Hanamaru and I share a love for Ai Yazawa and Paradise Kiss so when we won a surprise trip at Metrocon to be entered into the NYAF Yume Masquerade, it only took us a couple days to decide on Yukari and Miwako. I've always wanted to make the runway dress, so this was a great excuse to finally do it. We decided to use the anime designs because we thought that these two dresses shared similar elements and would coordinate well together :D We were living in different states until a few weeks before the con, so we had to plan things over the internet for months until we could help each other in person last minute. So much time and work went into these dresses, and I still have things I want to fix on mine.

I had problems finding the right color fabric to use for my dress. Everything was either too green or too blue. I ended up choosing shot silk taffeta so it changes color depending on the way you look at it. Not sure if I'm happy with the way the skirt photographs, I might have to add more poof so it looks less wrinkly. The bodice is lined in white satin with boning on the sides. I made all of the blue ruffles and the train out of sheer organza. I made my petticoat out of white satin and made five layers of white fabric ruffles covered with 29.5 yards of Venice lace for the bottom. It\'s pretty heavy, haha. Made satin ruffles for the gloves too. All of the blossom designs and jewelry were hand beaded by us. There\'s about 8,000 beads on the dress so far. I\'m slooow at hand sewing so the first blossom took me almost 4 hours to complete, but I eventually got down to 2 hours a flower. I bought 40 fabric roses for my hair, cut off the stems, glued them so they would not fall apart, and sprayed them blue with 3 cans of blue floral paint. I used the same paint on my shoes too before we added the beads and feathers. I bought super long loose hair and braided them myself to use as extensions. I dyed my hair black and cut my own "Yukari bangs" and Hanamaru helped me attach the braids to my real hair. All of the roses are attached with wire and I used a headband for the ones on my head. We also made our own stage props from stratch; the butterfly fans and the reversible backdrop curtain. Those were a lot of work too. A special thanks to NYAF, Metrocon, and Hanamaru for all her help!♥ Hoping to wear these costumes again soon just for fun!

New York Anime Festival