have the skill at the time to accomplish anything like her actual outfit, so I went for a mix of the Amano version and the spite version. I added a few of my own twists too to try and do things on par with my skill level.

Construction Notes

I started the sleeves first because I knew they'd be the hardest part. I made small basic sleeves to start with, leaving them open at the bottom. Then took about two metres of fabric, folded it into a triangle and pleated it along the hems of the smaller sleeve to make the billowing effect. I hand sewed the gold ribbon up and down both sleeves with gold thread, and made some god stars out of card, punctured two holes in each star point and sewed them onto the sleeve for added effect. They stay up by elastic around the tops.

Next came the dress. Having never made one before. I just winged it. Got a long piece of a material. Sewed it up, fitted a zip and hoped it fit. Which is did. It was very short, so I ended up adding and additional layer of gold so I didn't feel quite so exposed (still suffering from lack of confidence here people). I made a stencil and then sprayed some stars on the bottom of the green dress. To make it look like on glitzy. To keep the dress up I slip-stitched some ribbon onto it for straps.

Next came the cape and sash. The sash was a 2 metre length of fabric hemmed all the way around. I added some bells and beads and such onto the end for and added touch. The cape was a metre or so length of fabric, again hemmed. I painted on a gold pattern on the back. It attached to the dress using a couple of snap fasteners. The boots were a lucky find in Primark that I was able to spray gold. They were surprisingly comfortable and worked really well with the outfit as a whole. The headdress was an old hair band, sprayed gold with red feathers glued to it.

This was my first attempt at this cosplay. I've since done a second attempt, and am currently working on a third attempt.

Photographs

Taken by Seraphim Cry of CosplaySnap

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