As burgeoning storm clouds clothe the sky, Tori Moore, a senior international studies student, sits beneath the iconic Maxcy Monument and explains how she dresses cosplayers.
“I started out as a Halloween kid, the kind of person who loves Halloween and doing costumes,” she says, “and I realized how much I really liked it, so I took costume design when I got here.”
After that class, Moore began designing her costumes for cosplay, a performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories. (Think Comic-Con.) Shows that focus on this talent like “Heroes of Cosplay” and “Face Off” helped further Moore’s interest. They exposed her to some of the most well-known cosplayers, including her favorite, Riddle Messy, who she met at HeroesCon and again at DragonCon. Moore’s first from-scratch costume design is actually based on a character her idol cosplayed as, a Bettie Page version of the comic book hero The Rocketeer.
Before doing The Rocketeer design, Moore’s costumes were alterations of clothing she bought at thrift stores like Goodwill, like the Poison Ivy costume she made from an ‘80s prom dress. From conception to finished product, The Rocketeer design took her two-and-a-half months, which might seem like a lot of time to a non-cosplayer, but is actually quite short compared to others that can take up to six months. Moore can work on one project for months at a time.
“I started with the comics and Riddle’s cosplay as reference,” she elaborates. “It’s kind of a leather jacket dress, so I made my own pattern for it. I had four different mock-ups by the time I began to put the fabric on my mannequin. From there, I added upholstery vinyl to stand in for the leather, cut my pattern out of the vinyl and sewed it all together.”
At that point, she added the chest piece; her friend Alex Hibbes (fellow cosplayer and fan of The Rocketeer) made the rocket pack for her using two six-inch shipping tubes. For Moore, cosplay is more fun with friends involved.
Moore and Hibbes went to DragonCon together and entered cosplay competitions. “I met Riddle at DragonCon while I was wearing my Bettie Page costume and she loved it,” Moore beams. She also got to meet Grant Imahara of “MythBusters,” who judged one of the competitions she entered and won. Besides DragonCon, Moore has also won the past two years of University of South Carolina’s own Project Condom, a campus fashion show that raises awareness about safe sex in the form of outfits made entirely out of latex.
According to Moore, cosplay is not just about winning competitions and collecting awards. “It’s an escape; you can be the superhero that you never get to be,” she explains. “If you’re shy, if you’re scared or feel like you don’t have power in your life, you can be someone like Wonder Woman and have that strength.” As the storm clouds break through, she adds, “You can be anyone.”
