My Lady Crusader Costume (the time I dressed up like a superhero)

I decided that I couldn't let another year of Comic-Con pass by without wearing any costumes. Dressing up may be uncomfortable, painful, and require a lot of time and/or money, but ultimately: it's tons of fun. One of my costumes this year came about at the last minute. You see, I'm a fan of Thom Zahler's comic: Love and Capes. It's a superhero romantic comedy that always brightens my day. The main character is a Mark Spencer, aka the Crusader. He has a cool costume and after seeing something that happens in an upcoming issue, I decided I'd do a femme version of the outfit one day, eventually.

That wasn't too long before Comic-Con. I expected I'd work on finding someone to make the costume in a year or so, but coincidentally a designer/seamstress/awesome lady who I watch on Facebook (geez, that sounds creepy) happened to post she had room for commissions for Comic-Con. I figured why not check? Yeah, Lauren is awesome. She's the force behind Castle Corsetry (she's made costumes for Team Unicorn among many others) and had me over for measurements in no time. She took one small image I had and some reference comics and came up with the PERFECT Lady Crusader design. Seriously:

This is a good view of the costume as worn by Mark:

Yeah, reference the awesome comment above. The costume fit superbly and was actually comfortable. I got so many compliments on how well it was put together. The mustard yellow color was spot on, and she even figured out the cape that Thom thought was physically impossible. She also taught me a great trick for my boots. It was going to be next to impossible to find a pair of mustard yellow boots. Most costume boots come in bright yellow to match anime colors. Instead of paying a ton for custom boots or trying to cover a pair, she just gave me some spandex scraps to make cuffs for the tops of the white go-go style boots I already owned. Genius!

Oh, and thanks to Lauren I've discovered the magic of dance tights. Who. knew.

I can't wait to work with Castle Corsetry on more costumes in the future (like... Kitty Pryde!), and I'll definitely be wearing my Crusader costume again and again. This time around, I wore the tights for three or so hours behind the Love and Capes booth. I learned that flat shoes are an absolute must for me. Some people can survive in heels, I'm not one of them. I'll remember this one day. I also learned that even though I was there with my fancy cape, more than one person completely ignored me to get his or her photo taken with just Thom. He very kindly pointed out a couple of times that he had a Lady Crusader... it was cute. I think next time I'll be sporting it will be at Baltimore Comic-Con.