Monday, April 9, 2012

T'Posh

Character: T'Posh (T'Pol/Posh Spice mashup)
From: Star Trek: Enterprise/The Spice Girls
Made: 2008
Awards: Part of a skit that won Best in Show Presentation at the SciFi/Fantasy Masquerade at Costume-Con 2008

I made this costume for our 2008 Costume-Con skit, "Space Girls," a Star Trek/Spice Girls mashup. (Lots more pictures, plus video, are available on that page!)

My Space Girl was T'Posh-- a mashup of Posh Spice (better known these days as Victoria Beckham) and T'Pol, the Vulcan officer from Enterprise. One of my favorite episodes of Enterprise (okay, also one of the only ones I've seen) is the mirror universe two-parter, where all the female crewmembers wear form-fitting, midriff-baring versions of the uniform jumpsuit. I'm not even kidding. *Midriff jumpsuits.* They're so fantastically over-the-top, I wanted to hug the costume designer when I saw the episode.

T'Pol normally doesn't wear the Enterprise jumpsuit uniform, but she does in the mirror episodes. So I took that as my starting point, but I changed the pants to a skirt, because Posh usually wore skirts. Then I added five-inch heels with laces that wrapped up the leg, sort of like Posh's shoes in this picture, and a wig that looked like the Posh bob. And of course a pair of pointy ears!

Costume-Con, San Jose 2008
(photos by Kel, Corli, and conpix.net)


Construction

Top and Skirt

Both the top and the skirt are made from dark blue stretch twill from Fashion Fabrics Club. The stretchiness was important because the outfit was so tight-fitting. I used flat patternmaking techniques for the top and skirt. Thanks to the patternmaking courses I had taken, I already had basic bodice and skirt slopers that fit me exactly. I converted the bodice darts to straight princess seams and took out most of the ease, in order to contour it to my body. The sleeves on the actual jumpsuit are fairly complicated; since this outfit wasn't going to be accurate anyway, I did regular set-in sleeves and then made the shoulder "patches" from a raglan-sleeve pattern. Instead of the normal red, blue, or yellow trim, I used gold lame bias tape to outline the shoulder patches. The shoulders turned out a little linebacker-y, but not too bad. I might fix them eventually. Finally, I made a plain rectangular collar and added a separating zipper up the center front. I debated whether I should do the regular Enterprise arm patch or the mirror one; in the end, I went with the regular patch, since I wasn't actually making a mirror costume, just using it as my starting point. The skirt pattern was pretty much straight from the sloper; I just cut off a lot at the waist and the hem and added a narrow shaped waistband and belt loops. I found the perfect belt at Target.

Wig

I bought the Elizabeth wig from cosworx.com in dark brown (#4), which they no longer seem to stock. Then, I used the hot-water technique (as described here by Katie Bair) to set the part and straighten the ends out so it would look more like Posh's hair. Basically, I pinned the hair in place on a foam wig head (using a lot of bent sewing pins to hold the hair exactly where I wanted it) and then carefully poured the hot water over it. It worked like a charm! When I wore the wig, it tended to completely cover my pointy Vulcan ears, so Cordelia added some strategic bobby pins to keep the ear tips poking out through the wig.

Shoes

I knew I needed a pair of crazy heels to complete the Posh look-- I ended up buying a pair of 5" heels from cosworx.com, which they don't seem to sell anymore. I added some padding to the sole with black Fun Foam, but they were still pretty uncomfortable to wear, and tough to dance in! I did not trip and kill myself, however, so yay! The ends of the laces are stuck to my legs with double-stick tape.

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