Bioshok Infinite

I've never been one to play a lot of action video games.  The only action games I've really played and been good at are the LEGO Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Indiana Jones games, and I don't know if they're really considered action games.

My brother recently introduced me to the 2013 FPS game, Bioshock Infinite. The first time I played through the entire game, I barely understood the game, but after doing a lot of reading to understand the concept and the ending of the game, I was quite intrigued.  I love the characters, Booker Dewitt and Elizabeth.  They're both so unique and I love their interaction in the game.

Elizabeth is probably my favorite character in the game, so of course I felt the urge to make myself a cosplay.


Of all the cosplays I've created in the past, this one seemed the most easy to make (it's just a simple blouse and skirt), yet it took so long to complete for several reasons.  One of the biggest contributors to this problem was the fact that my local Walmart stopped carrying the blue cotton that they usually sell.  It's the perfect color for Elizabeth's outfit, and of the scraps I had left in the house, it was enough to make the cuffs and the collar, but not enough to make the skirt.  So I made the shirt in the meantime, waited a few weeks, and the fabric still wasn't there.

After waiting about a month for the fabric to get back in stock, which it still hadn't, we took a trip out to a farther away Walmart that sold fabric on the bolt.  Now this Walmart sold all types of blue cottons, ranging from light blues to dark blues, it even sold fabric from the same company as the one that made the blue fabric I was looking for, but for some reason, it didn't have the exact same color as the one I needed.  I ended up opting for the one from the same company even though the color difference was quite noticeable.  Thankfully now that the outfit is complete, if you didn't know there was a difference in color, you wouldn't know to look.

(It's been a few months since I finished the entire cosplay, btw, and my Walmart still doesn't have the blue fabric in stock...)

And now, without further ado, here is my finished Elizabeth cosplay.  (For once I went outside to take nice, proper pictures of my outfit. :P )

Here is the completed outfit, with the button-down shirt, and long blue skirt.  (In case you're wondering, I edited out my watch in this photo because I forgot to take it off for pictures.  Oops.)  While Elizabeth wears knee or just below the knee high boots, I'm wearing brown combat boots that I found at Goodwill, and surprisingly they fit.  It's hard to find anything that fits me at Goodwill, so I was very lucky to find these boots.  Since my skirt is so long anyway, I figured the fact that it was short boots didn't matter.

The cuffs on the sleeves roll up and I managed to make them look quite accurate to Elizabeth's in the game.  She spends the majority of the game with her cuffs rolled up, so a lot of cosplayers don't bother to make them reversible? flipable? roll-up-able?, but since I'm a perfectionist, I had to make it that way.  The neck tie (which isn't tied properly, I know) is made out of a dark blue lining material that I actually used to make Captain Cold's coat.

For the skirt, I had to modify an existing skirt pattern to make enough room for all the pleats that are only on the front left side of the skirt, and that took a lot of work, and also used a lot of fabric.  (Thank goodness I was smart enough to get 3 yards of blue fabric or I wouldn't have had enough!)  For the little stud thingies that are on the straps that go over the pleats, I used some snaps.  Now the skirt makes a lot of rattly noises whenever I move in it, but hey, at least it looks good.

At the bottom of the skirt I used more of the dark blue lining material to add that darker section.  Also, you probably can't see it since my ponytail is in the way in the picture, but there's a pleat on the back of the shirt as well.

Down the front of the blouse are more pleats, 3 on each side.  You can kinda see it here.  For the collar, I used the reminder of my wide gold ribbon that I used for Bjorn's 1977 costume 5 years ago  Originally I had used gold fabric paint, but the end result just wasn't good enough, so I made a new collar and attached the gold ribbon.  I had barely enough left over to use, but thankfully I managed to just make it fit.  For the choker, I used a piece of blue ribbon (also leftover from my ABBA projects), attached a piece of white lace, and secured it in the back with a piece of a choker that I bought from Aliexpress. 

Funny story:  Aliexpress had a $3 off coupon going on, so I decided to use this opportunity to buy a choker for my cosplay.  Someone was selling a choker set with the two different pendants that Elizabeth can wear depending on which one you choose in the game, the bird or the cage.  So I bought the chokers, but in order for the coupon to work I needed my order to get to $4.  So I through in a necklace that came with a big pendant of the bird.

Turns out the pendants on the choker were too small, so I sacrificed the clasps in the back of one of the chokers, and with my dad's help, used the large pendant from the necklace as the pendant for the completed choker.

With the remaining smaller pendants that I now have left over, who knows, maybe I'll be making an Elizabeth doll in the future....

Also for fun, while Kitty and I were taking pictures of my outfit, we decided to film this showcase video as well.  It's very short, but we had a lot of fun filming it together. 

Before I end this post, I thought I'd mention that you can't have an Elizabeth without a Booker, and since my brother is the one who introduced me to this game series, I've also made him a Booker costume and hopefully soon I'll be able to take some nice photos of that.  Stay tuned for that. :)