Making a Good Omens Historically Accurate Cosplay: Victorian Aziraphale (Part 1)

Hello everyone, and welcome back! It has been more than a year since I did my last Historically Accurate Cosplay, so I am due for another one. And this time around, I am really inspired by Aziraphale in Good Omens. This is a really unusual take on Historically Accurate Cosplay, however, because unlike most of the other characters that I've done, there isn't a specific era or one specific costume that I can really point to. In fact, Aziraphale, being an angel, has been around since before recorded history, and there's even an entire portion of one episode where you get to watch him and the Demon Crowley go through literally centuries and centuries of fashion. So we've already seen what Aziraphale wears for a lot of different time periods, and more importantly, the costume designer Claire Anderson did an amazing job of making sure that they were relatively historically accurate. So anything I would do wouldn't actually be showing you much of a difference in terms of the clothing. Instead, what I thought would be fun would be to choose an era that we don't see. So I was pondering that, thinking about the fact that I have an upcoming event in Chicago that is meant to be a Belle Epoque ball, so that's going to be set somewhere in the late 19th early 20th centuries, and I'm going to be wearing the evening gown that I made back for the New York event over a year ago. However, the next morning there is going to be a tea as well, and I was already thinking I wanted to make a new tailored piece for this, so this seems like the perfect time to overlap those two ideas. And actually adding on a third one, I was recently contacted by the Figge Museum in Iowa, who's hosting the traveling exhibit of fashions called Outdoor Girls, that has a wide range of clothing from the 19th and 20th century in women's sportswear styles. And this is a massive, beautiful exhibit if you get a chance to go see it. I'm going to be doing two digital talks with them in April. I will let you guys know as I get more information on that, but as I'm doing all of this research into these types of garments, I really wanted to make something from that style. So it only seemed appropriate that I would overlap all three of these at the same time into one outfit. I found myself particularly interested in the 1890s, what they called New Woman. And this is something that we today tend to think of as the garments worn for women when they started doing bicycling in the 1890s, but in fact this outfit would have been much broader than just that one activity, and it would have been popular for everything from walking, through hiking, and hunting, and bicycling, and so much more. And quite a few women actually just picked up wearing this as their regular everyday fashion because they found that the regular fashion was too fussy. So this is a really unusual and interesting era, and at the same time it started formulating a story in my mind about Aziraphale, who, if you don't know, is particularly interested in humans in general, more so than most of the angels, especially when it comes to food. One of the things that was popping up in the 1890s were women's clubs. Men had their clubs long before that, where they would go and sit and talk and smoke and have dinner if they wanted. Women started up their own clubs, so that way they had spaces to comfortably exercise and be active in, or to go and sit and eat and chat. So there were restaurants showing up that were women only, unless you were escorted in by one of the members. So I have this fun little story in my head of Aziraphale wanting to go into one of these particular places around the UK or America, and finding it far easier to dress in that sort of attire as a new woman, rather than having to find an escort to allow him inside the one time. There is no reason for me to need the story for the premise of what I'm going with. I just find it highly amusing, so that's what I'm sticking with. So what that means is I need to spend some time looking at Aziraphale's general style, as well as the styles of that particular era, and figure out how to easily combine them. Which thankfully, stylistically, also means things I'm making are going to actually be pretty practical everyday wear for me, in terms of the style of things that I'm wearing, so I feel like I can invest some time and money into this project to make sure they have really good quality items that I can continue to wear regularly. Speaking of quality, I also want to take a moment to thank the sponsor of this week's video, Birch. You may not be able to control what your day throws at you, but you can handle it better with a good night's sleep. That's why I'm so happy to introduce Birch. 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But I can honestly say that with my Birch mattress, I sleep through the night and wake up without pain. And you don't have to worry about trying it out. With your Birch mattress, you get a 100 night sleep trial along with a 25 year warranty. That means you'll get more than three months to make sure that you loved it. The mattress arrives at your door, rolled up in a box with free shipping in the US, and it was so easy to set up. I love my Birch mattress and I think you would too. If you're looking for a new bed, check out Birch. You can click the link below or go to birchliving.com slash Nicole Rudolph to get 20% off your new mattress plus two free pillows. And if you're looking for a new mattress for your little ones, also check out the new Birch kids line. Thanks again to Birch for sponsoring this week's video. Now let's get on to analyzing Aziraphale. Since we have such a wide range of costume styles for him, we can kind of see what is his essence. It's not just one outfit, but it is for the most part a color scheme. He wears a lot of ivory and beige, mix of gold and silver tones, a little bit of accent of a light blue, but generally it's all pretty muted, pretty soft, and ethereal in a way. I think that's the most important thing to carry forward. There are some elements of his suit that he wears in the 1860s section, which sort of crystallized at that point. The costume designers does say that she specifically feels like Aziraphale found his favorite fashion in that era and kind of stuck with it. Which thankfully for me, I don't have to change dramatically in order to get to that 1890s new woman style. It's not terribly different. The image that I'm using as my main inspiration for this is this one. I particularly like the lady who is standing, and though this will be my main source, I have literally dozens of other images and articles that I have looked at. I'm just not going to be digging into the weeds of that right now, because that will be a part of those larger presentations that I'm doing, and I might eventually do a video on the topic with all the research, but there is so much at this point. It cannot be contained by one video alone, let alone in the middle of doing a historically accurate cosplay. So you're just going to trust my research on this for right now. I promise there's a lot of really fun things coming up. But this is the style that I'm going for. You can see it so many times over with the divided skirt and either bloomer or knickerbockers underneath. I am going with the knickerbockers, so they're a little bit more practical because they're not nearly as voluminous as the bloomers were. They're very similar style. As well as a shirt, sometimes waistcoat, a very mannish style coat, as they would consider it. Even a more masculine style of hat and oxfords. Everything about this is very tailored and mannish, as they would call it in the era. So I don't have to make grand leaps in styling here, but I do still need to break down every single element of this project in order to know what I'm doing. Because I need to order fabric and supplies, figure out if I have enough time to do everything, come up with that good, better, best system that I've talked about before. So I'm gonna take you through that entire process, show you the mock-ups that I have done, as well as going over the supplies that I end up finding. So this is going to be an in-depth look at how I actually plan out projects of this size, before the next few videos will break into making all of the different parts and the final reveal. So since we're doing something a little bit different today, I'm going to take you upstairs to my sewing studio, so we can get to breaking down all of the different elements to this one ensemble. First things first, I have a lot of pieces I need to figure out, and that means I need to have a really good plan in place for how I'm going to go about this. I'm going to be using the same paper doll method that I used for my capsule wardrobe, because there are a lot of layers to this outfit. So this allows me to go through each piece individually and figure out what I need to know about it. Starting off with the shirt. The shirt, in the case of Aziraphale's original outfits, is blue in the vast majority of the modern part of the series. However, he does also have a white shirt in the 1860s scene, so it does mean that we're not tied to exactly one color. That is great, because a lot of the shirts that I was looking at had a contrasting white collar and cuff to a stripe or otherwise slightly colored shirt, so I'm not sure if I'm going to go with a blue or a stripe or a light gray, but it will probably be a slightly contrasting shirt style, I think. Next up we have the knickerbockers. I don't know what fabric I want to use for these yet, because obviously there is no example that he's wearing, so for now I'm just going to assume they're going to be the same fabric and the same color as that grayish tone that his trousers are in both sets of images. I don't want to do the really giant bloomers. I don't want to go to the more extreme. I think I'm trying a little more 1897-1898 with this than 1894-5, so I'm gonna stick with the snugger knickerbocker style, because I think that's also going to be much more likely to be used in my own wardrobe at some point in time. This is gonna be a relatively simple style, because it's going to be entirely covered up by the skirt. I am relatively sure that I am going to do a divided skirt for this, just because I want to take that challenge on beyond just a regular skirt. I did, however, realize there is going to be one big challenge with this. Since this is going over the knickerbockers, that means that I have to make it large enough to go over them in terms of the waistband size, and if I choose to wear this skirt without that bulk underneath or a bulky sweater tucked in or something like that, it might be a little bit too big. So I'm going to try and find a way to make it adjustable. Then we have the waistcoat, which in the case of Aziraphale is a single-breasted velvet. I wasn't seeing all that many single-breasted waistcoats for women's garments in the 1890s, unless they were really high-cut. I didn't like that style as much, but I did really like the lower cut shawl collar style that happened to be double-breasted. So I think that's what I'm going to go with, but I can perhaps amend that if I end up not having enough fabric, or if when I do the mock-up it doesn't look quite right. Then we have the coat. This is something that is, I think, if anything, one of the more iconic parts of Aziraphale's outfit. He has a long ivory colored wool coat, and this is the thing that he's sort of carried over from the 1860s forward. So I knew that I didn't want to do something dramatically different. I'm going to keep same style of lapel. I think I'm going to go with the longer length. I saw plenty of both short and long jackets when it came to bicycle ensembles, so I think for now I'm going to go with that longer length. I might change my mind when I get the whole thing together. I'm worried that it's going to be a little overwhelming with that much fabric going on, but we'll see. The other really iconic piece of his ensemble is, of course, the cravat tie, bow tie, whatever it is he has for neckwear. This might be a challenge in terms of finding fabric. It's a relatively simple piece though, so as long as I find something that I think matches with the ensemble, I'm going to go with the same either larger width tie or cravat style that seems to be really common on most of the imagery that I was seeing for this era. We also have to deal with the below the knee portion. While I know that bicycle boots are a thing, they also talk about the fact that they go out of style really fast. So I found plenty of articles that said that they were leaving those off and more and more women were going to just plain oxfords and then putting spats over them if they needed it for weather purposes. So I'm not entirely decided what I'm going to do. I do know I'm not making bicycle boots for this particular ensemble. I don't think I have the time or the mental space for it. So it's probably going to be a pair of oxfords or a pair of shorter style boots like Aziraphale is wearing, something laced up just above the ankle. Which means that I need some sort of leg wear there, which will either be stockings that I will purchase or spats that I will make. Ideally I find good stockings for this because the spats are going to cover up the shoes and then what's the point of putting all the effort into the shoes? So I'm hoping to find a good pair of stockings. I also have to go all the way back up to the top to figure out the hat. That is actually one of the bigger questions for me. They talk a lot about this particular style of hat that seems to be incredibly popular with bicycle and other sporting or what they call mannish attire. And it is essentially a man's hat. It's not far off from what we in modern day call a derby hat. And some of the references actually even talk about alpine hats or other things that are similar to what we think of as the traditional Bavarian style. So clearly that was one of the options. They also have some flat caps and a variety of other things. So I think a lot of this is going to come down to what I can find. As is all of this. So this is where I want to talk about the Good, Better, Best system. I have mentioned it before, but I've never really gone over in great detail. So where I can cut corners is frankly not that many places. I don't have a lot of trim or decorations or busy work in a way with most of this. What I can do, however, is one, do stockings instead of spats. A beige pair of socks is not the end of the world for that. The next up, I can make sure that I'm not over tailoring any of these pieces. Zarafale's coat is rather lightweight and loose. There is no reason for me to do a crazy amount of layering up in terms of interstructures. That's going to take a lot of time versus just one layer of interfacing. So that is definitely going to be a time cut that I don't think I'm losing anything on. Next up, I can definitely make a shortcut on the hat. This is something that would be ideal for me to get a hat block. That's exactly what I'm looking for. Custom made for me. Ordered way in advance because that takes a few months. Make up the hat from scratch out of just the right supplies. It's not going to happen. This is the first place that I'm cutting really steeply. There are modern hats that are not that far off. So I'm going to look for a ivory beige color derby hat instead of trying to make something from scratch. The next place that I might have to cut, this is definitely a good versus best option, is the shoes. I don't want to have to cut those. I really want to make a good pair of tan oxfords or boots. The big time crunch there though is the fact that I have to make a pair of lasts for this. I don't have a mid 1890s style last, the lower heel and the long pointed toe. I have to account a whole week for making lasts, at least if my health permits it. So that might be the thing that ends up getting cut because I do have a not historical but very modern pair of tan oxfords with a long pointed toe and a low heel that I think I've had for over 10 years at this point in time, but they would do. They would be not distracting. So if it comes down to it, that is going to be my big cut because that saves me potentially two or more weeks and a lot of stress. So that is my big thing that I might have to. We'll see when we get closer. That also means that I have to schedule myself out, so that way that is the last thing that I am doing, which is fine. Nothing else depends on it. The rest of the clothing, however, depends on the layers to be built up as they need to be. The knickerbockers first, so that way the skirt can be fit over those and then the waistcoat can be fit over that waist bulk and then the coat can be fit over the waist coat bulk. So I need to do them in that order. The shirt I'm going to wait on because it's something I can do with a commercial pattern. There are some good commercial patterns for that out there. I can make that super fast. If I absolutely need to, that is a sit down and really focus for one day. So that's my good system on that is buying a pattern and hyper focusing for a day to get that done because I don't need it for fitting. So that will be the last thing that gets done along with these shoes and I'm short cutting on the hat. I think this might work. So next up I need to find patterns to draft for all of these. Thankfully there are so many patterns for this type of garment in tailoring drafting manuals throughout the 1890s and into the early 1900s. They have great examples of bloomers and knickerbockers of different types of skirts that were meant for walking or for bicycling or for rainy days as one puts it. So there are a lot of great examples for every single part of this. Thank goodness. So I'm going to get started on drafting and making mockups. I don't normally make mockups but some of these pieces are a little bit challenging in their fit and some of them I'm not entirely sure on style. More importantly I think I'm going to end up with a lot of really expensive and rare fabrics for this. So I want to make sure that I am not adding any inches that I don't have to. So that way I don't have to buy any more yards. So we're going to start there. I'm going to be going into far more detail with each one of the garments in terms of their patterning and fitting when I get to their construction videos. But for right now have this little time lapse video of me drafting out the coat. We have the first round of parts. I have knickerbockers and the waistcoat. They're pretty close to being correct. The knickerbockers are far too long so I'm going to take a couple inches off the pattern. Super easy to do. I also have noticed that they're a little short in the crotch. I can't quite get them up to the waist point in front. So I'm going to be dropping out that crotch seam about an inch. I'm doing that instead of adding to the top because the hips are in the right place and everything else seems to fit really well. So I think that makes more sense to raise the whole thing than to lengthen it more. I also know that I'm going to need a little bit of change in the back. There's too much of the baggy bit. But I'm not going to do a big difference on that on the pattern. I'd rather keep changing that on the actual garment. So I'm going to save that for the main thing. Waistcoat is good to go. I had to draw the neck line which I think is pretty close to where I want it to be. And it will have a shawl collar and be double breasted. But the double breasted part will just be a chunk of this flipped over so I don't need to pattern a separate part for that. The neckline will be pretty easy to deal with for the collar. So main thing is it fits. And of course the coat. The coat can only go so far until I have all of the layers underneath to double check the mock-up. But I did have to adjust the shoulders. I found that there were a lot of pull lines running from the back of my neck down underneath my arms, so I shifted the shoulders outwards. They fit much better and much smoother now. Still a little snug up under the arms, but that is fixable in its more final format. Especially since this will get clipped and all of that. But also moving those things outward helped to tighten up the lapel line so that way it's not gapping in front. So that was the big shift that had to happen there. I'm not 100% convinced on the longer length, nor am I 100% convinced on my fullness of skirt. I pinned in one side. It's still feeling a little full, but I think I'll keep fidgeting with that. Sleeve is pretty good. I think I'm gonna add a little bit more fullness up to the top. A little bit of height, little bit of width. It's pretty good in the arm. I don't want it super tight. I want a looser fit, more coat-like. So that's pretty comfortable in width. I just want a little bit more puff on top. The collar was added after the shoulders were adjusted. Lapels I think will be just a smidge wider, about half an inch or so wider, just to make sure that it gets the angel wing feeling that the designer talked about. The collar up on top is pretty long and large for that reason, so I think though it's a good fit to start. And I just need to figure out how much I can trim off so I don't waste any of my fabric. All right, I have a lot of stuff to update on. I have received most of the things that I've ordered, and I think there are still a few things I need to find, but I haven't really fully decided. I'm not the right things. So we're gonna start off with the very first things that I ordered, which were the wools for the jacket and for the divided skirt. I found the jacket wool pretty much immediately. I am absolutely in love with this. I got it from the historical fabric store. It is a lovely wool tweed. They have so many great wool tweeds available there, and this is the exact color and texture that I needed. The right weight as well. It's pretty lightweight. I also ordered a wool from them for the divided skirt that unfortunately is a little too brown. It didn't really look terribly different online. I think I was just hoping it would come in a smidge more on the dull side. So I made a mistake on that one. This will get used for something else very soon because it is an absolutely beautiful brown. So it's not the end of the world that this isn't working out, but it did mean that I had to do a lot more research. And what I ended up with was this wool, which is just a little bit more on that gray side. It has the same sort of flannely tweedy softness, a bit of a mixture of tones. Unfortunately, it was really expensive. So I only ordered two yards of this. Even though really for a large divided skirt, you should probably have more like four. But um, yeah, look forward to next week's video for the discussion on that problem. The nice thing though, was that in the process of going back and forth on what sort of wool I wanted for the divided skirt, I realized after I'd ordered that round that I honestly didn't want the divided skirt and the knickerbockers to be out of the same fabric. One, because the brown that came in the tweed was a little bit on the heavier side and having two full layers of that seemed like a lot. I was also doing a lot more research and was finding that they talked a lot about silk as an option or lighter weight wools. And I had fallen in love with this image. And I really loved the fact that they had plaid knickerbockers. So I dug through my collection. And this fabric that I had gotten from Burnley and Trowbridge, how did I forget that I had this, it feels incredibly lightweight, it's gonna do really well underneath a little bit of pop of color and pattern interest. But it won't be the main deal with that. I was at that point that I also came across my miracle, which I feel the irony of saying that considering cosplaying an angel, which is this pair of stockings, which are actually antiques. Fabgabs actually, just as I was beginning to realize that I wasn't going to find modern stockings that had the correct little plaid style to them in this sort of color range, happened to put up a whole big lot of antique stockings and it could not be more perfect. It matches the gray wool pretty much exactly. And it has a little bit of golden texture to it. And it does have the green up on top. But I feel like that's kind of a fun little accent, if anything. So that took care of a lot of the major stuff to start. I also knew that I needed a velvet for the waistcoat. There's the color that he has in the vast majority of the episode with very worn down sort of mousy brown color. And then the 1860s roughly is a lot more gold. And I originally ordered an antique silk velvet that on the screen looked way more gray. But when it came in, it was very cold. This is really bright. It's beautiful. And it does kind of resemble the one that he has in the 1860s. But it's just really bright. It felt like a little much. I think this is going to be perfect as an accent on some things in the future. So for right now, I'm putting that to the side. And I ended up ordering from the same place a different silk velvet that is that mousier color. So I should have enough of this, barely. I have a yard and a half of this very narrow stuff. So we're gonna see how that goes. There will probably be some piecing in my future. Then I knew I needed shirt fabric. And I have two options that I ordered for that. I'm not convinced on either. But I think I'm just gonna let my brain take me. They're pretty similar. They're both white with a grayish blue stripe through them. This one just is a lot more white. This one's got a lot more stripe. But this one's also like softer. This is silk and cotton and this is just cotton shirting. So it might come down less so to the pattern and color and more to the texture that I need to work with for this shirt. I will definitely be doing the collar and cuffs out of a plain white stiffer thing. But we'll see. We'll see which one I end up liking better in the end. Then I also needed shoes. I might not have time for the shoes, but I at least need to have the fabric just in case. Took me forever to find a silk that was anywhere near this color. I ended up with this one from Renaissance Fabrics, which isn't exactly what I was looking for. I wanted something less hair darker. I also was really hoping to find something that was a patterned brocade, but that just... I spent way too much time doing that. This is what I ended up with as an alternative. I also have leather, which is lighter than I want it to be, but that's okay because that actually allows me to stain it a little bit darker to get exactly the tone that I need. So I know the shoes are going to take a long time if I can get to them. The other things that I need to figure out were more of the accessories. The cravat actually has turned out to be the most difficult thing, shockingly enough. I have had so much trouble finding plaid silks that aren't super heavy weight, like big taffeta or dupioni or something like that. I originally ordered from the place that I normally get silk for ties from. Neither of these work. This is more like a woven silk. It doesn't really work as the type of tie that I need it to. It's not outside of the color range, but it's just... it doesn't do anything. And then this one is just way too peachy, so that didn't work. I do, however, from Gonzo's efforts that failed, have this silk, which is a really lightweight taffeta. So it's still not ideal, and it's not a plaid. I really did want a plaid, but in a worst case scenario, it is the right color range. Which then brings me down to the last thing that took a bit of time. I still have to do a little bit of work to this, but the hat. I found a hat, and it is not too bad. It looks really silly on me without a lot of hair. I bought a size smaller than I actually am to hope that it's not as overwhelming, but I think with the hair, the wig, and everything, it should be okay. I might do a little bit of reshaping to it. I do know I'm going to take this ribbon and this feather off and replace it with a darker one and maybe a bigger feather, so it will at least get a little bit of alteration, but it is a worst case scenario already taken care of. Like, it's not a big deal. I do also have a wig coming that has not arrived yet, so that is one of the things I am still missing. I don't think there's much else that I'm going to need. I figure I'm going to be using the glazed cottons for a lot of the things like the back of the waistcoat and the pocketing on the skirts and things like that, so I'm good on that regard. I might want a separate lining for the jacket. I haven't decided yet, so I'm thinking I'm just going to go find like a really lightweight silk satin twill something that's hopefully not too expensive, maybe even a rayon, so that way it's less expensive. I've already put a lot into this. I'll pick a major project every six months is kind of my standard issue for this, and all of the things that I'm making, quite honestly, I'm going to wear separately outside of this costume so I don't feel too bad. So I guess that's where I leave you today, and when I come back in two weeks it will be the knickerbockers and the divided skirt that I will be tackling at that point in time, so I better get back to work because I have a lot of sewing to do.