Halloween Costume Deconstructed

I've always enjoyed building things.  Be it a set piece, a prop, or a bookshelf, the process of taking an idea from, "Hey, maybe I could just build it?" through "I should have just bought this..." and on to "You know, that actually looks way better than anything I could have bought!" is one that gives me an immense amount of pleasure and often sends me off the deep end, investing way more time and energy on a particular project than perhaps it warrants.  Since the inspiration for this year's Halloween costume came at nearly the exact same time as I was preparing to launch this site, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to document my costume building in some detail and make it all available here.  Now that Halloween has passed and the costume worked nearly as well as I had hoped, here it is.

• Part I: The concept.

None of this would have happened if it weren't for my girlfriend, so she is to blame.  While on completely unrelated errands, we came upon one of those thousands of Halloween costume stores that pop up in the skeletons of failed retail ventures each and every year.  Apparently having nothing better to do, we decided to pop in and look around.  This was very early September, and the idea of not frantically hashing together a Halloween costume on October 30th appealed to us both.  But store bought Halloween costumes for men tend to suck.  Women are better off because the costumes tend to make up in detail what they lack in actual material.  When the idea is to show as much as possible, and it usually is, you can afford to sell more detail.  Men have the opposite situation.  Our store bought costumes tend to be one-size-fits-all frocks that only sort of resemble anything at all.  Knowing this, I tagged along side Liz as she browsed from Sexy Witches to Sexy Insects.  Somewhere in between, she found a Queen of Hearts costume that was in decent taste and construction.  Not anything that Disney would have designed, but not exactly Slutty Convict girl either.  Most importantly, it fit her.  So there it was.  Queen of Hearts.  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  Ready?  Go!

My first thought was the Mad Hatter.  Unfortunately, there were no such costumes, nor even a good headpiece or mask from which to work.  Considering my tailoring skills and probable price of a brightly colored suit, I quickly nixed that idea.  I briefly considered and rejected a number of other characters.  The White Rabbit would be hard to live down.  "Dude, you went as a Bunny for Halloween??"  No.  The Cheshire Cat would have been interesting, but lacking any good way to make most of myself invisible, I thought I'd be leaving out a key component of the character.  Perhaps someday we'll have the technology.  I rejected the caterpillar for similar reasons.  I had no TweedleDee to accompany my TweedleDum, and while a talking doorknob would have been a clever costume, having an entire door attached to oneself seemed in an impractical way to attend Halloween parties.  I went home discourage.

Google, of course, came to the rescue, for while researching obscure characters in the Carroll's book, I cam across this particularly lively discussion of the playing cards in the novel, and how they were illustrated in the original.  From rereading this section and with a little knowledge of the traditions of playing cards, I quickly found my inspiration for my Halloween costume:

When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable.

The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly what they said.

The executioner's argument was, that you couldn't cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn't going to begin at HIS time of life.

The King's argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren't to talk nonsense.

The Queen's argument was, that if something wasn't done about it in less than no time she'd have everybody executed, all round. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.)

I would go as a card soldier, the Ace of Spades, the Executioner.   

• Part II: Materials.

My first thought was to buy some black foamcore, cut it into two card-shaped rectangles, hang them around my neck, draw a spade on them, and be done!  It quickly occurred to me that this costume would not do well at all in the rain, and given Halloween's track record with rain, this seemed unacceptable.  The more I thought about it, the more problems I cam up with.  Even if I substituted a plastic for the foam core, how would I move?  My arms and legs would be trapped behind it and walking would be difficult.  Then there was the problem of what else I would wear.  Obviously it would be all black, but an executioner, particularly one in such a world as Alice in Wonderland, has to look more menacing than the guy with the sandwich-board sign on the corner, no?  My search for ideas took me to a place unparalleled in geekiness and costume knowledge: Cosplay.com.  Here you will find amazingly detailed information on costumes and costume materials.  If you have a moment, browse their costume pages.  The vast majority are from video games or comic books I have never even heard of, but their detail and construction are incredible.  This was my undoing, because it was here that I discovered a product called Sintra, which is a closed-cell PVC.  This PVC has useful quality of being able to be made completely pliable at temperatures upwards of 165 degrees, and then maintaing whatever shape it cools in.  It is also surprisingly rigid without being at all brittle.  You could take a baseball bat to it and do little more than scratch it.  I was able to locate a local sign design and supply store nearby, who sold me entire 4' x 8' sheet of black 3mm Sintra for $23.00.  Now my executioner was going to have some armor. 

• Part III: Construction.

The construction of the costume was equal parts research and guesswork.  I have discovered that while it may seem counter-intuitive, the build-your-own-15th Century-armor-with-your-backyard-forge crowd does not congregate much on the internet.  Armor patterns and methods for assembling them were surprisingly difficult to come by.  The few I did find gave little to no instructions as to how the pieces should properly fit together.  Add to that the fact that I was working with a thermoplastic and not steel and you can imagine that there were some gaps to be filled in.  While poking around for patterns for chest armors, I came across this "How-To" for Lamellar armor.  It immediately struck me that I could build sheets of this armor out of playing cards, which would not only be appropriate to the costume, but cheap and easy!  So, buying a couple decks of cards off of eBay for about a dollar, some cord from Home Depot and a hole punch from Staples, I watched the Dodgers sweep the Cardinals while tediously punching seven holes in 104 cards.  Lacing them up, I made two sections of lamellar "playing card" armor, 6 cards wide and 9 cards high.  These would be excellent for use on my legs, since they were completely flexible and would allow me to walk, while still looking like armor.   I then started to cut patterns for the various "plate" armor pieces I wanted to build.  I started with the vambraces, guessing at the pattern.  The vambraces were small enough that if I really got them wrong, I wouldn't be wasting too much of my material.  Well, I got them wrong.  I had under-estimated the amount of material needed to go around my upper arm and I had also misjudged the direction of the curve at my wrist, so that I could bend it without cutting into my arm.  I also quickly discovered that if I were make the material exactly conform to my shape when hot, it would be incredibly difficult to get on and off.  This would mean leaving it somewhat open at the seam, and lacing it up.   

I took a drill bit to it, fearing that it would splinter and crack as soon as I tried to put a hole in it, but not only did it not crack at all, but I could put holes near the cut edges, without any bulging or deformation.  This PVC sheeting is really amazing stuff.  

Pretty soon I thought I knew what I was doing and began cutting out more patterns, new vambrace patterns, pauldron patterns, and shin brace patterns.    I also quickly discovered that molding certain pieces onto myself was tricky.  It's hard to properly wrap and form a vambrace with one hand, and impossible to use one's shoulder as an actual model for a pauldron.  The pauldron's each constructed with three pieces of similar shape and size, were actually formed on a large mason-jar container I had in my kitchen, simulating the approximate width of my shoulder, and providing a symmetrical contour to the pieces, which was crucial to getting them to fit together.  Similarly, the pieces that went over my feet were formed over the shoes I would wear that night, and then the shin braces were formed while wearing those shoes and their plating, so that the ankle covers would properly slide over them.  The chest and back plates I could not have done alone.  Liz was kind enough to help smash these patterns onto me while still hot.  This took a number of attempts, as only about half of each plate would fit in the oven at one time.  In order to keep the length of the original piece but allow for walking and bending, I cut the bottom two corners of the chest plate and then re-affixed them with chain to let them swing.  I also used the black chain to loosely attach the chest plate to the back plate, which kept them from sliding from side to side with the added benefit of adding a "clanging" noise to an armored costume not actually made of metal!  

I determined that the best way to attach the hand plates and pauldrons was velcro which would hold (relatively) well and still allow me to get in and out of the costume without too much complication.

Finally, to give the costume detail, Liz, who has actual artistic skill, used a metal silver sharpie to draw in some excellent detail on the various pieces.  

 

• Part IV:  Puttin' it on.

And here's how it all came together with a little make-up and a cape and hood.  It ended up being an excellent costume, even if it was a little difficult to navigate the close quarters of a crowded Brooklyn apartment.  

• Part V:  Liz Still Looked Better In Her Costume That Was Way Less Work & Less Expensive.