How to make your cosplays 'eternal'?

 So after all thoses years I wanna reactivate this blog. Maybe not only for progress posts but also to write about stuff that really got my attention and I think needs to be said, tutorials or to highlight certain techinques. 

This time I want to talk about a topic that recently has caught my attention.

How to make sustainable, lasting cosplays?

Pls don’t feel offended nor called out by this blog entry. It is just here to give some thoughts. What everyone does or decides and how they spend their time is entirely up to themselves.

 

Lately the topic has arisen over and over again that fast fashion thrives also in cosplay. The trend has gone to some extremes of ppl buying and just wearing cosplays for a single Instagram shooting or even just makeup tests.

This trend personally troubles me a bit… and that is why I would like to talk about the utmost different route: of making your cosplays ‘eternal’.

What does it take when making? Selfmaking already is limiting, yes, cause it is time gated and often more expensive than buying on the Chinese market. But not necessarily lasting. Everyone has crunched now and again and often (not always) the results suffer from speeding up.

Speeding up itself is not something bad. But when you rush you could ask yourself if you are really happy with the way this is going and could you still improve it later if you do it that way or only if you use a different technique or postpone that part. Try to make alterations possible whenever you can.

What also helps is: Planning in advance. While you still have time and before you even start think different methodes through and consider which are easiest, which can still be changed if they don’t work and which fastening issues you could encounter?

Also when using new techniques, colours, materials in general: make small tests with them. Often you encounter issues or see what you don’t like already at that point and can avoid them.

Ask questions. If you work with a new material are there any sources or tutorials? Have friends already used that particular thing especially in a way close to the way you want to use it?

Ofc that doesn’t get rid of all problems (some colour issues for example flaking off or glue not holding pieces together after a whole day of use) cannot be avoided easily. But some already can be countered just with a little test.

Also avoid doing stuff you need to concentrate on like gluing in place, appliqueing etc when you are not concentrated or distracted. Especially when crunching late at night.  Try to do these steps rather when you are more awake and do more routine stuff late or when you run out of energy. Cause incorrigible mistakes or mistakes that eat up a lot of time (and sometimes money too) qne are prone to happen right then.

Another thing is fastening as already said. Actually that is a much more complex and difficult topic than decoration techniques and shows true skill to my mind. I personally avoid glue whenever possible or at least try to use the best option possible. Why? Because I trust thread more and also I can correct this more easily. But that is a personal preference. If you use glue test it as there are huge differences for every material and if there is tension on a certain part or not. No tension means more options and that the parts stick together during a whole day or longer more easily.

Other examples are: snap buttons or hooks. They tend to open up easily under tension. Other options possible are elastic, knotting strings, zippers or to some degree also velcro in those cases.

Also always think of your materials first. You might want to avoid velcro for more fragile fabrics as e.g. silk to prevent them from fraying. Also which side to put your velcro on. Always put the hook side on the parts that are non fabric in case of armour pieces attached to clothing to make it more easily wash and transportable.

Also a necessity if you want to sew cosplays that endure is: Washability. That’s also a reason why I avoid glue and refrain from using certain painting techniques. While fabric colours often stay in place (and can easily be fixed up) acrylics don’t necessarily behave like that. Glue also might not endure a washing (although I am pretty sure some brands like gütermann do but you really have to make sure of that with tests).

Another option to make things more easily washable is attaching certain fragile parts in a way you can take them off for washing like with velcro, snap buttons, safety pins or baisting…  Such parts are embroidery or extremely painted parts or other fragile materials or non-fabrics.

A key step to making something washable is ofc trimming edges that are not covered especially or if you use very easily fraying fabrics like lining etc. Also lining in general might improve the durability and fit of a cosplay.

Also washability includes certain steps: handwashing (like in the bathtub) up to machine washing. Machine washing is not always achievable especially with heavily decorated pieces or if you use cords. But handwashing most often is if you consider it in advance.

So those are my very general thoughts on how to make a cosplay staying intact for a very long time. I have quite some that survived many years (and quite a few times of wear) even when I neglected some of those pieces of advice I now listed here and only found out later.

So to close this: I might update this as it for sure doesn’t include everything I know in general and also ppl might have more advice on this. Aside form that again I want to stress that I don’t want to annoy anyone with this little text. And ofc some ideas are very basic or logical so they might be too obvious but I found out some obvious things don’t come to our minds at times.