Sabrina (Pokemon)
The Source
Doesn’t everyone know Pokémon? :) Playing Pokémon Red and Yellow as a kid, Sabrina was my favorite character. Sabrina is the Saffron City Gym Leader and specializes in Psychic-type Pokémon, but also possesses psychic abilities of her own. Shared between her various incarnations across the sprawling Pokemon franchise (TCG, manga, anime, video games…) is a strong association with the uncanny and the unknown. Sabrina’s gothic horror vibe meshes especially well with high key, low light photography.
The Costume (2010)
There are so many variations of Sabrina’s costume across Pokemon canon that I decided I’d just mix and match my favorite elements. (Eg, I strongly preferred the black corset to the yellow one, but favored the corset silhouette in another piece of character art.) Her hair can be anything from purple to green to blue-black to black. I kept it simple and just went with pure raven black.
I used Joann’s interlock knit for the red dress and yellow cuffs. For the cuffs, I cut and interfaced a rectangular shape, but I didn’t like how blocky this made the end of the sleeve look, so I redid them using a flared shape for my second Sabrina outing. The sleeves taper quite sharply, and having the sleeve flow in one unbroken line from shoulder to cuff looked significantly better IMO. My first pair of gloves were kinda short, so I also replaced them with a longer pair for my second time wearing her.
I made matching bootcovers that could just slip on over the boots, but the cotton-poly interlock knit I used had stretch retention so atrociously bad that it degraded into an unacceptable state the second time I pulled them on over the shoes (and there was absolutely no time left before the con to do anything about it). The lesson rather painfully learned here: if you are relying on the fabric tension for dimension you need some % of spandex content to avoid permanent deformation. Sabrina wears black boots in the anime anyway, and after getting photos back I decided I kind of liked the look of them with the rest of the outfit.
The black pleather “corset”/waist cincher was made with the wonderful stretch pleather from Distinctive Fabric. It is my favorite stretch pleather in the whole world which has since disappeared from the planet. (I tried to figure out wtf happened to it, but the only people who seemed to notice it vanishing were a few furry forums who weren’t sure where it went either.) I serged the cincher on my Brother 1034D and then topstitched it in place.
The first wig I got for this was a long 40” wig from Zephyr via Rakuten Japan. It was great fresh out of the bag but turned into an absolute nightmare after about 30 minutes of wearing it around. The next con I used a 40” wig from Epic Cosplay, which worked much better. Epic Cosplay was very new back then, but has been my go-to choice for long wigs ever since.
Sadly, I no longer had any of my Burger King pokeballs from my childhood, but I was able to find some replacements pretty easily on eBay. I painted the central ring black and then closed the pokeball on top of a loop of clear stretch cord from the Joann’s jewelry section. With a smidge of photoshop, this gave me the appearance of having psychic powered floating pokeballs. :D
Honestly, the most annoying part of the costume was being constantly mistaken for Uhura from the first Star Trek reboot movie, which had debuted in the last year. I guess the designs are VAGUELY similar—but only vaguely. (You’d also think the Pokeball would have been a clue.)
Overall it was pretty comfy and has good mobility so made for a great cosplay competition judging outfit too. :)
