Dolores
Westworld

Inspiration: Westworld is an incredible show. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it. I really liked Dolores’ character, but I wasn’t planning on cosplaying her until several people told me I looked a lot like the actress who plays her. Basically my friends talked me into doing this costume, but I’m really glad that I did!

Materials/Construction Details: I didn’t notice until I was looking closer at references that Dolores’ dress has a swiss dot texture on it. Luckily I was able to find a swiss dot linen material, though it only came in white, so I had to dye several yards of fabric cornflower blue. Her bodice has two vertical darts in the front, which wasn’t something I was able to find a pattern of, so I had to draft my own. For the skirt I used a basic seven panel pattern, but made the back four panels wider so that I could pleat them.

The trim on Dolores’ bodice was the most challenging part of the costume. I couldn’t find ready made trims that I was satisfied with, so I had to make them all from scratch. I used the same swiss dot linen for the outer trim, but painted all the dots white before making tiny knife pleats. The middle trim is actually made up of three different components. I found a ribbon with scalloped edges and then hand stitched two layers of tiny ric rac on top. I wasn’t able to find the ric rac in the right shades, so I fabric painted white ric rac the appropriate yellow and blue shades. The inner trim is cotton that I custom dyed and turned into bias tape.

It turns out that the exact belt the costume designers for the show used was from Tandy Leather, so I was able to order it. It did require painting though, so I used Angelus leather paint in tan and brown to paint and weather the belt. To make the buckle, I purchased a square buckle of the correct size and then created a cover of sorts for it in the correct shape using worbla. I used acrylic paints to paint and weather the buckle.

Wig: I used a lacefront wig for this costume. A friend actually discovered this great wig seller that had a beautiful blonde wig with dark roots. To style it, I parted the wig near the middle and pulled the front pieces back. I trimmed the hair near the temples and curled them on either side.