R. Dorothy Wayneright from The Big O

Made In. December 2007
Debuted. Anime Los Angeles 2008
Info. Big O was one of those anime I watched when I first got into the convention and cosplaying scene. I'm not huge into mecha shows, but it had a catchy opening and ending theme song, so I gave it a chance. I quickly learned that even though there were mecha elements to the show, it was far more of a psychological thriller. Overall, the show leaves a little to be desired, but the noir-ishness of it and the quirky characters kept me entertained all the way through.

The truth is that I didn't cosplay Dorothy because I enjoyed the show (which I did, but I digress). I really cosplayed her because I thought that there was something glaringly obvious that many Dorothy cosplayers had missed, and I wanted to do it to show people what it was. Most people wear a black dress when cosplaying Dorothy, but I'm convinced that her dress is a deep red. If you look at almost every screenshot of Dorothy, her dress appears black, but with a red hue/shine. That implies to me that it's not completely black. That's not to say that people who cosplay Dorothy with a black dress are doing it wrong, but attempting to make a dark red dress appealed to my obsessiveness for detail. I used a dark red stretch velvet and had to make sure all of it was upside-down when I sewed the costume, because that direction absorbs the most light and appears the darkest (it was a huge pain, trust me). I did take a few liberties with the costume (I used heels instead of flats because I have short, squatty legs, and I wore red contacts even though Dorothy has black eyes to make my irises look bigger/darker), so I guess the accurate color of the dress was in vain. But I did put blue eyeshadow under my eyelids!!! Take that, accuracy!