While cosplay is most generally associated with making one’s own costume, there’s nothing wrong with cosplaying in bought costumes as well.

There are different reasons a cosplayer might choose not to make their own costume. Sometimes a person isn’t as craftily adept, sometimes there’s a lack of time, or sometimes a person just doesn’t want to have to make their own costume. Whatever the reason they don’t make their own costume, it doesn’t mean that they don’t love the “play” part of cosplay as much as anyone else.

Nothing Wrong With Buying Your Costume

There are some people will try to shame those cosplayers who use bought costumes instead of homemade, but the truth, there’s nothing wrong with cosplaying in bought costumes. The underlying purpose of cosplay is to show your love for your favorite characters. A cosplayer can do that whether it’s a costume they made or a costume they bought. You can act just as much like Captain America in a store bought costume as you can in a homemade one.

In the early days of cosplay, pretty much all the costumes had to be homemade because there wasn’t the large selection of costumes aimed at cosplayers that there is today. Costumes were only available in stores at Halloween time, and even then weren’t very accurate.

These days you can find costume pieces and props available for sale all year. They’re generally better quality than they used to be and fairly decent representations of accuracy. So if a cosplayer doesn’t particularly enjoy making their own costume, for whatever reason, there’s no reason they can’t use a bought costume.

Costume Commissions

In addition, another form of bought costume is still homemade at the same time. A cosplayer who doesn’t want to make their own costume can commission someone else to make their costume for them. While such commission costumes would technically be considered “bought costumes,” since they’ve been custom made by a costume artist, they’re still unique, homemade costumes. Commission costumes are the perfect option for a cosplayer who doesn’t want to make their own costume, but still wants the attention to detail and authenticity that most often is achieved with a homemade costume.

For myself personally, I don’t cosplay in bought costumes simply because my favorite part of cosplaying is actually creating the cosplay. (Though I have at times bought props to accompany a costume, such as lightsabers, when they could be purchased for less than I could make them for). Plus, by creating my own costume, I can usually keep costs down to less than what it would be buy them. And I can keep them on a more eco-friendly level than what could be purchased in a store. (I’m an eco-geek, so that aspect is very important to me).

I suppose I’m also something of a control freak when it comes to my costumes, so I like being control of every detail on the cosplay. I get off on the thrill of the construction process as much as actually wearing the costume. But not everyone does. And for those cosplayers who don’t, but who still want to dress up as their favorite characters, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with cosplaying in bought costumes.

By Amber Reifsteck, The Woodland Elf

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