Welcome, Welcome: The Effie Trinket Reaping Costume

If you follow me on Instagram (and you should! go do it now!), you have already seen snippets of this Effie Trinket costume, which I wore to the Gala at Costume College. I had kept the fact that I was making an Effie Trinket costume from scratch a bit hush hush for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted it to be a surprise. I am not a fan of revealing things in the process because I feel it robs the finished product of its bang. After all, if you’ve already seen something in the making a gazillion times, you won’t be as surprised by the final product as if you hadn’t seen it at all. Second, I wasn’t even sure I could actually pull it off. It would have been much easier to pull the plug and never speak of it again in the event it didn’t work out if I hadn’t said anything about it than if I had publicly said “Oh, hey, look at me over here! I’m making an Effie Trinket costume!” I can accept defeat, but public defeat is hard pill to swallow.

This is costume was inspired, as it is not an exact reproduction, by the outfit Effie Trinket wore to the reaping in the film “The Hunger Games.” That was the first Effie Trinket outfit I ever saw, it was in the trailer and when I saw the outfit I knew right then and there that I HAD to watch the movie. I expected her to be evil, as she does look a bit evil in that outfit, but she turned out to be OK. But I digress.

I made the entire costume except for the shoes, the black cami, and obviously the wig. It took me about two months of on and off work, mostly fiddling with the jacket and the sleeves. I learned quite a bit in the process and I’m thrilled with how everything turned out. I went out my comfort zone and it paid off, several people told me that I was the best Effie Trinket they had ever seen, bar the original, presumably. I was initially nervous about wearing the outfit but those comments made my day.

This post is only to show the completed outfit; I will publish a series of posts showing how I made all the components. I took a lot of pictures in the process I hope they serve as tutorials of sorts. So, stay tuned for those posts, subscribe to my feed if you haven’t already done so so you don’t miss them! And may the odds be ever in your favor.