Kaoru Kamiya (Rurouni Kenshin) - Cosplay Write-up

Kaoru was one of those characters from my childhood that resonated in me something strong. I loved how tough she was when you first see her in the anime, but as it goes you see that she has more sides to her. She is a strong fighter, but she’s also really feminine. She’s stubborn to a fault, but stands up for her morals none other. All of the women in this anime are amazing people, but Kaoru will always be my favourite and her training uniform has been on my cosplay list for years.

Fabric – The fabric I used for everything was linen. While this fabric is on the pricier side(use coupons) and regular broadcloth would have worked just fine, I absolutely love the texture and weight of this fabric. It has a distinctly woven look to it and you can even see a little color variation in the fibers. It definitely gives the costume more character and depth than regular broadcloth would have. One thing about linen, however, is that it does like to fray, meaning you will either need to use pinking shears or serge the edges of your fabric. I did a combination of the two for this project, but what your preference is will work just fine.

Top – I’m not sure what the proper name for the top is, whether it gi or kimono or something else, and if anyone knows, please let me know. But for the purpose of this write-up I’m just going to call it the top. So for the top I used the Simplicity Jedi pattern. I did almost no alterations on it outside of shortening the shoulders a couple inches to get the fit that I wanted. This pattern is really baggy in nature so I recommend using a size down from what your measured size is to reduce that if you wish. I didn’t and it still turned out fine, but make sure to do a mock up beforehand to see what effect suits you better. I used a blind stitch to hem the sleeves, and a regular top stitch on the bottom hem. To attach the band goes around the neckline, I first sewed it on, right sides together, to the neckline. I then folded it over, ironed it, and SLOWLY top stitched it down, keeping my stitch as close to the seam as possible. To keep the front closed, I just put little stick-on zelcro patches and set them with the iron (DO NOT SEW THROUGH THESE THEY WILL RUIN YOUR NEEDLE).

“Hakama” – I put hakama in quotes because this is certainly not the proper way to make them nor do I claim these to be legit hakama. This is my first time making “hakama” and I feel like they could’ve turned out better if I had made my own pattern, but I really did not feel like doing that so. I just found a pattern for sweatpants and used the biggest size available for them(XXL). In retrospect, I should have widened the pattern a few inches on the bottom of the legs to be able to achieve better volume. To combat the fact that I didn’t do that, I added a triangle of fabric to the inseam of the legs and it worked out decently. The front pleats took a lot of readjusting because I constantly refuse to use math, but after a few tries I got them relatively even. For the single pleat on the back, I just added a seam a couple inches back from the original seam and went down as far as I could without it looking weird on my body. Sometimes with cosplay, you need to take your body into consideration over accuracy, this isn’t the proper way to do that, but because of the way that I am shaped, I couldn’t get actual pleats to look good. Anyways! For the ties, I used the same pattern piece that was used for the band around the neckline on the top, except I used the largest size available on that pattern instead of my own size(so it was the XL instead of the S). For the trapezoid shape on the back I just freehanded the shape and used lightweight interfacing to keep it stiff. I suggest not doing as I do and ACTUALLY USE MATH because mine ended up waaaaay too big. I was able to easily remedy that by folding it, but it would be less hassle to just make it the right size from the beginning.

*Note on patterns* From the time when I initially made this cosplay and began writing this, there are now commercial patterns specifically intended for Hakama and this style of Top available on the market. Both McCalls and Simplicity offer patterns like this, so if making or altering your own pattern isn’t your style, those are completely available to the public now.

Wig - The wig I used for this cosplay is a Jeanie in Dark Purple from Arda Wigs. Now I was consistently torn on the color I should use for Kaoru because in a lot of images and screen shots, her hair tends to have a blue tint, and in others, it seems purple. I know that her hair is technically black, but I wanted to give it more of a pop of color, especially since I was basing my cosplay off the anime version specifically. My reasoning behind choosing purple was kinda silly, but after watching the anime a couple times I felt like Misao had bluer hair whereas Kaoru had purple-er hair and I guessed this was an intentional thing to keep the designs distinct from one another.

ANYWAYS, to style the wig, I put it on my wig head (which I had resized to match my head size), pinned it down and took to untying and retying the ponytail to fix any “bag hair”. I suppose it’s also a good idea to mention that I ordered my wig in the Small size that Arda offers, meaning it is distinctly more snug on my head and didn’t need too much fixing in the “bag hair” department. The first thing I did to style the wig was separate the side burns/hair tendrils (is there a proper name for them?) I separated them with a wig comb and clipped them to sides to keep them out of the way. Once that was done, I began cutting the bangs. I kind of eyeballed it, but it’s always wise to try the wig on first to know how long you need them to be. I kept them a little on the longer side so that I could fluff them up. To do so, I initially used the hair curler + heat method, but didn’t get quite the volume I wanted so I went back and teased them a little to get some extra lift. While the bangs were cooling, I unpinned the side burn hairs and used heat to straighten them to my liking as well to form them into position so that they could hide the hairline. For the ponytail itself, I never stub my Jeanies, not for any good reason, I just don’t. I instead just pin it up into a kind of bun. I took the ponytail extension off the clip it came on and tied it onto the base permanently. Again: This is probably not a good way to do this, it’s just how I do it. I then went in and shortened and thinned out the ponytail clip. This is helped to make it lighter, I also added clips inside the wig to help secure it to my head when wearing.

I made a work log on styling this wig (well part of it) that can be viewed here

Accessories and Props - Just about everything else was bought for this cosplay, which includes the sandals, the training sword and the tabi socks. The sandals and training word, which I think is properly called a Bokken, I found on Ebay for pretty reasonable prices. The sandals are just some basic fashion flip flops with bamboo soles and cost about $6 and the bokken was about $16. The tabi socks can be found on Ebay or Amazon ranging from about $17-$20 depending on the seller you get them from.

All in all, this cosplay was a very fun and quick build. Most of the sewing was finished in a couple days and the rest of the time was waiting on shipping. Mostly, I’m just excited to have cosplayed one of my favourite anime characters.