Reith - Magna Carta

Photography: David Dunn
Costume made and modeled by me

This costume is not one I would have ever picked to do on my own, but a friend asked if I wanted to make a costume with her back in June and she picked Amila, so I chose Reith. It was so much fun working on these costumes and our props together for the Anime USA Masquerade!!

There are so many different versions and drawings of Reith that I decided to make a combination of the in-game artwork, the CG artwork, and a few touches from Hyung Tae Kim's drawings.

The wig is a brown wig from Ebay, with brown braided extensions glued into the base wig for the ponytails. The flowers are fake lilies sprayed yellow and orange with Floral Spray, and decorated with yellow feathers and fronds. The metallic bits are craft foam.

The shirt/dress is cotton sateen in a butter color. I used a 3 gore dress pattern and combined it with a 5 gore bodice pattern to get the odd seams in the artwork. The edges are trimmed with white and lavender bias tape. There is a separating zipper up the front and the strange yellow/orange/copper panel is wired onto the zipper pull. The collar is black Casa satin with interfacing and hand-stitched gold cord for the clover detail, which closes with a hook and eye. The white bib collar is white sateen satin stitched onto brown cotton and interfaced for stiffness. The design on the back is black Casa satin Heat 'n Bonded on with satin-stitched edges and nude-colored fabric for the keyholes.

The back petals are gradient dyed white sateen and are satin stitched onto the yellow fabric, which was gradient sprayed to orange with Floral Spray. The little spots are Heat 'n Bonded on. This was done on both inner and outer sides of the petals, which are also interfaced for stiffness. Last but not least, the lace panels are made from dull organza and lace appliques that I hand cut from two types of lace and applied with Heat 'n Bond.

The sleeves are sateen with interfacing for the flowered tops, and netting that I bleached and Floral sprayed to get the correct shade of yellow (that netting would NOT change colors!!). Make up in my skin tone was applied to get the "disappearing" look to it, even though you can still see the netting pretty clearly

The skirt is ivory Casa satin hand pleated and decorated with handmade brown bias tape. Tights were purchased. The shoes started as a pair of white Keds. I then added 3 layers of thick craft foam for the soles and cut the upper shoe to get the correct shape of Reith's shoes. I used sateen and black twill to cover the shoes and added the sole detail with black satin cord.

Overall, this costume wasn't terribly difficult (beside the patterning for the shirt/dress), but I had a lot of fun making it and performing in it!! We ended up winning Best in Show and Best Overall Craftsmanship for our efforts, which we were really happy about since it took nearly 5 months from inception to making this skit a reality. This whole project certainly helped make some wonderful memories that I'm really grateful for ^__^

Many thanks to and her husband NeonGenocide for being wonderful friends and hosts and cosplay partners!!