Cleaning Out Your Closet

Don't think you can make something out of what you already own?  Much of what makes these costumes is exactly that.

Jim (Second from Right)

Jim's wearing common dress pants and what I think are loafers on his feet. He's taken a basic vest and replaced the normal buttons with clock-face buttons. The collarless shirt probably came out of his closet as well.

The bowler hat, goggles, tinted glasses are at least costume pieces, quite possibly for steampunk.  

Rex (Far Right)

Rex is an interesting collection of pieces of which darn near all probably came from his closet.:

• Handmade monocle
• Bowler hat, costume piece
•  Vest looks like it might have once been part of a suit.
• Shirt is a Renaissance Faire piece, which often doesn't work but does great here.
•  Bracers are also likely re-purposed Ren Faire garb. It's simple style lets it work in multiple time periods.
• Kilt is a Utilikilt. He paired it with tall socks, which is standard for kilt wearing, but then he wore heavy leather boots over them.

Scott (Kneeling)

I'm really serious when we say we credit effort and originality. Scott joined our adventure at the last moment and is not a big costume person. So he put on dress pants and a dress shirt from his closet, borrowed a hat from Jerry, and clipped on a wrench as a tie. As the event ticket-seller commented, "The wrench makes the outfit."

Seriously, we don't judge, and we love creativity.  And we love a tie made out of a wrench.

Myself (Far Left)

 I'm the least closet-created character here, although I pulled the entire thing together over a several days after being invited to my very first steampunk event.

 The red underskirt was picked up at Goodwill from their Halloween section for $7.

The black overskirt was an old skirt (also originally from Goodwill for $4) I used to regularly wear until the elastic waist snapped. Here I've put in a drawstring and made basic alternations to sweep the skirt backward.

Read more: Simple Overskirt

The bustier was specifically purchased as a steampunk item for about $35. Since the zipper failed on the fourth wear, however, I can't really call it a good buy.

The shrug was homemade from a Goodwill shirt.

Read more: From Shirt to Shrug

The necklace, a collection of different colored chains, was from a local department store and is something I wear in real life.

Glasses were picked up at Halloween Express for about $7. The jeweler lenses were purchased at Harbor Freight for $8.

The hat as depicted here is in its early stages. I eventually added so many embellishments it caved in on itself.

Jerry (Second from Left)

This is his steampunk formal wear. Because we do a fair amount of costumed events, he already owned many of these pieces.  While all totaled, there's a good chuck of change in this outfit, the point is he didn't spend most of that money to specifically make a steampunk outfit: he already had much of it:

•  Tailed jacket from eBay was about $50.
• Dress pants and shoes are from his closet.
• Tuxedo shirt with wing collar, also off eBay.
• Ascot tie for $20.
• Bowler hat from Hot Topic for about $30.
• Goggles are also about $30.

His glasses are actually for vision correction. It's not a costume piece.