Somindeo’s Costumes

As Somindeo plays a key part in iSundae: The Way of the Wielders, it was important to me that he had a costume that fairly reeked of drama and mystery. Okay, more like it had to look good on camera.

I knew up front that Somindeo would need two costumes. One for the main part of the movie and one for the duel at the end, which we all referred to as the “reveal.”

Somindeo’s main costume is made out of brown wool our grandma gave us. Several people have mentioned that it looks like a monk’s robe. I will maintain a stony silence of the “that’s-not-what-it’s-supposed-to-be-sort.” I paired the robe with black pants, a wig and a penciled-on mustache. And any of you who are wondering, yes, that is a mullet wig. I thought it looked swashbuckling.

The second costume needed a first-glance impact that would draw “Oooohhhs” and “Ahhhhs” from the audience. I don’t think it ever got that far, but considering the materials we worked with, it turned out pretty good. Ready for this? The gorgeous red fabric isn’t fabric. It’s a mainly plastic shower curtain. I’ll wait a moment and let your initial shock wear off. To resume… Even though it looks great, it was awful to sew on! (shudder) We lined the collar with black felt, used the black pants again, and put on an interesting belt and sheath. We had to do the sword belt and sheath last minute, but I like the pattern we put on them. (You can read about the sheaths here.)

Once I had those two costumes wrapped up, I got hit with a curve ball. Somindeo needed to be in the prologue scene, but that meant he needed another costume. Back to the drawing board. By then, the black pants were a given. I just needed to come up with a top of some sort. I poked around in our materials and found an old, tan-colored blanket. I cut a hole in the middle for Jordan’s head, hung it over a floor lamp and cut the edge into fringe. Later we decided it looked a little plain, so we took the leftovers from Marelac’s vest and wrapped them around the neck as a collar. It needed a lot of adjusting. Poor Jordan was very patient with us.

In all, I think this is a good example of using what you have to make something happen. (Which is practically a motto around here.)