Welp, I’ve been adding content to the site like a CRAZYwoman. All of my costumes are now online except Kefka (uweee heee hee saving the best for last) and almost all of Cachalot’s are online as well. I think we are waiting on Shadow and Cid.  And the photoshoots, or at least one of them, is on track to go online by early weekend.

Here’s a list of the costumes online now—

Cachalot’s costumes:

• Osaki Nana
• Tifa Lockhart
• Suboshi

DancingMad’s costumes:

• Byzantine Angel
• Baaya
• Mozenrath
• Judge Q
• Fancy Toph
• Tasuki

But both of us have been sick the past few days so forgive us for the lag! m(_ _)m We’re doing the best we can.  It’s a miracle I’m sitting upright right now honestly xD

Oh, and we’ve decided on the second of our two cosplay groups for 2011. I am so excited I am about to ASPLODE.  I am going to wait on announcing  it because it’s still a new idea and people might change their minds, but I think it’s really going to happen!! (But, ehm, it’s in the tags if you are super curious…)

We are doing three total groups for 2011, but the third one is all original characters, so I hesitate to call it cosplay   But yea, we’re booked through now to 2011 for costumes and already have an idea for 2012.  WE ARE CLEARLY INSANE!

But you knew that ;D

A pipe dream of mine is to do an updated version of this costume:

View of Disney's Mozenrath

I made a very literal version of this costume several years ago for Halloween. It was OK, I guess, though I wasn’t super happy with it, simply because it was very very simple.

Halloween 2006 Mozenrath costume

Mozenrath’s costume is so simple because it was drafted for a poorly-animated cartoon show in the early 90s–low bandwidth, low budget, and drawing any kind of detailed costume (without computer help) just can’t happen.

I thought the best way to update this costume would be to put it back in the spirit of the 1001 Arabian Nights, my favorite book growing up, and what the entire Aladdin series is extremely loosely based on.  TheMozenrath character is supposed to be an evil wizard-type character, and I’ve determined that if anything he probably should be Persian (even though most characters in the Disney series are very vaguely Arab).

With that in mind, I started to research 16th century classical Persian fashions to reverse-engineer what a Mozenrath might look like in garb of that time.

I'm not very good at crosshatching

What I’ve found is lots of brocades and damask silks, a great deal of ornamentation and detail work. Basically the complete opposite of how he appears in the show!

This entire costume is very much in the preliminary planning stage so, aside from a sketch or two, I have nothing to show.  But I have found some handy damask silk and brocade stores online as well as an incredibly detailed classical Persian clothing pattern site.

Rashid’s Persian Patterns – historically accurate Persian clothing patterns complete with antique fabric swatches to get an idea of the colors and detailing in the clothes.

Persian Miniature Paintings — more good reference

Decorative International Silk — some good silks here, including some damask silks, though they are upholstery weight

B.R. Exports — some great silks direct from India

Will keep you posted…