After seeing Kotobukiya's lovely rendition of Mystique for their Marvel Bishoujo line, my friends thought I was going to do a Mystique cosplay after I posted the illustration to Facebook. I decided why not, I've never dabbled with body paint, and besides, Mystique is a fucking badass. Cosplaying is the only time I get to be a badass, so why not...
I'll start by talking about how I made her dress. I wanted the boots, gloves and dress to all match, so I set out to find the boots first. I got very lucky and found exactly what I was looking for. Yes I went to a fetish shoe shop. Leave a comment if you're interested in what style these boots are, they're from Pleaser. These boots are made from PVC. Luckily I'll be wearing these mostly at night so I won't be a sweaty Mystique, at least. I ordered 4-way stretch PVC online for the dress and gloves.
The PVC has a decent amount of stretch, and was thinner than I thought. I drafted the pattern and cut a sample in muslin to check the fit and proportions. If I had more time I would have cut the sample in the same PVC but I did not have that luxury (ok, when do I ever, anyway). The dress zips up along the back.
(excuse crappy mobile phone picture, I forgot my camera the day I hauled my fabric to my friends' apartment, they have wooden floors = perfect for cutting stretch fabrics)
You can see that the dress has extremely deep cut armholes. I got one of those weird adhesive bras that girls wear for backless dresses. When I did my fit I had this bra on to make sure the chest area did not look funky and/or deflated (mostly the latter). I also tried it with the boots to make sure I wouldn't drag the train when I walk around. I used a zigzag stitch on my regular sewing machine since this is a stretch fabric. This sample was especially important for checking the proportions of this dress--am I showing enough side boob, enough thigh, etc, etc. I clearly took this photo after I had worn it, anyway I have to remake it for Anime Expo next year, I don't like that my zigzag stitches were spaced so far apart (that's why you can see the stitching in the seams), I literally made this dress in 2 days but I'd like to remake a better version for Anime Expo 2012 for our X-Men group.
The challenge in this particular design is that the neck piece is not a separate neck band. I wanted to keep this based on the illustration, so I used 2 seams to build up the neckline. The dress isn't exactly a halter dress either, so I thought it would end up looking like a mock turtleneck if I created a separate neck band. I neatly zig-zag-stitched all the edges. Curved edges were clipped, then stitched carefully. You need to get a walking foot for your machine or just sew with a piece of thin paper (don't use tissue paper, it's too thin. I used pattern paper but you can use vellum or tracing paper) over your shiny PVC surface in order to move the fabric efficiently through the machine. I used a size 11 needle to minimize the appearance of holes created by the needle, as well.
(how I sewed the zipper)
Here's a quick photo we snapped before heading out for Halloween festivities, I'll have to write up the gloves and belt (was not finished on time for Halloween) at a later time!
(yeah I'm wearing contacts!)