Today we’d like to introduce you to Cosmic Coterie.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Cosmic. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
We’re Cosmic Coterie, a team of four women that banded together because of our shared passion for creating costumes. We go by the names AdventTraitor, Koholint, The Geeky Seamstress, and Victoria Bane online. We participate in a costuming hobby called cosplay, which means that we create costumes from sources such as anime, manga, videogames, and other works of fiction. It may sound silly, but we enjoy the challenge of making things that were only imagined, into a reality. We use numerous creative skills that we’ve developed over several decades of hard work and practice to do this. Our primary skill is sewing (our members combined have over 50 years of sewing experience), but we can also style wigs, create 3D models in CAD software for printing in a 3D printer, embroider, make props using various tools and resins, paint, and create jewelry.
Over our years as a team, we’ve become best-known for the resources we created for others: tutorials and patterns for fellow cosplay makers to create their very own costumes! Our most popular resource is our in-depth tutorial to create costumes from the series “Sailor Moon”. We were officially established in the late summer of 2016 and created our website to host our tutorials shortly after that. 2016 was also the year we published the first version of our Sailor Moon tutorial, which we updated several times before moving to our new platform, Patreon.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
We’ve certainly faced challenges during our time as a group. Some of them have been internal – for example, figuring out workflows for projects was a big challenge early on. Back when we initially established our group, several members were very new to cosplay and didn’t have much in the way of sewing knowledge, so the burden of construction fell on the few experienced people. It was a quick recipe for burnout! We have since switched to a model where individual members are responsible for their builds, which greatly helped team morale.
Figuring out our goals as a team has been another challenge because our goals continue to evolve as our group matures. Back in 2016, we started by simply wanting to create Sailor Moon costumes and wear them at local anime conventions. As we became closer to our teammates and learned more about each other’s interests, we evolved into a craftsmanship-based team that creates tutorials and patterns for others. This eventually led us to Patreon, which has become our platform of choice for sharing educational sewing and cosplay-making content for fellow creators.
We’ve also faced some unfortunate hostility from outside the group. Online harassment is not a new concept, and members of our group have been attacked for numerous reasons, especially for things like not being white or for being plus-size. There’s not much we can do about it other than ignore the hateful words thrown our way and continue operating in a way that is inspirational to others (and ourselves). See, our team believes that cosplay is for everyone – it’s a fun hobby that allows one to express both their creativity and their love for a series, which means it has no limits on who may participate. Therefore, things like bullying and hatred in the community are unacceptable, especially when it’s over a person’s physical appearance. (Remember the adage that “you shouldn’t point out things about people’s appearances if they can’t fix it in ten seconds”)! Our teammates are positive and supportive of ourselves and others, and we’re grateful to have a following that also adheres to our ideal that cosplay is for everyone.
Please tell us more about your work. What do you guys do? What do you specialize in? What sets you apart from competition?
We’re Cosmic Coterie, a team that specializes in high-quality costume craftsmanship! Our members take pride in providing sewing patterns and tutorials to the cosplay community in return for all the knowledge we learned from our predecessors when we first began cosplaying well over a decade ago. We attend local and out-of-state conventions as guests to share our content in person, and usually create new costumes for each event, too. We’re all enthusiastic about learning new things and improving our skills as makers, so every new project allows us to grow.
We gained a significant following on Instagram over the last four years thanks to our Sailor Moon Fuku Tutorial, and the ideas our group has for expanding it meant we needed a different platform. Therefore, we moved to Patreon in January! We’ve been working hard this year to create brand new patterns and tutorials for our fellow cosplayers to use, and the income from Patreon allows us to explore new creative pathways.
What were you like growing up?
All of us come from different backgrounds and a huge variety of places, but the one thing we all had in common growing up was a love of anime! We all have fond memories of watching anime on the TV as kids, and we all grew up with shows such as “Sailor Moon”, “Pokemon”, and “Inuyasha’, amongst many others. This led us all to attend local anime conventions and eventually getting sucked into the wonderful world of cosplay!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cosmiccoterie.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cosmiccoterie
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/CosmicCoterie
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CosmicCoterie
- Other: https://www.patreon.com/cosmiccoterie
Image Credit:
Ash Snap’em Photography
Suggest a story: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
