FASHION CHECK!

'SUP, NERDS! My dearest friends know that I have an addiction... an addiction to Animal Crossing. It's a simple game, but it knows how to play me. With over 400 characters in the series, there is a huge pool of Animal Crossing cosplayers. I decided to cosplay Gracie, an iconic character that nobody bothers to dress up as.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. You will never know all their names.

Playing Mayor

The latest installment of the main Animal Crossing series, New Leaf, came out on the Nintendo 3DS in 2013. I hadn't played Animal Crossing since its American introduction on the Nintendo GameCube in 2002. I never owned a GameCube, so I was always limited to playing as my friends' characters, too young to afford a video game console for just a couple of games.

When New Leaf came out, I was hesitant at first, but my friends all bullied me into buying it because I didn't own many 3DS games at the time. I knew inside that it would be the best-but-worst decision of my life to get New Leaf. I pent up all of this Animal Crossing fever over a span of 10 years.

Nintendo hasn't made a game that stole my life more than New Leaf  has.
New Leaf is life.

Animal Crossing is all about creating a human character that moves into a village, whose inhabitants are all animals. There is no big point or goal to the game but to pay off your mortgage and expand your house. You can earn money buy collecting fish, bugs and other goodies that you find.

The game is known for its customization as for you can decorate your home and you can personalize any article of clothing. New Leaf is special because your character becomes mayor. Now you have the ability to make major decisions for the village such as deciding what monuments and landmarks you want to build.

Chilling on Gracie's furniture. This is her signature design.

The villagers make the game fun. Different animals come and go as you develop relationships with them. The animals have unique personalities and you quickly find ones that you love and hate. There are also permanent residents that run the town, Gracie being my favorite shop owner.

GracieGrace

Gracie yelling at me about
her amazing furniture designs.

Gracie is a snobby, world renowned giraffe who runs a high-end fashion boutique. She is known for belittling players for wearing poorly coordinated outfits or if you can't afford her wares.

All the items in her shop are extremely expensive and have a designer flair. You can only get these products from GracieGrace (or if a rich friend of yours decides to gift you something from her furniture or fashion line). It's difficult to convince her to move into town because of her high-standard fashion checks.


Animal Crossing games actually play in real-time so the game only moves as fast as time in real life. Gracie randomly appears in your village to conducts fashion checks. Once you pass enough times, she will build her shop on the top floor of the town department store. In order to pass, you need to follow a set fashion theme she assigns you that day to impress her with what you wear.

Me, in my sweet-ass basement. This is Gracie's Gorgeous furniture series,
probably my favorite of all her designs.

Becoming Haute Couture

Gracie.

Gracie's outfit was pretty simple to make. I already had experience making a dress from my QT cosplay so it only took me two days... of no sleep. The cosplay was made for Con+Alt+Delete this past December and I finished school right before Thanksgiving. That's enough time to make a cosplay for a Christmas convention, right? Nuh-uh. Not when you're working full-time holiday retail and dealing with the holidays itself.

Since I've become a bit more skilled at sewing, I was able to cut all my fabric and piece the dress together in a single afternoon. It was only the details of the outfit that killed me... and I only learned of an easier way to detail the dress until after I made it.

Gracie's iconic circle pattern took me forever to make. Rather than sewing the rings directly to the fabric with decorative, tight stitches, I folded and sewed down the rough edges to sew again onto the skirt. It was tedious and I didn't think of a smarter way to sew the circles until after I finished. The tiny circles and rings kept getting caught in the sewing machine so I had to frequently disassemble it.

Yellow dots and green rings wrecked me.

I left the ears and horns for my lifesaving mother to make. She just hand stitched some felt, stuffed it and hot glued it all to a headband. The scarf took me a matter of minutes to sew together. I got my wig and gloves off of Amazon. Because the convention was in the dead of winter, I just found a cheap sweater to accompany my dress.

This bitch was giving fashion checks all weekend.

This convention was also a first for me: I wore high heels for more than an hour. Not just an hour, but a whole weekend spent running around in them. I think you attain womanhood after wearing heals for a couple of hours, rather than losing your virginity or as a girl menstruating for the first time.

Getting Ready for the Next Con

I feel like this cosplay is a tad incomplete. I still have plenty of extra fabric to create more rings. Because I was on such a time crunch, I wasn't able to properly fit the bodice the way I wanted. When I add more rings, I will probably adjust the bodice and cut a scoopneck.

Gracie was extremely successful. I found other Animal Crossing cosplayers who never seen anyone dress up as anyone aside from Tom Nook, the Able Sisters, K.K. or Isabelle. I was constantly stopped for photos and the cosplay was well-received.

Next time I'm going to show you a cosplay I'm currently working on. It's an intense planning process and I hope to receive some advice from you!!

LATER, DWEEBS.
-Loverly Liz