Selphie Tilmitt from Final Fantasy VIII

Made In. May 2008
Debuted. FanimeCon 2008
Info. Final Fantasy VIII holds a very special place in my heart. At G-Mal's encouragement, Final Fantasy VIII was the first RPG that I played entirely by myself. In the past, I enjoyed watching G-Mal play video games, but never really took part in playing myself, especially not RPGs (which intimidated me with their complicated gameplay). However, G-Mal covinced me that I would enjoy Final Fantasy VIII because of its love story (I'm such a sucker for romance!), and armed with a strategy guide, I successfully mastered the Junction System and beat the game without anyone's help (I even beat Omega Weapon on the first try)! It was a great milestone in my nerdy lifetime. XD

After discussing my love for Final Fantasy VIII with my friend Solaria, we decided the cosplay community needed a FF8 revival! I originally wanted to do a Rinoa cosplay with G-Mal as my Squall, but I was shocked to hear that his favorite character was actually Irvine! As much as I love the Rinoa/Squall pairing (I swear I'll make these costumes one day!), Yuriy's comment about Irvine made me think hard about who my favorite character in the game was, and ultimately I realized that Selphie was my favorite character of FF8. Our personalities are so similar--bubbly and hyper--and I always thought that Selphie had the biggest heart in the game! And while Rinoa and Squall are my OTP, I would gladly pose as Selphie with G-Mal dressed as Irvine!

Despite Selphie's design being fairly simple, I spent a lot of time mulling over how I wanted to go about making this costume. In one image it appears that Selphie's dress is frayed along the top, which made me think that it was made out of denim. Of course, yellow denim is impossible to find at the fabric store, so I had to dye white denim the proper color (my first experience dyeing fabric FTW!). I took the liberty of topstitching the seams, even though it isn't accurate to the reference images, simply because I thought it would look sexy. :3 Another liberty I took was wearing heeled boots instead of flat boots because A) it was the 11th hour and I ordered whatever boots I could find, and B) my shorty-short legs need all the length they can get. ^^; At least I was able to achieve the frayed look with the denim! And my most AWESOME Quistis Solaria made me the most AWESOME nunchuks! Seriously, she makes the best Quistis, and it was so much fun cosplaying with her! An Irvine costume for G-Mal is definitely on the horizon!

P.S. TOTALLY wore the blue ribbon on the wrong hand all day at Fanime. -.-;