Samantha R. Crossland - Steampunk & Cosplay Fashion Design & Illustration: More Than 50 Ideas for Learning to Design Your Own Neo-Victorian Costumes and Accessories

by Samantha R. Crossland

FASHION IS AN AMAZING WAY to tell a story. I have always been compelled to tell stories, but never have I been able to do so more articulately than with design.

I got my start in alternative design, namely Gothic and Lolita. There was a lot of crossover with Neo-Victorian and Steampunk fashion, so I was able to tell a great deal of stories. Even though I have now crossed over into a more mainstream aesthetic, historical and subculture fashion still influence me.

Some of my biggest design inspirations are Alexander McQueen, Marchesa, John Galliano, Anna Sui, House of Wirth, Vivienne Westwood, Prada, Novala Takemoto, Hirooka Naoto, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, Mary Katrantzou, and Valentino. From construction to vision, I strive to be counted among the greats I consider my heroes.

Many designers create daring, alternative visions. Some conceive gentle stories. All of them make a mark. Now its your turn

Samantha R. Crossland

STEAMPUNK IS A POPULAR ARTISTIC MOVEMENT that spans many genres, including fine art, music, performance, fashion, graphic design, and others; however, the inspiration for this steam-driven, industrial utopia filled with Victorian sights, textures, haberdashery, and otherworldly technology was originally born in ink from the masters of science-fiction literature.

Tales of adventure penned by the literary innovators of their time sparked steampunk to life. Mary Shelleys Frankenstein (1818) bridged the gap between ancient mythology and the imagination of science, thereby paving the way for the genres earliest origins. A few years later, the innovative literary techniques in Edgar Allan Poes horror stories emerged. Then Jules Verne began blending the styles of Poe and Shelley into his cornerstone works, Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1869). In 1889, Mark Twain pioneered another foundational notion of steampunk with the concept of time travel in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court.

H. G. Wells is often linked to steampunk, most notably for coining the term time machine in his work The Time Machine (1885), and he continued to perfect the science-fiction genre with War of the Worlds (1898). H. P. Lovecraft, a contemporary of the scientific minds associated with steampunk, designed a sophisticated blend of alternate dimensions and apocalyptic settings in a fictional universe known as Cthulhu Mythos, which he created in 1925. Today many of these works are taught in high school and college literature courses. In addition to the contributions of these literary figures, the innovations, theories, and ideas of such brilliant minds as Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and others also influenced the evolution of steampunk. And many of their ideas thought to be impossible eventually became reality as science took center stage in the late 19th century.

In 1987, science-fiction and horror author K. W. Jeter coined the term steampunk to define the works of his peers, authors Tim Powers and James Blaylock. Jeter couldnt have foreseen that the trend would later grow into a cultural movement.

Today steampunk is most prevalent in the art and role-playing communities. Fans dressed in elaborate costumes brandishing antiquated-looking props gather at steampunk balls, conventions, and tea parties around the world. Many steampunk artists even sketch ideas that they eventually develop into inventions of modified technology, such as operable computers and phones.

There are two common principles on which most steampunk artists and inventors tend to agree. The first is that steampunk embodies a time that never happened. Anachronism does not exist in an artists fictional world because technology can develop according to the creators imagination. The second principle is that the materials used to create costumes, props, and other works of art are at least in part characteristic of the 19th century; therefore, steampunk artists often employ brass, copper, wood, and leather, along with industrial mechanisms, clocks, and assorted machine parts, to create their wondrous inventions. And just as the creators of steampunk envisioned fantastic technological advances beyond the limitations of their era, todays steampunk artists are forever dreaming up new ways to bend reality from a time that never was.

Definition of Steampunk

Central to the definition of steampunk is a discussion of the words steam and punk. The word steam is not a literal description. In fact, a lot of steampunk art does not even contain steam technology. Rather, steam refers to the era of steam technologythe 19th century. The word punk invokes the idea of rebellion (just as it does in music) against the modern manufacturing aesthetic. However, it is up to each artist to determine the ratio of steam to punk in his or her work.

STEAMPUNK, LOLITA, AND OTHER ALTERNATIVE FASHIONS in this vein are so much fun because they are historical fashions as seen through a modern lens. Steampunk started out as merely a literary term. It is a subgenre of science fiction/fantasy that usually describes the late 1800s through the very early 1900s in an alternate world with more advanced technology.

Depending on the era in which a story takes place, there are other similar offshoots, such as Clockpunk (Renaissance), Dieselpunk (mid-1910s to mid-1940s), Decopunk (1920s-1950s), or Atompunk (mid-1940s to mid-1960s).

The term Steampunk was coined in the 1980s by author K. W. Jeter as a way to describe stories in Victorian and Edwardian times with more technological advances. In the 2000s, the style was adopted into its own genre of alternative fashion. There are now Steampunk clothing labels, bands, conventions, and events all over the world.

Lolita fashion derives from a few places. This style, while inspired by Western fashions, had its start in Japan in the 1970s. Lolita is rooted in