Narutaki

• From: Steam Detectives (TV + manga)
• Materials: Modified overcoat, slacks, shirt, suspenders, tie, boots, extruded styrene ("eggs"), air-dry clay ("eggs").
• Design notes: This is a "modified" costume, where most of the pieces were purchased and altered rather than created from scratch.
• Construction notes: The golden "eggs" are created by sanding down styrene "Easter eggs" into a more oval shape and covering them with a thin layer of air-dry clay. A groove was added to the back to accept popsicle sticks. These popsicle sticks had holes drilled in them to allow two lengths of copper wire to be passed through them. The wire is used like thread to attach the buttons to the coat, but are much hardier than thread would have been.
• Additional notes: The "egg" buttons were made to be removable. This meant that they could be packed separately for travel. Not only did it make packing the costume easier, small adjustments could be made in placing them on the coat. There is a strong symmetry involved with the buttons, and they do not match the locations of the coat's regular buttons, so some trial and error is necessary. Since your body type affects how the coat hangs (which affects how the buttons will hang), we spent some time modeling the coat in front of a full length mirror.