River Tam

Serenity

I never intended to make a costume for the Serenity premiere. Oh, I'd vaguely thought about the possibility... some of Inara's outfits are absolutely gorgeous. But on the whole, I was really looking forward to a movie premiere where I didn't have to stress over getting a costume finished in time.

Then, just a mere two days before the premiere, a friend of mine made an offhand comment: that I would make a good River, and should make a dress from the previews. Now, I'd never even considered the possibility of cosplaying River, I still wanted a stress-free time at the premiere, and hey, the movie was just two days away. But on the other hand... hey, River was cool. I thought she was one of the most interesting characters from the tv series. And I kept getting this annoying, persistent thought: her dresses look so simple. I could probably make one in two hours or so. Still, I doubt I ever would have gone ahead with it if I hadn't found that I happened to have some passable material and a pattern already on hand. And so the dress was started Wed evening, and finished early Friday morning.

It is not false modesty when I say this dress is shoddy work. I made it on totally short notice, very quickly, out of sub-par materials, from a pattern that wasn't quite right, and based off just two promotional pictures found on the web. If I'd had more time I could have worried about decent craftmanship, a better pattern, and all of that. This was really a half-assed, last minute thrown-together effort.

Based on the two promo pictures, I was able to see that it was made of two layers: some sort of underlayer and some sort of chiffon-looking overlay. In one picture, there were hints that the underlayer may not have been identical to the overlayer at the straps/shoulders, but rather more strap-like than the overlayer; almost like a slip seen underneath a partially transparent dress. However, in the interest of simplicity and getting this done, I decided to forgo that and make both layers the same.

For a dress pattern, I used (now out of print) Simplicity 5746. The problem with this dress pattern was that the skirt wasn't nearly full enough. I tried adding a bit of fullness on my own, but it wasn't enough. (Well, and I was also constricted by the width of the material I had on hand.) The opaque underlayer was cut to mid-thigh length, while the transparent overlayer went a little past my knees. The two layers were sewn together at the neckline in the style of dress-and-lining, and again down the back at the zipper seams. Other than that, the two layers are separate. The original pattern called for stretchy material and no zipper; given what I had to work with, I added a zipper in place of the back center seam. For the material, I already had some dark navy polyester material I'd picked up for a tank top, and some dark blue filmy material that I'd picked up to use as mockup material to design and work out the next version of my Goa'uld costume. (To be honest, I think it may be curtain sheer material, or something like it; it had that odd feel to it.This is why I wasn't able to iron out the crease in the center of the material... I wasn't sure if it would stand up to an iron!)

I don't think any of my friends quite caught on to the costume while we were waiting in line for the movie. One of them figured out that I was going for a "River look", as he put it; mostly likely from the hairstyle. Coming out of the movie, they definitely got it. I think the nicest compliment I got was something along the lines of "You really make an excellent River. In fact, you'll notice we're all being very careful not to stand too close to you, 'cause it might not be safe...". Shiny.