I fell in love with Transistor from the preview trailer, and decided well before the game came out that I was going to make that costume. The dress has gone through a few variations, this is the challenge of working from only references images, and conflicting ones at that. I hadn’t quite figured out what all was supposed to be going on with it until after playing the game – at which point I made a few improvements. Below is documentation on how I made the current version of my dress, and check out this post on how I made the Transistor itself.
Top
The dress is actually a top and a skirt. The bottom section of the top was constructed as a very basic underbust corset, I used a modification of this pattern (find more corset making resources in a previous blog post) . I used steel boning on each of the seams, and it was constructed out of a plain black cotton, I wanted it to be sturdy but not shiny. The front triangle was sewn directly onto the corset and is a layering of cream satin over gold vinyl. The closure was a zipper on the center back seam, this was actually put on upside down as it connects to the upper portion of the top as well.
The upper portion was constructed out of two long rectangles, about 1ft by 3ft, I taped off lines and painted the darker brown stripes with metallic fabric paint. I gathered the short edges of the rectangles and sewed those directly onto the top edge of the corset. On the back I sewed the long edge together partially until the collar.
The collar was constructed on a base of white felt, one edge was sewn directly onto the rectangles. On the other edge I glued lots of feathers, so many feathers. These were laid in a pattern where they ‘flowed’ upwards, so in the front they were flat on the collar and in the back they were standing up. I covered the raw edge of the feathers in another layer of felt.
The blue line shows the bottom edge that was sewn to the neck opening, and the green line is the top edge of the collar. The red arrows and ‘feathers’ show the direction the feathers were glued to the collar.
Skirt
The skirt was a plain straight underskirt, with a series of overlapping scallops over the top. This tutorial by Skittzipoo is incredibly good at explaining what they did (and I more or less did too), just stop after the short skirt section. They also have information on a pattern your can use for the sleeve/top. I added a few scallops on the bottom of the skirt that I frayed to give the appearance of being ripped off.
The skirt actually just slipped over my head, I didn’t want to mess with adding a zipper onto all of those scallops. Instead I just made a stretchy waistband, and hid it under the corset. I also added a few snaps just to help keep it all in place.
Accessories
Boots – these were plain black boots I found and then painted gold. I used acrylic, but you would do better to use actual leather paint, or possibly rub n buff.
Tights – plain black thigh highs. Wearing them over another pair of tights will help with issues of them constantly falling down.
Ring – I made the ring out of a small amount of wonderflex, gold paint, a red rhinestone and an old ring.
Jacket – I made a loose jacket and sewed a gold vinyl triangle to the back. Really you can just get a large suit jacket from a thrift store, switch the buttons and add the triangle. Much simpler!
Wig – this wig from Anime Stuff Store, and a million bobby pins.
Nails – paint em gold!
