Photos by CK Imagery
This is by far the most complicated costume I have ever created, and I was working on it at one of the most tumultuous times of my life. It took over 200 hours, beginning in January 2024, less than two years after I nearly died in a hit-and-run, but I never stopped playing dress ups. It was only a few weeks after the accident that I was throwing together half-assed Metal Gear costumes just for a bit of fun, but even they got a bit of attention online. Soon I began my plans to bring the Boss costume I had been dreaming of to life.
The Boss was a character and a costume I fell in love with from the first time I played Snake Eater around 2020. I wanted to figure out a way of replicating that strange texture of her costume. In the remake, merchandise and Pachinko versions, they have rightly interpreted the sneaking suit as simply being shiny silver fabric. Every cosplayer I have ever seen has followed this model, some of them are stunningly accurate. Admirable, kudos to them, but I find that utterly boring. What inspires me to make a costume is when I see an opening, an opportunity to experiment, to go where no costumer has gone before.
Snake Eater (2004) versus Delta (2025)
I would slowly play around with various existing fabrics to try to replicate the texture, I even considered painting it. Luckily I hadn’t launched into the project, because in 2024, the Metal Gear Solid series was finally brought to PC and I was able to easily rip the textures out of the game. I cropped and enhanced the texture and had it printed onto lycra through Spoonflower. Get the fabric for yourself here: https://www.spoonflower.com/en/fabric/16212823
I was unsure how it would turn out, but the results are beautiful. The fabric I created was a repeating pattern pulled from one of the leg panels on the Boss’s costume within the game. I love the almost watercolour look of it. I think there is a beauty in how earlier generations of digital artists overcame the technological limitations and I want to celebrate that.
To contrast with this unrealistic fabric, I had to make the rest of it very real and grounded. I mounted the lycra onto a heavier spandex to give it more body so that it didn’t look like I was just wearing a cheap zentai suit. I also built bra cups into the chest so that it wouldn’t squish my chest flat. The white panels were initially neoprene, which was an utter nightmare, the neoprene available locally was horrible, but every time I ordered more online, the stretchiness would be different. This is where I wasted a majority of my production time, I had very little experience with stretch fabric outside of my time as a costume student at WAAPA over a decade ago. I’ll never work with stretch fabric ever again! As it is, this costume is incredibly complicated and I wanted to get every seamline matching the original costume as much as I could. And I would grab whatever stretch fabric was cheapest to make my toiles/prototypes. That meant I ended up producing three or four toiles and each time the results were unpredictable.
Still I charged ahead, perhaps moving onto the final copy too soon. There was A LOT of unpicking, more than I’ve ever done in my life. This costume has been remade so many times, and yet there’s minimal damage to the fabric despite this. I overlocked it with a four thread overlocker, so it can withstand it’s own weight and the forces regularly applied to it while worn. The final costume is almost entirely lycra and spandex, with only neoprene on the the lacing panels where the sturdiness was most necessary.
In my past, I briefly worked for a company that specialised in industrial slings and harnesses, so I was no stranger to the kinds of buckles and webbing that I have incorporated in this costume. These are seriously heavy-duty automotive ones, which match the weight and size of the buckles seen in Snake’s STABO harness. I feel they give this costume the level of reality it would otherwise lack. And speaking of reality, given that I had so much time to study this costume it began apparent to me that the lacing panels did not appear to be functional and indeed, many cosplayers simply make these panels decorative. I remedied this by inserting eyelet tape under the facings and putting cord locks on the end of the laces. Every lacing panel you see here is genuinely modifiable.
Then there were the metres of ruching on the sides of the arms and legs, this was intended to replicate the compressed texture seen in the game:
All in all, this costume is surprisingly heavy, I would guess around 3-4kg. I’d like to get it weighed. This costume made its debut at Supanova Pop Culture Expo during a mild winter, although it’s always much hotter in the crowded convention halls, but I was not uncomfortable once. Having tried it on during the summer too, it’s not unbearable, possibly because it’s essentially made of sports fabric.
Now I am writing this all out, it’s no wonder this costume took me years to accomplish, probably would have cost me that much under the best of circumstances anyway. I was having fun experimenting and inventing entirely new techniques. I was doing things these materials were never intended for. I had to do so much mounting and re-enforcing to make sure this costume didn’t collapse under its own weight. I wasn’t cutting corners, I was adding more corners where I didn’t even need to!
In hindsight, I can see that I really should have gone easy on myself for a few years after the accident, something I still struggle with now. To give you a very brief summary of a very horrible experience: I had a serious traumatic brain injury, I wasn’t thinking straight, my emotions were all over the place. As if the accident wasn’t bad enough, I was mistreated by the hospital staff, I was mistreated by my family, I was mistreated by a lot of other doctor and therapists as I was trying to recover. I was not in a good or safe place at all, then my landlords sold my house. I stayed with a friend for some time, then I felt guilty and hated the hour long commute to work. I shouldn’t have been working at all, I wasn’t ready for that, but I was stubborn to prove how strong I was. I found a place with cheap rent ten minutes from my workplace, I didn’t last long there because I soon discovered it was a sex trafficking operation! So yes, an extremely chaotic time, I was struggling to survive, and yet I never stopped dreaming, never stopped wanting to create, even if it was just a silly fan project. There were many times I thought I would have to abandon this costume, but I persevered, even when it felt like a Sisyphean task. I think the Boss was respect my dedication to the task. Loyalty to the end.
Some early test shots on film
The final touch was hand painting the white panels and armbands, I don’t consider these fully complete yet, but they go a long way in capturing the visual language of the game. Afterall, if you look closely, no part of the Boss’s costume in the original game was truly white, it has shades of grey running through it that are not a direct result of the light of the environment, as they would in modern games. These “shadows” are attached to the costume.
The Patriot gun was a fun project, it was just 3D printed pieces assembled around a piece of dowel. I bought the pattern from here: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/metal-gear-solid-patriot
The very last thing I need to do is complete the knife and sheath. I don’t plan on jumping into any other major costume projects for a long time, I just want to enjoy this one. Plus I’ve got plenty of costumes still waiting to get their proper photoshoots, and I’ve had a lot of clothing alterations piling up while I prioritised the Boss.
I think this project proves to me that you really do eat an elephant one bite at a time. Even when it seems impossible, even when it seems like it would be easier to simply give up or start over, if you just spend an hour on something per day or even per week, progress is being made.
Now to start entering this costume into some cosplay competitions, I’ve never entered one before.
Travian Designs 