So a kind anon asked me a question and for some reason Tumblr won’t let me post multiple pics to answer, so I’m doing it here. I hope you see this, anon, and I hope it helps! The question is as follows:
I’ve recently found your cosplays and noticed that a number of your dresses are strapless. I was wondering if you had any advice/recommendations/tips for similarly buxom ladies for how to pull off a strapless dress without inadvertently flashing someone at some point during a convention?
This is a great question because, I am definitely busty, and strapless or braless or anything like that would NOT be an option.
Unless…
So with Tiana, the top part was actually made with a couple of layers of a really thick fabric, I forget what it was, it maaaaaaay have been canvas? (my wifey makes all the costumes so she’d have a better idea but she’s sleeping right now). Please forgive my blank memory, the cosplay is actually 4 years old. The fabric is so thick that it holds my breasts in like a corset. I normally wear a bra, put the costume on, then kinda shimmy out the straps :) It was kinda a happy accident, because I remember that we were considering invisible bra straps then when we put it on for the first time I was like, “Huh. They feel secure…” so yeah :)
So basically, it ends up looking like this:
(please ignore the tank top it’s there for picture taking purposes)
Then we put the dress on, I maneuver out of the bra straps, tuck them in, and:
So since that worked so well and the top was acting like a corset, we decided, “HEY! Let’s get a corset to wear underneath your cosplay."
Here are some pictures:
This is the corset in question. I highly recommend spending the money to get a good one. This one came from Corset Story, who lets you try the corset and ship it back if you need a different size, just keep the tags on. Pro tip from a friend: get the corset in two sizes smaller than you are, I made the mistake of getting it in my actual size the first time and it was too big, because when we tied it, it was trying to fit me to the size I already was. As far as corsets go you want steel boning, the works, so it can get the job done, hold them in, and be secure. I’m a big girl, so I need something that recognizes that fact ^__^
Now, it may feel uncomfortable at first, but you have to get used to it, and you will get used to it. It’s actually not that hard at all. I wore this one twice before wearing it with cosplay. I wore it in the car to get used to it, walked around, ate, all that stuff, and it’s actually pretty comfortable (I have also gone to a bunch of cons this year so have been wearing it a lot). Even if we’re all like "Hahaha can’t breathe corset” the truth of the matter is we can breathe and they aren’t going to kill you. They shouldn’t. If you feel actual pain or discomfort beyond the normal “I’ve been in a costume for hours I want to go home” then remove the corset and look into getting a different one. Corsets should not hurt you. A lot of cons have booths like “Scoundrelle’s Keep” where you can try them on and they’ll show you how to tie them and everything (this is the place I look at for actual “I wanna wear this corset and show it off and have fun” corsets and not just “no one is going to see this corset because it’s basically a bra for my cosplay.”)
So anyhow, after we put the corset on, we pull on the red part to the Wonder Woman dress, for example, and it looks like this:
The red part is made of T-shirt fabric so it stretches and fits to my shape, so it almost looks like a corset when I wear the whole thing. What we do is pull on the hoop skirt over it and the blue skirt and it looks like this:
And that’s that. I do the same thing for my Neo Queen Serenity:
It really comes in handy. Honestly I don’t mean to have so many strapless cosplays, it just works out that way. Needless to say, if it isn’t strapless, I tend not to wear a corset and just wear a bra:
Urm… sometimes, sometimes I just feel sassy, lol:
It all depends on if it’ll work with the cosplay.
Hope this helps!
