Easterner (E): What is your costume of?

Mary Wirkkala (MW): Today I’m dressed up as a plague demon. This one was kind of thrown together because I couldn’t find my vampire fangs.

I plan on doing a costume every single day this week. On Friday, for the Terror Trot, my friend and I did half skull makeup and we had safety pins in our faces, so that was pretty cool. On Saturday, I did a beheaded Queen of Hearts look, with my friend also being the executioner. I won a costume contest with that one. Yesterday, I did a witchy, spider queen look. I had spider webs all over my face.

Tomorrow I think I’m going to be a dragon because I have the set-up for that. I’m going to be an ice dragon because I happen to have wings. Thursday my friends and I are going to do broken dolls, which is makeup I really enjoy doing because I like drawing the gears in my face and stuff like that. Friday I’m going to be an elf. That’s a costume I’m re-using from last year. Specifically, it’s an elf from Dragon Age Inquisition, if anyone knows that game. It’s one of my favorite ones to do. Then on Monday, for the Harvest Fest, I’m actually planning on doing a group cosplay with my friends. We’re all going to be characters from Steven Universe, which is a really popular cartoon network kid’s show.

E: Do you happen to have a favorite?

MW: I’m looking forward to doing my dragon costume because it’s a set of things that I haven’t combined before. I also really do love doing my Dragon Age elf costume just because it looks so well put together and I love going for medieval renaissance looks.

E: Did you make all of your costumes or just parts?

MW: It’s a combination of everything. The makeup is usually from tutorials, and then also mixing my own style into it. Because I dress goth anyway, it’s pretty easy to look through my closet and go, “this works for this.”

For more complicated pieces that are clearly not going to have something I can buy anywhere I will try to find as much of a piece done as I can. For instance, I’ll take my costume from Monday — I’m doing Peridot. She has a very dancer-like look. So I took a leotard and I edited it and I sewed all the pieces onto that myself.

E: How did you put together the look that you have right now?

MW: One of these skirts is from my friend. A lot of this stuff I wear on a daily basis. I shop at Hot Topic like daily. I’m not ashamed to admit it. They have a lot of pleather and a lot of black. So [that part] was really easy. The look is inspired from something off of Pinterest, but then I blew it up even more. Most of this is accessories that I previously had.

E: What is your favorite part of the creative process of putting things together?

MW: I think the best part is starting with a theme and being able to twist it a way that is uniquely my own. Before I decided what I was doing today, last night I was thinking “I really want to do something witchy because I’ve got the stuff for that. So I pulled out the costume and then I was like, “I’m also kind of feeling like going harpy-like, with the bird look.” And then that got me thinking black plague, and then I was like “you know what? I’m going to be a plague demon.”

E: How long did it take you to put this together?

MW: This was really easy actually. The only drawback is using the paint [on my arms], because this is something we bought over the weekend. It’s actually really cheap black paint from Walmart and it got everywhere before I found a good setting powder for it.

Because this is something I could wear every day though, it’s pretty easy to throw together. Some costumes take a lot more time though. Especially if there’s a full wig, [or] if I have any latex prosthetics to put on. Sometimes I make my own latex prosthetics, so that’s always fun. Then I would usually give myself a three hour prep time. But this time I thought, one hour should probably be good.

E: Why do you cosplay?

MW: It’s probably the same reason I dress goth when I have time to get ready in the morning. It’s sometimes nice to just get random compliments. It’s something that just brings up your day. It doesn’t always just have to be like, “you look so pretty.” Sometimes it’s “you look fierce” or “you look intimidating,” which is a look that I can actually really appreciate.

Also, just walking to class and watching people part ways or just kind of stop and have to take a second to realize what they are seeing is really cool. It’s also nice because then people are like “oh my gosh, I never had the guts to do that. But now that I see you doing this I kinda want to try it.”

We are told that we’re not supposed to dress up anymore because we’re not kids. I think that that’s stupid. This is a lot of fun. Why should kids be the only ones that get to have this kind of fun?

E: Is there anything else that you would like students to know or that you would like to tell students?

MW: Start dressing up early in October. Make it a trend. It’s a ton of fun and I would love to be able to see everyone else pulling out their best outfits.