Haydée from Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo

Made In. March-April 2006
Debuted. FanimeCon 2006
Info. Oh, Gankutsuou, how crazy your designs are! I guess that's what attracted me to the series in the first place; the art design for the show is insane, and it proposed a unique challenge in terms of cosplay. I hopped on the bandwagon when a bunch of my friends were planning Gankutsuou costumes, and settled on Haydee because A) she hadn't been claimed yet, and B) I really liked her character design, with the pointed ears and white face.

Initially I had planned to find a fabric that would work for Haydee's crazy designs on her outer dress, but after 3 trips to the LA Fashion District and coming back empty handed (with the exception of finding the perfect fabric for her inner dress), I realized I would have to approach the outer dress differently. I took a cue from my friend Scruffy Rebel, who in order to achieve the wild designs on her Albert de Morcerf jacket covered it completely in iron-on transfers. I drew the faces that appear on Haydee's dress in photoshop and printed them, and I printed out sheets of color cut in unusual shapes for the rest of the patterns. I then spent the next 25+ hours ironing the patterns onto nearly every square inch of the dress. It got a little boring at times, so I hid silly messages in the patterns like "Cosplay 4 Life" and the rebel insignial from Star Wars. XD The wig was my first big project in wig construction; aside from a dye job gone terribly wrong (I'm totally aware that her hair is *not* royal blue -.-;;), I'm pretty happy with how the wig (especially the hair-loops) turned out.

Wearing Haydee with a group of 9 people, all whom are talented and did awesome jobs on their costumes, was really an honor. Especially Jinyo, who rocked the Count like no one else has ever done. Without an amazing Count, our group would have not been nearly as awesome. I felt really priveledged to cosplay with him, since Jinyo has talent oozing out of every orifice. XD