Fabrickind Cosplay and Cosplay Education

Amphigory was a very fun site that, in its prime, sold cosmetics, hair dye, incense, cool jewelry, and wigs. They did not manufacture their own wigs, and instead they were a distributor for several wig brands. They existed long before Arda and Epic Cosplay Wig were selling their own lines of custom-built wigs for cosplay, so a lot of cosplayers had to make existing costume wigs work for their cosplay.

The thing that set them apart was that they very thoroughly documented every wig that they sold. They would have pictures of the outside from all angles, the inside, and text about things like the size of the skin top, how easy it was to dye, and if there was crimped fiber in it.

Lacey Costume (also called Morris Costume as far as I can tell) is still around, so you can still purchase a lot of the wigs that you would have bought through Amphigory from other sellers. A lot of shops actually are selling Lacey Costume brand wigs at discounts or clearance. The problem is that most Lacey Costume wigs have a single stock photo, that may or may not be at a useful angle.

For example, this is their ONLY picture of this red ponytail extension.

A lot of the Lacey Costume wigs are available on sites like Amazon and Walmart.com, and it's not hard to search around and see if any of them are on clearance. I bought a pigtail wig for an upcoming costume for $9 and it arrived in less than 2 days.

Amphigory renamed their wigs to match their own line. I can't blame them, because you'll see how the manufacturer names are kind of terrible. I have wanted to match up Amphigory's detailed pictures with their manufacturer names, so that people buying these wigs from other sellers can know what they're buying. Even though they'd stopped selling wigs, I still didn't want to repost their content while they were still in operation, because I wanted to let them have a chance to bring this product line back. However, with the site fully closed, I don't feel so opposed to it anymore.

So, here's some of the classic Amphigory wigs and their equivalent names from their manufacturer.

Long and pic-heavy under the cut:

so, ways to get around this:

turn off AI results. they're literally nonsense to us

don't use pinterest because the sources/provenance is often hard to trace

a standard internet search can be okay, but museum collections are the top tier (list of collections below this list)

instead of broad terms like victorian, regency, tudor, renaissance etc. try using the decade you're looking for. if you're not sure of what decade it is but have a vague image in your head, look on the fashion history timeline and just jump around until you find it. but even changing to e.g. 19th century will give better results than victorian

including terms like womenswear/menswear, daywear, formal wear, evening wear, court dress should increase the value of your search too

including "fashion plates" in your search can give you a nice impression of the intended silhouettes of the era. some of these might be a little stylised but will show you what was considered in vogue

for pre-fashion plate eras or things like makeup and styling, you'll have to look at portraiture or manuscripts. these are harder to actually find what you're looking for, but searching museum collections and limiting results to specific date ranges will be your friend

when looking at art, do bear in mind sometimes artists would paint fabric extra flow-y to show off their skills. it might not have been exactly like that in terms of fabric weight or drape. so, a pinch of salt required!

if you find something on image search where the provenance is dubious, reverse image search and you might find a source! i've been able to trace random pinterest images to real sources, but this does take a lot of time and effort and is often not worth the headache

some online resources and museum collections:

fashion history timeline is an invaluable resource if you're trying to get a feel for everything and should be your first port of call. it'll also link to good examples

the met has a vast number of extant examples of clothing, as well as fashion plates

costume institute fashion plates is a subcollection of the met for fashion plates (1800s-1922)

v&a also has many extant garments, fashion plates, and incredible articles on clothing and aesthetics. read the details of the objects because they'll often reveal a lot about the piece

lacma is good for C19th-20th pieces

nypl digital collection for photographs

national portrait gallery or similar for portraiture, or literally any museum in your country that has historical art

national museums scotland can be useful situationally but might be oddly specific

stout style history is a great collection for finding image references for fat people wearing historical clothes. survival bias of a lot of museum pieces tends towards smaller clothing that couldn't be repurposed, but this aims to counter that. it's not sortable, but is still a really nice resource

wikimedia commons is surprisingly handy! and the images, if you should need to link/repost them, are public domain

auction websites sound like a funny one to recommend. some won't have mannequins and some will. just look up historical garment auctions and you'll find some!

also btw this is ezra petticoatedmouse im avoiding emails again

For warmth, you really do want wool.

New scan! "Yumeiro Club Cute Newsletter No. 2 (1-1-1995)", largely focused on "VG II: The Bout of Cabalistic Goddess", available on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/yumeiro-club-cute-2

Okay heres how I did my Greg Universe space guitar. I used a real guitar because I wanted to be able to play it but this tutorial also works for rock band guitars, or just what ever non functioning prop guitar you have.

I was lucky enough to find a flat black guitar to start with, which was this Jackson Dinky I got on ebay for 105 bucks and it plays surprisingly well for the price.

Here is what you are gonna need for this:

Blue painters tape

an exacto knife with a fresh blade

1 can of white semigloss spray paint- any brand

1 can of black semigloss spray paint- any brand

1 can Rust-oleum “GLOSS MAUI BLUE” spray paint

1 can of Rust-oleum 2x ultra color SATIN Nutmeg spray paint

1 can of any brand Metallic silver spray paint (optional)

1 red paint pen

Lots of old newspapers

You can find the paint pen and exacto knife at any craft store, the rest I bought from Home depot after like 45 minutes of matching colors and doing test sprays to find the closest ones to Greg’s guitar.

First thing you’re going to want to do is take any removable hardware off the guitar. Strings, nobs, switches ect. I took the nuts off the tuners on the headstock but thats not really necessary unless you like to be really detailed like me. Once thats done wiep the face and headstock of the guitar down real good with a disinfecting wipe or a wet wipe, something to get any dirt and grease off it from having someones hand resting on the face for who knows how many years and then dry it really well with some paper towels.

Then you are going to start taping over things you don’t want to get painted with the blue painters tape. I started with the pickups and the tone switch, then I did the bridge, the sides/back of the headstock and the tuners, Once all that was done I ran a line of tape along the outer lip of the guitar about half an inch wide and used the exacto knife to even out any spots that came out too wide. After that I wrapped the neck in some newspaper and made sure it was sealed on with more tape. and did the same with the sides and back of the guitar.

If you’ve been following along your guitar should look like this

Now you are ready for paint. I’m not an expert with spray painting and I’m sure you can find a tutorial on youtube or something that will tell you how to do even coats and how long you should wait between coats and stuff, but anyway. I painted the headstock and face of the guitar with the black semigloss paint and here is what they looked like 24 hours later.

Next you are going to wrap the headstock in news paper and seal it up (we’ll come back to that later) and tape a curved line across the front of the guitar just below the bridge and pickups, cover everything above that line with newspaper and tape it down then paint it again with the blue paint. After 24 hours you can remove the newspaper on the face and you’ll have this.

Next step is painting the land. Section off the far left piece of blue with a piece of tape and use your exacto to cut some ridges into the shape of the land. You can look at a reference picture of gregs guitar or just free hand it, it really doesn’t make much of a difference. Once its done pull off the left side the the tape, seal everythign with newspaper again so it looks like this

Then hit it with the nutmeg brown paint. Wait 24 hours

Now is when you’re really going to put that exacto knife to work. Take all the newspaper and tape off the face the guitar aside from the stuff you put on in very beginning. (pickups, bridge, and the outer lip) then tape over EVERYTHING. with tape. No news paper. Once thats done you are going to cut out a curved line between the pickups and the earth for the clouds. Then you are going to cut out the moon and start cutting out stars. (I used a Keurig cup for the shape of the moon) You can look at references for yourself if you want, but the stars disappear and reappear on Gregs guitar depending on the shot your looking at. I went through references for everrrr till I found them all so you are better off just looking at where I placed everything on my guitar honestly. Once you are done cutting everything It will look like this.

Now paint the guitar with the semigloss white.

This next part is optional but its what I did for my guitar. After 24 hours when the white was dry I taped off the clouds and moon and gave the stars one or two super light dustings with that silver metallic paint just to set them part from the clouds and give them a faint sparkle, Then when that was dry I taped off all the stars and taped a crescent shape off on the moon before giving that 3 or 4  dustings with the metalic silver paint. Thats how I got the shadow effect so that the moons shape changes depending on the lighting/angle its viewed from to replicate the ever changing shadow on Greg’s guitar.

Anyway, once all thats dry all you can pull the tape off of everything and view long awaited outcome of your hard work!

As you can see there was some overspray, which happens. I just taped off the respective areas and touched them each up individually. Once thats done all thats left is the do the JADER lettering on the headstock.

I used a white paint pen at first by mistake but I’ve since redone it in RED like Greg’s guitar. I just don’t have any new pictures. Just don’t make the same mistake as me because taking the strings off again to re do it was annoying.

Anyway, one you do the lettering and it drys you can put your guitar back together and rock out. Just don’t forget to pick up a red guitar strap!