Lara Croft – Tomb Raider – Costume – Cosplay

I had trouble deciding on who I wanted to dress up as for Courtney’s Halloween Costume Party.  Then Courtney suggested that seeing as Jonny was going as a computer game character (Ezio from Assassins Creed), then I should be a game character too!  After searching for a well known female character – Lara Croft was the only one that kept showing up.  I said there’s no way I’m wearing hot pants in October! lol (still very much winter here in NZ)  But then we found the new rendition of Lara where she’s wearing pants!

I had thought about going as a black cat – making some ears and a tail, painting whiskers on my face and I was just about to start making some ears when Courtney and her Mum found me a pair of cargo pants in a second hand shop.

They were men’s pants, way too big and the wrong colour.  But a good starting point!

The crotch was too low and baggy, the legs were too loose & long and the pockets too low.  I went to work altering them.  After unpicking the inner leg seams and part of the crotch seams.  I made a big tuck in the legs lifting the pockets up.  I then fitted them on myself and wearing the waistband lower on my hips it fit properly 🙂  I pinned the crotch seams and made them more fitting.  Then running in the inside legs to tighten the fit.

After trying them on again, I found the crotch was still too loose and baggy, I had nothing to fill it out! lol.  So I took a little dart on each side of the zip to take out some excess fabric and the fit was a lot more feminine.  The zip was still to big for ladies pants hence the pull on the fabric around it but it was ok for a costume.  Please excuse the odd socks!

Fit fixed!  but the colour was still not right.  Luckily they were 100% cotton, so I found some fabric dye at the chemist.  I left them quite a while in the dye, they came out pretty good.  The only things that didn’t take the colour were the zips and the thread (it must have been polyester).

Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the pants on me after they were dyed.  But I found they were still not quite right.  I found an awesome tutorial on Nerd Farm Blog for distressing the pants.  So I found my acrylic pants and artist’s pastel chalks (lucky I’d done an art certificate).  And got to work.  Painting browns, yellow ocre and moss green in different directions in different patches on the pants.  Once dried the paint even felt like dried mudd!

I also followed Nerd Farm’s advice on using chalk on the singlet tops to make them look dirty.  I used black, brown and red colours.  Rubbing the chalk on a piece of card, then rubbing my fingers on the card and onto the singlet.  It took a while to wash the colour off my hand lol.

I added the chalk to the bandage I’d found to use and to some ripped cotton strips to use around the bottom of the legs.  After the pants had dried, I tied on the bandage and strips over the pants and hot glued them on once they were in the right place.  Then I didn’t need to worry about them coming off during the party.

The holster was made from some faux leather I had in my fabric stash.  I fashioned it on the style of Lara Croft’s holster.  It’s rather tricky to see in most pictures so it’s kinda stylized.  The buckle is from an old belt I picked up from the second hand store.  The gun was a cheap plastic toy from the local Asian variety market store.

The boots were borrowed from Courtney and the bow from her brother, who had distressed it for his school play of Ali Baba.  I wrapped the chalked up bandage on my hand and some of the ripped cotton on my arm.  I had dyed my hair the night before (it was brown but not as dark as it should be for Lara) and trimmed my fringe after tying up my hair in a ponytail.  After putting on my makeup I used charcoal eye-shadow and a blush brush to make me look dirty.  I used some khaki cream blush too to look like bruises.

I had a great time at the party, the costume made me feel quite strong and sexy.  I’ve never played any of the tomb raider games but I enjoyed cosplaying as Lara Croft.

Please check out the other costumes I made for the costume party   –  Tinkerbell  –  Stuart the Minion