Punch & Judy (Cowboy Bebop)
creation: February 2002worn at: Katsucon 8, Otakon 2002
why punch & judy?: When my current roommate moved in, he brought only a few DVDs with him. And among these were a few of Cowboy Bebop. I'd heard of it, but never watched it. At his strong urging, I ended up seeing a couple of episodes and deciding that it was a pretty good show. Since I'm not interested in long serious things, my favorite episodes are Mushroom Samba, the fridge one, the one with Andy the cowboy, the one with that clown guy, etc. I like most of the characters, too. After I made my roommate a Spike costume for Halloween, we ended up discussing the lack of Indian guys in anime. This, of course, makes it hard for him to look like any character. Somehow, we eventually decided that it would be hilarious to go as Punch and Judy, the cohosts of the Big Shots TV show. I think it was because we love Punch's wacky accents and it's so much fun to say "shucks howdy!" to everyone. It just seemed like a great idea.
con notes: Even though we thought it seemed super, we were completely unprepared for the reaction from the Katsucon crowd. EVERYONE wanted our picture. I've never been so bombarded with cameras before in my life. It was so bad that we couldn't move down any hallways because we just kept getting stopped again... and again... and again. It was cool to feel popular, but also sort of scary!
construction: This costume is completely different than most of my others. I did almost no sewing at all. I bought the hat and wig (which only required cutting bangs into). I made cute pink heart earrings, which was fun. The bandanna was actually a scrap of red fabric which I pinned on so that it wouldn't fall off. I wore flesh-colored bodysuit to imitate Judy's shirtlessness. The blue shirt was bought, but I had to remove all the pockets and buttons, sew back the parts with the button holes and such, and add all the designs and decorations and such. I already owned an old crappy black skirts, so I sewed on the white stripe and was all set. I looked VERY hard to find a belt with a heart-shaped buckle. The other belt is very cheap and I used it to put my little plastic holster around my hips. My roommate and I were both very sad when security made us put the plastic guns away. To complete this outfit, I wore some brown boots, because I have no idea what Judy really wears! Finding pictures of her online is difficult, and finding a full body shot is impossible. Well, nearly impossible, since the only pic I've ever found is a black and white one from a filmbook.
photo credits: Eurobeat King, Maboroshi Studios, DeathCom Multimedia