Hi! I am the costume mistress for a youth theatre company in Bath and our next production is 'Hot Mikado'. Our director has decided that Harajuku is the look he wants to go for and Cosplay will be an important part of that. I need to be able to marry up the personalities of the characters in the show and the cosplay costumes that they wear and I just don't know who is good and who is evil! Can anyone help?

i'm a little confused....
you need to marry up the characters and the cosplay costume? don't they already wear the costumes? all you need to do is make them. or do you mean you need to suit each characer to a style of Harajuku fashion?

Hmm, we definitely need some clarification!

It sounds like what you want to do is to come up with costumes for the characters that are reflective of Harajuku fashion; is that right? Because if so, then that's really not a tall order. Or are you trying to do a kind of meta-cosplay thing where the characters in the play are cosplaying as anime characters?

Also, as a Bath resident, I'd love to know more about this show in general - any details you can pass on?

I remember my friend telling me a little of Hot Mikado. I think the show has always been performed with a distinctive hybrid of japanese textiles and western costumes. I'm assuming your director wants to modernise the costumes to match with harajuku fever? I think the word "cosplay" may be misused here...? Do you just mean dressing up harajuku style and not "fancy dress" as well know manga and anime chracters? So for example a baddie would be dressed up punk style and a sweet girly character would be lolita?

Omg, I did some work at YPT costuming in Bath some years ago!! That was before I got into cosplay myself. I remember it being all... sewing sacks for aladdin, and that's not my bag. DADUMTSHH.

I think you don't mean cosplay also, and since there is so such thing as "fruitsy" or harajuku fashion, it's like saying camden fashion or sth.

In this wikipedia link to youth culture in Japan it will give you links and more info on the different styles so you can pair up styles and character personalities! I hope it helps:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_fashion

A good book I recommend on it is Tokyo Look Book, my bro bought it for me and it has so many good description and pictures of all different youth culture/subcultures Very informative!!