Last Halloween, when it came time to ask myself the important question of what are we going to next year, I thought I had come up with a perfect idea. One that incorporated a fun costume with a great makeup element. I was excited. And then I went to a friend's Halloween party and when she opened the door, there she was, wearing my next year Halloween idea. Rude. (She had no way of knowing.) So, I had to come up with something else. And, lo, I landed on Tommy Lee Jones's Twoface from Batman Forever.
This costume was all about fabric. Finding the right patterns and colors is key. I started out downtown, hunting for good matches. I did find a good zebra stripe for the suit--but it was white instead of pink, so I would have some dyeing to do. I dyed the fabric with Rit Synthetic in "Super pink" (best name).
It didn't come out as dark as I wanted so I ended up having to dye it twice.
And then, after I had cut the pieces out, I airbrushed on purple fabric paint in loose stripes.
Now I just had to wait for all that to dry.
For the shirt fabric, I had to turn to the internet and found a close-enough match on Etsy. I bought the white side shirting fabric at JoAnn Fabrics. Easy.
Since nothing had to be tweaked, I just went ahead and started putting the shirt together. There's something so satisfying about working on a shirt like this because it's such a nice, basic shape. I just had to keep telling myself: "Left side is crazy. Right side is normal"
It went together quickly and without any surprises. I had to add some darts to accommodate my lady shape but other than that, it was pretty uneventful.
Next I moved on to the tie. I had a hard time finding a yellow leopard print so I decided I would just do a regular leopard print. This one was fun because I just went to my favorite thrift store to get a red tie and then wandered around until I found something leopard print to cut up for the other half. What I found was a satin-y ladies blazer. And it was perfect.
Then I opened up the tie and used it as a pattern for the leopard fabric, stitched the whole thing down the middle and put the tie back together.
Then I tried it on and realized that tie knots do not work the way that you need them to for this to look right. So I had to cut off the leopard fabric so it was only on the part of the tie below the knot and hand stitch a little piece of leopard on half of the tie.
Tommy wears the tie long (because the 90s were a terrible time for fashion) so I made sure it fell to about the same spot on me because there's no untying it now.
By now, my suit fabric was dry (after dye and dye and paint) and I was able to start putting it all together. I started with the skirt because it was a pretty simple piece--basically just a pencil skirt. Weirdly, before I cut the pieces, I'd help the pattern up to my body and felt like it was going to be small so I added a few inches. But once it was all put together it was huge. I took it in three times to get it nice and snug. (Now I can't gain any weight before Halloween...) I want it to be short, but I'm not going to hem it until I have the shoes and everything, so for now, I just set it aside.
The blazer is where I got sort of gummed up. Tailoring has never been my strong suit (Suit, get it??) and this particular suit has a shawl lapel on one side and a notch lapel on the other. And a welt pocket on one side and a flap pocket on the other. So it's basically a tailoring sampler. (But also, nice work costume designer--those are cool little elements to throw off the balance.) Oh, and also, the buttons on the cuffs match the lapel. So I had to make some covered buttons.
Once I actually sat down and tried to work it out though, it wasn't as bad as I expected and soon I was well on my way again.
As that was happening, I turned to eBay to get a pair of shoes. I wanted something high-heeled but kind of comfortable so I searched for used black Michael Kors shoes (I have a pair of MK pumps that I wear sometimes and my feet love them). At first I wasn't finding much that I loved and then I realized I could dye the shoes black--so I widened the search to any color. And I found these:
The block soles are just the right style to match the actual shoes TLJ wears. The shape is great! Now I was starting to get really excited!
I used the dark chocolate leather dye leftover from my River Song belt to dye the shoes (they look black) and spray painted the sole and heel black.
Now the right shoe was done but the left still needed some style. I glued on some studs and a skull. I needed the boot tip--I started out looking into metal sheets for stamped jewelry but the only ones I could find were $20. No thanks. So I was at JoAnn Fabrics and they had some little decorative pails for Halloween that were made of thin metal and only $3. So you better believe I just bought that and cut it apart. I made a paper pattern for the boot tip and cut it out of the metal.
Then I glued it in place with leather cement (also leftover from my River Song leatherwork).
The shoe was basically done but I was worried it still looked too much like the right shoe. So i taped off the tip and the sole and then lightly sprayed a snakeskin pattern on it with silver spray paint (I just stuck the shoe inside a fishnet stocking by way of a stencil)
I had one more piece to finish off the costume parts of this ensemble: the tights. Obviously the original costume doesn't have tights, but since it's inception of a skirt-suit Twoface, I've wanted to do a skirt and tights. In fact, the pink tiger-striped tights were the first thing I bought. So now it was finally time to cut them in half and serge them to a pair of black tights. The surgery was a success.
Now all of the costume pieces were finished and it was time to start in on the makeup. I did a sculpt of the face prosthetic using a lifecast of myself.
I molded that and then had to turn to a larger lifecast to sculpt the rest of the piece
Once the molds were finished, all that was left was pouring the prosthetics with silicone which I tinted pink as a base color.
On the day of Halloween, I wimped out of doing the full prosthetic and just wore the face piece (minus the lips). I parted my hair down the center and used spray-in hair color to color each side.
I also discovered that the tights (on the pink half) were too small (shoulda done a test run...oh well). So there were some last minute changes, but I was pretty happy with the way it turned out overall. Here I am at the party with my Commissioner Gordon!
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