Construction Details:

Hanamaru and I share a love for Ai Yazawa and Paradise Kiss so when we won a surprise trip at Metrocon to be entered into the NYAF Yume Masquerade, it only took us a couple of days to decide on Yukari and Miwako. I've always wanted to make the runway dress, so this was a great excuse to finally do it. We decided to use the anime designs because we thought that these two dresses shared similar elements and would coordinate well together. We were living in different states until a few weeks before the con, so we had to plan things over the internet for months until we could help each other in person last minute. So much time and work went into these dresses, and I still have things I want to fix on mine. I had problems finding the right color fabric to use for my dress, everything was either too green or too blue. I ended up choosing iridescent silk taffeta so it changes color depending on the way you look at it. Not sure if I'm happy with the way the skirt photographs in low lighting though. The bodice is lined in white satin with boning on the sides. I made all my own blue ruffles and the train out of sheer organza. I made my petticoat out of white satin and added five layers of white satin ruffles underneath 30 yards of Venice lace for the bottom. It's heavy, haha. Made satin ruffles for the gloves too. All of the blossom designs and jewelry were hand beaded by us. There's 10,070 beads on the dress not including jewelry and shoes. I'm slooow at hand sewing so the first blossom took me almost 4 hours to complete, but I eventually got down to 3 hours a flower. I bought 40 fabric roses for my hair, cut off the stems, glued them so they would not fall apart, and sprayed them blue with blue floral paint. I used the same paint on my shoes too before adding the beads and feathers. I bought super long loose hair and braided it myself to use as extensions. I dyed my hair black, cut my own "Yukari bangs", and styled the braids to fall like Yukari's. All of the roses are attached with wire and I used a headband for the ones on my head. We also made our own stage props from stratch. Those were a lot of work too. A special thanks to NYAF, Metrocon, and Hanamaru for all her help!♥ Update: I fixed my dress up a little more; I added another petticoat, lengthened the dress, re-did the headpiece and choker, fixed the braids so they would be more accurate, remade smaller earrings, poofed up the sleeves and finished beading the flowers on the back of the dress. Hanamaru and I also wore more makeup this time so we wouldn't be washed out in photos again. ^_^

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