How to Cosplay: The Secret World of Arrietty

Hey everyone,

Today I’m going to give some advice on how I would put together a cosplay of Arrietty from the new Studio Ghibli/Disney collaboration, <em>The Secret World of Arrietty, </em>coming to theaters February 17th. Arrietty is a borrower; about the size of a human finger, Arrietty and her family live off of simple items that they take from the humans. From what I’ve gathered in pictures and the trailer (I haven’t seen the movie!) Arrietty wears three different outfits, two of which are red dresses, and the third a creme colored ensemble. I’m going to talk about her red dresses and accessories here.

One of Arrietty’s dresses is a long sleeve turtle neck while the other is a short sleeve boat-neck dress. Turtle neck shirts are always made out of knits in real life so that you can get them over your head without a zipper. The problem with making this long sleeve dress out of a knit is that knit fabrics cling to the skin and are very limp and light-weight. The bottom of Arrietty’s dress is wide and flowing, and it is going to be very difficult to find a knit that will have both the weight and the stretch to pull this dress off without a zipper. My recommendation is that that this dress be made from a cotton, cotton-polyester, or even a cotton jersey. Studio Ghibli’s characters always wear very casual fabrics, so anything shiny is out! A cotton blend will give you just a little stretch (more if you’re using a cotton jersey) so that you can make the dress form fitting on the torso and sleeves, but it will still have enough structure to provide a smooth bottom. A zipper or buttons are still needed, but they need not be an eye-sore. I think a row of cute buttons running down the back of the neck would be perfectly acceptable here. The opening only needs to be big enough to get over your head; the dress isn’t super clingy, so there’s no need to make it so tight that you need a full zipper to get it on and off. I think that a six or seven inch opening down the back should suffice depending on your fabric’s stretch.

With the boat-neck dress you need not be concerned about a zipper; the neck line is wide enough to get it over your head, just don’t make the body too tight. I think this dress would look great in a cotton jersey. For patterns, there are plenty available online at sewingpatterns.com, ebay, or at your local Joann’s. Find one that is as close to the dress as possible and calls for a fabric with the same amount of stretch as your choice. Or if you’re feeling ambitious, draft your own pattern! Its a very simple dress and the hardest part to draft here will be the sleeves, but you can always use the sleeves from a pattern that you already own!

Arrietty’s purse and belt can easily be made using any sturdy fabric. I like the upholstery section of the fabric store for accessories like these. Canvas would work perfectly here. For her hair clip and pin, turn to your local craft store! There are several ways to go about making her hair clip; you could carve it out of a lightweight wood, or cast it in fiber glass resin around a foam carving, or perhaps the easiest way, cardboard and paper-mache. If I were to make this hair clip, I would build it out of cardboard so that it cannot be opened and closed (moving parts get very complicated very quickly!). Then I would cover it in a layer of paper-mache to smooth out all the edges and seal it all together. Then sand, paint, and seal with a top coat of either clear paint or an acrylic varnish. I would leave a circular hole in the bottom of the clip through which I can later feed the wig pony tail, and if you’re really planning ahead here, when you build the hair clip, make a little loop or two on the side which will be pressed against  your head so that you can literally sew it to the wig. For Arrietty’s pin, I recommend a styrofoam ball, covered in paper-mache, sanded, painted, and finished, attached to a pointed wooden dowel. (Or not pointed, to make it more con-friendly).

Now for the wig. Studio Ghibli’s characters are always so simple, that its very important to get all the little details right to set your costume apart from the rest. One detail that may cause a lot of people trouble is the wig: Arrietty keeps her hair in a pony tail without bangs, and making a wig hair-line look natural can be a real challenge. I always recommend using a wig over real hair, especially when you need to secure accessories to it. Most cosplayers use synthetic wefted wigs. These are relatively cheap, have lots of body and are easy to style. However the hairlines on most wefted wigs look totally unnatural. There are however, some wefted wigs that are specifically designed to be worn in a pony tail. These wigs have “finished” hairlines that end in a clean line of hair. They look much more polished than the average wefted wig, but still not natural because no one’s hair line ends that abruptly. If you really want to go the extra mile on this cosplay, you’re going to want to look into hair ventilation. That is the process of sewing individual strands of hair into mesh wig lace. This may sound like it takes forever, but don’t worry, you don’t have to make the whole wig yourself.

My suggestion is that you buy a normal wefted synthetic wig, (one with a finished hairline is even better) and add a lace front. You can sew the lace to the underside of the wig, and then sew in fibers that you cut from a hidden weft into the lace until the hairline is blended and natural. Wig lace disappears on the skin, so if you do a good job, no one will even know its there. If you’ve never ventilated before, you’re going to need wig lace, ventilation needles (sort of like latch hooks without the latch), a tutorial, a block of wood, some small nails, a small hammer, and if you can get your hands on it, real human hair knots and folds better than synthetic fiber does. Practice on a spare piece of lace before you start on the real thing: nail the wig lace tightly stretched on the block of wood and then go find a video tutorial because I can’t explain the whole process here right now! Maybe in another post, eh?

Anyway when your wig is all done, feed the pony tail through the hole left in the hair clip and use those little loops I told you to make to sew the clip to the wefts inside the wig to hold it in place. When you wear the wig, you will need a wig cap and a ridiculous amount of hair pins to keep it from sliding backwards from the weight of the clip and the pony tail. You may want to look into wig tape or spirit gum as well to hold your hairline in place.

And last but not least, the shoes! The finishing touch to every cosplay, the shoes are very important, even more so when the costume is so simple. Try to find a pair of boots like Arrietty’s at your local salvation army, or make boot covers using a sturdy canvas, vinyl, pleather, or leather depending on your level of skill. Finding boots pre-made is going to look the best unless you’re a cobbler, but I have seen some decent boot covers before. Trial and error here, keep the seams in back or on the inside of the shoe and depending on your fabric choice you may need some interfacing to keep the boots from slouching.

Hope this helps, and good luck!