#Cosplay: Hysteria Alice Dress, Part II

FACTS is this weekend, and thankfully… my costume is (sort-of) done! Hysteria Alice has been quite the undertaking, but I think I managed to complete the costume to the best of my current ability. You can read more about how I started this costume here.

For those in need of reminding, Hysteria Alice is this character:

What started as an ugly thrift store wedding dress went through quite the evolution…

I made those accessories that would end up attached to the dress (more specifically, the Hollow Yves skull bow and the Pluto pendant) from air-dry clay, which I then painted and varnished.

Attaching the Hollow Yves skull (which was, despite my efforts to actually hollow it out a bit, rather heavy) to the bow I made from leftover fabric, posed a bit of a problem at first. It required a whole construct of push buttons and ribbon and even a random ball of fabric to keep it attached and upright… but I think I managed. Somewhat. Behold, the back of the dress:

This also works as an illustration to the fact that I absolutely suck at making bows. I shudder at how uneven it is; thankfully it’s on my ass so I don’t have to look at it while wearing the costume. I also didn’t make the clasps that should go on the back of the dress. I’d pay almost 5 euros per clasp if I bought them in my local fabric store, and I’d need about 5… and I didn’t think perfecting a costume detail that hardly anyone would have remembered from the game was worth an investment of 25 euros. There. I’m an avaricious (and generally poor) student cosplayer.

Then, I also attached the pendant to the fabric choker/collar…

I guess I underestimated how heavy my dollarstore-bought air-dry clay would be. The pendant actually does look good in real life though. Also, this picture illustrates my meager hand-hemming skills when it comes to curves. *sigh*

And then, at last… we have at last gotten to the part where I show you what all this looks like together…

For those of you familiar with the character (or those who checked the reference pics in my first post): yes, the stockings are wrong. I needed horizontal stripes. Unfortunately, not a single store in my hometown carries adult-size, horizontally striped black and white stockings. So, unless I wanted to sew my own tights from a bazillion of striped baby socks, I needed to repurpose the ones I already owned. Alas, shit happens.

I am actually pretty proud of what I managed to do, given my resources… Hysteria Alice has been done often enough for there to be reference material, and though it’s easy to tell that this is far from the best costume out there… it is also far from the worst. So go me, I guess!

I will be posting about my Vorpal Blade efforts later this week. Also, after the weekend you will hopefully get some FACTS pictures from me… unless of course I manage to look bad in all of them. Which is, sadly enough, not all that unlikely, as I am notoriously non-photogenic. Fingers crossed!