T R I C K S S I

February 2020 Costume Writeup: Boss/Shizue Kuranushi

What Went Wrong:
Good GOD y'all the jacket the jacket the jacket. Never in my life have I sewn and picked and resewn so many seams in the pursuit of making a single garment. For some reason, when I transferred the mockup to the fabric, I marked the wrong shoulder seam and the collar got so messed up that I couldn't even figure out how I managed to do it. And by that time, I'd already done some quilting stitches for the design that couldn't be taken out without a lot of pain. What you see in its final form is a modification made on the fly where the collar eats into more of the shoulder space than was originally planned. I'm so lucky I have small shoulders that could handle that disparity, otherwise I would have had to start all over.

Also, that jacket fabric? THE single hardest fabric I've ever had to work with. It had slight stretch, a faux suede interior, and a faux leather exterior. Needles didn't want to pass through it even with a walking foot and parchment paper stabilizers. It was a worse nightmare than maid Velvet's leg garter! I really am lucky that this jacket came together at ALL.

Also, Arda changed the lace in their lacefront and I found out at a really inopportune time (e.g., MAGfest, where I hadn't packed any other solutions) that my tape no longer sticks well/at all to that kind of fabric. Remember, kids, test your lacefront application out well before it's time to wear it, otherwise someone will judge you at a gathering in a really inappropriate and almost cosplay-ruining way! (I don't want to talk about it.)

What Went Right:

I think I did the zipper lapels pretty well, considering the zipper part goes into an impossibly sharp corner! I also like the hood a lot, particularly the button holes I used to string through the jersey tie. The mockups that I did were all very clean and precise, even if the project didn't end up that clean. They always say that the best performers only perform at 80% of their practice capacity in the best of circumstances... so... I'm invoking that!

And knowing that that red fabric is pretty much the worst in existence, I'm pretty proud of the bias tape work I did on the shoes with it. Bias tape is starting to be my pride and joy in cosplay.

Also of note are the lines on the jacket. Although I wish they showed up a little better (thanks again to red hell fabric), I did a good job keeping them straight and consistent, and true to the model.

If I'm allowed to be proud of this, I'd also like to be proud of the likeness factor. Maybe I didn't sew everything perfectly as planned, but dammit, I look a lot like Boss, and that's pretty cool.

What I'd Fix for Next Time:

Since I hand-sewed the gloves, they're gonna need some tuning up at the tight spots. The shoe glue is also coming undone in one of the arch areas, but that's an easy fix.

Would I Wear it Again?:

Wearing it again in less than a month from the time that I'm writing this, but basically, yeah, I'll rewear this as often as I reasonably can!

Why I Chose This Character:

So, pretty much the second I saw Boss's design before AI: The Somnium Files was released, I thought she looked exactly like a parallel-world version of me. I even kept making "I'm suing Uchikoshi" jokes because of how uncanny it was, and how many friends commented that they thought the same. And then we played the game and found out her personality is similar to mine, too, which made me love her all the more. Her role in the game was also fantastic. The cherry on top? She's 42. I love that Uchikoshi writes older women into prominent roles in his games!