Aya Brea (Parasite Eve)
The Source
I played Parasite Eve for the first time in 2010. Aya has a wonderful personality, and as a big fan of both sci-fi horror and Aya’s phenotype, Parasite Eve was a game I enjoyed very much. :D Classic Parasite Eve cosplay had already become fairly rare given that the original game was made for PS1 back in 1998. Not many people recognized it, but the ones that did were all really excited to see a Parasite Eve cosplayer.
The Costume
I bought some matte milliskin in black and grey from SpandexWorld on one of my trips to the New York fabric district. Because the material is very tight and form-fitting, I also built my own bra from scratch out of foam cups (sourced from Steinlauf & Stoller), matte milliskin, and elastic. I was having a really hard time finding a bra that would work with the dress without showing somewhere, so I made the spaghetti straps for the dress by serging a tube of my milliskin spandex, leaving a long chain at the end of the fabric, and then using a tapestry needle to pull the whole thing inside out via the thread chain. The whole dress is completely serged to ensure durable stretching. Since I went with a knit I can just pull the dress on over my head without needing a zipper or any other sort of closure. OTOH, the grey strip wasn’t great and could use reworking.
Aya’s shoes have very extreme heels. I bought them from Electrique Boutique online. They’re a near perfect match to the in-game renders, but they made me literally six feet tall. I definitely turned a few heads late night Saturday at the Ohayocon Hyatt bar—I was towering over most people!
The wig was a caramel blonde from Epic Cosplay. It was ok, but could have been styled a bit more thoroughly. I think I’d prefer a little more natural of a blonde, but I only ever wore this to a single Ohayocon (another outfit not well suited for 20F January Ohio weather which you can sort of tell by my expression a bit LOL). I briefly pulled the wig from a box for a casual closet Aya for NYCC 2014.
