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More Than a Costume [1]
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Date: 2025-04-18 15:00:51+00:00
Sustainable cosplay for your wallet, environment, and community
By Arts & Culture
Cosplay might just be the epitome of fandom — going beyond engaging with your favorite media to becoming it in a way has become a prominent art form, hobby, and career. Dressing up as your favorite characters, whether it be for Halloween, a TikTok, or a fan convention, can be a fun and artistic tool for expression.
Cosplay is a practice without a barrier to entry. With various origin points and names, from science fiction costuming in the U.S. from 1939, to the practice in Japan throughout the 1970s. The eventual coining of the term “cosplay” is attributed to media producer Nobuyuki Takahashi after writing a report for My Anime magazine covering fans at Worldcon in 1984.
In the U.S., cosplay blew up in the 2000s, with growing internet culture and an increase in fan conventions, finding cosplay resources and meeting other fans grew more accessible. The 2010s alone brought a hoard of Marvel cosplayers to the forefront. Now, cosplayers make up a large community with competitions, fashion shows, meetups, and ways to make a living off the art.
Putting together a cosplay can be done in many ways. Just like any art form, there are plenty of considerations to take for making your cosplay practice more sustainable for the environment.
Environmental
Costumes can easily be purchased from costume stores like Spirit Halloween or cosplay-specific online stores like Uwowo, Doki Doki, and MicCostumes — or even Amazon. But purchasing from these stores feeds into fast fashion, creating immense textile waste. If you want to purchase your cosplay, seek out high-quality pieces that are long-lasting and can be multipurpose or get multiple wears. Supporting creators that make handmade garments and accessories on sites like Etsy is a great way to start.
Consider hand-making your costumes and accessories. Purchase fabric by the yard and sew costumes perfect to your size. As brick and mortar fabric stores like JOANN Fabric and Crafts close down, you can also recycle fabric from your old clothes and from thrift stores.
Large-scale cosplays sometimes include props, mechanic suits, large wings, etc. These can be made by hand, using recycled and recyclable materials like cardboard boxes, plastic bottles, newspapers, and other plastic from packaging. For intricate details or unique shapes, you can utilize bottle caps, soda tabs, corks, and egg cartons. Aluminum cans, glass bottles, and jars can also be cut or crushed. Eco-friendly paint and dyes are a great choice too.
Comparatively, materials like EVA foam, acrylic, nylon, resin, and synthetic paint, dye and fabrics should be avoided as much as possible as they can take hundreds of years to decompose.
An item’s recyclability is generally determined by its ability to be sold and sorted as well as its safety and supply. Not all things that can be recycled are easily decomposed by the earth.
When it comes to traveling to fan conventions, be aware of your mode of transportation and time spent traveling. Frequent flying and driving releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the environment contributing to global warming. Try to stick to local conventions and cosplay meetups and avoid frequently having your cosplay materials shipped. You can also see how your trip directly impacts the environment with carbon calculators online.
Economic
Cosplay can be expensive! From buying your costume, to gathering your materials, to buying tickets for and traveling to fan conventions, there can be a hefty price tag to cosplaying.
Instead of buying brand new pieces for your cosplay, try doing a “closet cosplay” by looking through clothes and accessories you already have at home to see if you can build out your characters for free. Or, visit thrift stores and find pieces second hand for a discounted price.
Rather than visiting the biggest conventions like Anime Expo or Comic Con, which have pricier tickets and may require you to pay for travel and other accommodations, research local conventions and meetups which could be smaller but more cost-effective. Also, consider limiting your attendance to paid conventions to only once or twice a year.
As you hone your cosplay expertise, don’t be afraid to profit from your work. Become an influencer, monetizing your social media platforms. If you’re good at patterning and sewing, or making wigs and props, you can sell your designs to other cosplayers. You can even compete in cosplay competitions with paid prizes for winners.
Social
When connecting with other cosplayers, try to encourage handmade cosplay pieces. Cosplay fashion and performance competitions sometimes have separate categories and score rubrics for custom cosplays. Participate in these to support and contribute to the handmade cosplay community. Cutting back on fast fashion costumes and props as aforementioned makes a huge difference.
Share your knowledge online or with your friends and community and continue to learn! There are countless crafting hacks and tutorials online that can make yours and others’ cosplay journey easier and more sustainable. There’s never too much information to pull from and as cosplayers continue to move towards eco-friendly creating, the possibilities are endless.
It’s all of our responsibility to make eco-conscious decisions in our day-to-day lives. Why not carry a sustainable mindset as we create and do the things we love?
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