Hitomi Kanzaki - The Vision of Escaflowne



Cost: $105
Time to Make: 25 hours
Timeline of Construction: April - May 2008


Pictures




Information

In late 2007 I was feeling nostalgic towards the Anime that I first came to love when I started liking Anime in the mid to late 1990s. When I first started Cosplaying one of the first costumes that I put on my future possibilities list was Dilandau from Escaflowne (my true dream costume). I reminisced about Escaflowne and eventually decided that it would be fun to Cosplay as Hitomi for Anime North '08. I've always liked her outfit and aspects of her personality so I thought it would be a neat costume to make.

It was several months before the con at that point and I was busy preparing for Ohayocon and then dealing with university so I put my plans on the backburner until April. I did spend the semester of university thinking about the costume and hunting for materials though. I bought my friend Sakura's old Kari wig to use for this costume because I was worried about finding a nice wig online that was the right colour (since I've been having trouble getting the wig colours right when I buy my wigs online lately). The colour was a bit darker than I had wanted it to be but the shade of Hitomi's brown hair changes quite often through the course of the series and in official images so it worked out. I also had a lot of trouble picking out fabric for the jacket and skirt. Depending on the image, Hitomi's skirt and collar sometimes look rather brown and other times they look black. I first bought black for it but I later went fabric shopping with Pan and Sakura and found a nice brown suiting fabric that was a great colour choice. I'm not thrilled with the material I found for the jacket. In the series Hitomi's jacket had a pretty obvious yellow tinge to it, but I had a lot of trouble finding a material that wasn't too yellow to use. In the end I settled on more of an off-white so it bothers me a bit that the colour seems off.

I bought the socks and shoes for this costume and I found the white shirt in my closet. Originally I was considering buying a pair of plain white tennis shoes to attempt to alter to match the designs Hitomi has on her sneakers, but I found a pair of shoes at Walmart which have a somewhat similar design to Hitomi's. It was challenging and time consuming to make the skirt and jacket so I didn’t feel that bad about cheating on the shoes. Making a fitted jacket is no simple task. My mother helped me out a lot with the patterning process as we searched through our pattern collections to mix and match aspects to make a proper pattern. We ended up using four different patterns that worked with varying degrees of success. I like the overall look of the jacket, but because I couldn't put darts in it, the back of the jacket is somewhat bulky and the collar doesn't sit properly. It looks pretty good in photos but the collar looks wonky in real life. I like how the cuffs turned out, though.

The skirt caused a lot of problems because it was really hard to keep the pleats straight to sew and iron them in properly. I ended up making it rather uneven and my mother saved the day by fixing it up as best she could. In the end the skirt turned out rather nicely. The bow was fun to make but I kept making it too large and I had to adjust it a couple of times. It's probably still a little bit too big, but I don't really want to change it. The bow is held on to the shirt by snaps.

I styled the wig to create Hitomi’s antenna using a lot of hairspray. Pan cut my bangs at AN and sprayed down my wig because the wind outside of the con hotel was ridiculous. I bought my pendant on eBay because I love necklaces and I wear the necklace from time to time when I'm out of costume. It made a really nice prop. :3 My tarot cards were a promo pack of cards that I got way back at either CNAnime 2001 or 2002 for free from a Bandai booth. I always thought they were really neat since they're reproductions of the featured cards from each episode, but I never figured that I would use them for Cosplay. They really ended up coming in handy.

I managed to convince my friend Pan (who was also a big Escaflowne fan back in the day) to be my Van. She did a really great job on her costume and I had a lot of fun posing for photos with her. :D At Anime North we were surprised to find out that our friend Crimson had secretly made an Allen costume to Cosplay with us so we ended up having a group at the con. Crimson was a wonderful Allen and I was so happy to have been a part of an Escaflowne Cosplay group.

Events/Conventions this costume was worn to
Anime North 2008 (Saturday)

Photo Credits
SolarTempest


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