Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade - Desert Elsa

keepcalmcostume

Active Member
So I definitely have enough on my plate without planning, starting, and especially actively working on a new costume. MouseMeat and I are finishing some Zoolander and Gotham costumes for WonderCon, I need to tweak last Halloween's Hocus Pocus costumes eventually, we're still head-over-heels about Crimson Peak and thinking about that project, I'm in the middle of college applications, Real Life is as Real Life as always... It goes on and on. But I kind of just fell into this and now here we are. It's always a slippery slope.

MouseMeat and I got to talking about history and archaeology a few weeks ago, and naturally an Indiana Jones joke came up. I've been antsy to work on something fresh and get a break from the school grind, so I decided to sort of plot out an Indy project just for kicks. Eventually research alone wasn't enough, so the easy answer of course was to do a smaller/cheaper/faster accessory or prop piece. I bought a ceramic goblet at a thrift store a few years ago because it was too cool to pass up, but it's been mostly gathering dust ever since. I realized it's a pretty close (or close enough) match to the Grail. Seemed simple enough to paint it up, so I watched the movie again. It wasn't long before I fell back into full-blown costumes as usual, and with The Last Crusade fresh in my mind I ended up on Elsa. Marion has always been my favorite, and I still need to do her Cairo market costume - not to mention I've been wanting to do a Rule 63 Indy forever too - but I think Elsa is tops in style points out of anyone in the movies. Her Brunwald suit and book-burning rally suit are some of the best, I think, but since I was already planning to do the Grail I leaned towards her desert/expedition costume which is fantastic in its own right. And there's the slippery slope: research led to online-equivalent window shopping led to actually finding stuff led to me realizing it was actually feasible, if still impractical. So it started to happen.
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I initially talked myself down to what she wears in the Grail room - basically that same desert costume from the whole end of the film, but minus the hat and goggles - with the option to add those extra pieces later, but after finding some potentials for the hat and goggles I ended up aiming for the full rig again. In addition to the Grail base, I already had a watch that works well. But that was pretty much it. Since starting this craziness I've bought the hat, a jacket to use as a blouse pattern, a jodhpurs pattern, gloves, and boots (I even found the boots totally by chance just today, which is what finally pushed me to start this thread). I've got my eye on goggles and a belt, and I think I can make up a close approximation of her shirt trim with materials I already have, so there's a chance that's all not far behind.

I don't have any real plans with this. It started so abruptly and it's coming together to casually that I haven't really considered an endgame besides just having another awesome costume in my collection (and the bonus of getting an Indy series costume done, which has been a goal or a long time). And it's actually kind of nice. Not having a specific event or deadline for it means it's harder to justify doing it, but it also means less pressure to push forward on it. If I want or need to stop at any point, I can easily do that without any problems. It's also coming together quickly, so I ended up with a lot of the pieces before I got a chance to start this thread. But I still have to make and modify some things, so there should be enough to post updates with. I started the Grail tonight and I've got photos of the other stuff to post, so I'm hoping to get that up this weekend.
 
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KeepCalm, is this your Elsa? If so it came out great!

I've never seen anyone else do that cosplay, more power to you for pulling it off so well!

Nope, not me. But funnily enough I've met her and talked to her at a few events. I absolutely love her Elsa, and seeing hers actually got me thinking about mine again.
 
That was an amazing day at Wondercon! I showed up by myself as Senior (as you can see in my avatar) and immediately bumped into that big group of Indy cosplayers who were in the middle of doing a photo shoot. So I joined in as you can see! I think most of those people are WWII re-enactors, I ran into them at Fort MacArthur at a big re-enacting event.

Here's another photo taken that day

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That was an amazing day at Wondercon! I showed up by myself as Senior (as you can see in my avatar) and immediately bumped into that big group of Indy cosplayers who were in the middle of doing a photo shoot. So I joined in as you can see! I think most of those people are WWII re-enactors, I ran into them at Fort MacArthur at a big re-enacting event.

Here's another photo taken that day

View attachment 1349567

I love this.
 
Very authentic, and the people do have a resemblance to the original actors. Short Round should be nicknamed Tall Thin.

Yes Short Round grew up!

What's funny about those pics is that I look average height. I'm 6'4" which goes to show how tall some of those guys are.

BTW KeepCalmCostume was your avatar drawn in New Orleans Square in Disneyland? That's where I work (or did work till they shut everything down in March).
 
That was an amazing day at Wondercon! I showed up by myself as Senior (as you can see in my avatar) and immediately bumped into that big group of Indy cosplayers who were in the middle of doing a photo shoot. So I joined in as you can see! I think most of those people are WWII re-enactors, I ran into them at Fort MacArthur at a big re-enacting event.

Wow! What a lucky coincidence. I love seeing big groups like that at conventions. Yeah, a lot of them are reenactors. I've seen them at Fort MacArthur too during Air Raid, and at some other local reenactment events.

BTW KeepCalmCostume was your avatar drawn in New Orleans Square in Disneyland? That's where I work (or did work till they shut everything down in March).

No, it's not from Disneyland. It was drawn by Charles Holbert, an illustrator friend of my roommate. That's awesome you worked at Disneyland! I miss going there so much.
 
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