Anyone that knows me well enough knows that I am not a fan of the Wizard World Comic Convention so what on Heaven’s good Earth would draw me to be at the one Chicago convention that I would much rather not go to? Generations of Art of course! Geez, it is as if you didn’t know me.
In any case… if you have read my previous post I was in love with the corseted dress that was made for me to the point that I was and am looking into having others made. In fact when I emailed Lisa Lindburg (the creator of all the designs and corsets from Generations of Art) about a few ideas for down the road she replied:
I’m planning to be in Chicago again at Wizards comicon. [You] could come be my slave and work into a corset.
Now remember how I just said that I was not a fan of the Wizard World Comic Con? Yeeeeaaaah… I was going to have to eat my words. Looking at my schedule we talked and eventually she found people to help her out. So since I wanted to see her stock regardless I decided to head to the convention for one day regardless and talk to her for an hour or so (depending on how busy she was) and that was it. Expensive for a $35 pre-show ticket, but for me in the end would be worth it… little did I know what I was getting myself into.
Taking a day off of the office I cleaned up, decided to toss on the dress she made for me originally (blue side out) and headed off to the Stephen Donaldson Convention Center in Rosemont.
Oddly enough their booth appeared to be in the far back end corner of the convention floor within Artist Alley as opposed to with all the vendors for more traffic. When asked, it was mentioned (and this is my interpretation / paraphrasing) that she felt that that it would not be as cost effective to garner space on the vendor floor as it would be if she was in Artist Alley… apparently the price difference between the vendor space and Artist Alley is significant enough that the number of items sold in a vendor booth would not offset the cost of acquiring that space and still have a sizable profit.
Makes sense when I look at the cost / profit differential from my college years. (I blame the Industrial Engineering classes that were required)
So I stopped by the booth, said my “hellos” and we chatted a little bit of what I would love to have done. I brought along a piece of blue taffeta fabric (in the center bottom portion of the above photo) that I purchased at trip to Jo-Anns when I was putting a costume together for a promo film (this is for another post). My original hope is for it to be long enough to be one side of a floor length Susie gown where the other side would be a white brocade for a future possible wedding dress. The underskirt would be more difficult since one side should be either white or silver for the “wedding side” and the other should match the blue of the fabric.
However, at first glance the fabric may not be enough for a floor length Susie gown, but it would be a little longer than that of the Susie dress that I have a the moment. With that taken into account I realized that perhaps sticking with a darker blue taffeta that she has ready access to would be the best bet… perhaps the blue from this Cannibal style (which is actually reminiscent of the Assassin’s Creed costume) would work better. When looking at the fabric I realized that perhaps this particular darker blue would be a near-perfect match to my original intentions.
However when hanging out at the booth there was a Susie style dress (no pictures available) where one side is a blue fabric with chocolate brown polka dots and the other side is a brown fabric that is a close match to the brown polka dots… needless to say I fell in love and almost immediately scrapped my original idea of having a Susie dress made with one side a deep forest green and the other side a plum purple color. This change in plans came primarily because she had more fabric available in the blue polka dots and I don’t really have enough chocolate brown in my wardrobe.
After hanging out for a little while the booth got to be rather busy, to the point that they asked me to help out whenever necessary and who am I to say no? Eventually it got to the point that their friendly neighbors from “Gimme Anime” based out of Aurora, Colorado were asking if I was going to be around the following day (Saturday)… Unfortunately my plans were originally going to be that I would attend one day and that was it. I jokingly said that if they really wanted me to be around to help out on Saturday then they should pay for my ticket in… And that’s what they did!?!?!?!
Granted there was another reason I wanted to come back for the remainder of the weekend… but that’s too personal for me to mention and this post is really more to focus the fun of being at Wizard World Comic Con and my time with Generations of Art… so I digress.
One girl that was helping the Generations of Art booth for the whole weekend was an adorably cute young lady: Jenica. For Saturday she ended up wearing a cincher that we dubbed the “Captain America” corset.
She admitted that she came across Generations of Art at C2E2 and fell in love with the corsets the moment she tried them on. To the point that she was willing to “work herself into a corset”, really you guys have no idea how well fitted these corsets are, even those “off the rack”. As one lady mentioned as she tried one a cincher on Saturday:
This feels like a hug! This girl knows how to make a corset!
No wonder people are falling in love with these corsets. Then again, we also know how big of a purchase having a corset (or corseted dress) would be. In fact the recommendation that the vendor makes is just go ahead and try on a corset even just for size, that way you could get the measurements written down and she recommends that if there are any other corset booths to go and try those on and make your decision. A fair assessment, keeping everything open ended and nothing tied down.
If for some reason you cannot find a better quality corset you are free to come back and either get something off the rack (as long as it fits) or have something custom made. Due to my size and insanely picky tastes I tend to go for the custom made orders… however there are quite a few items that were “off the rack” that had I been a smaller person I probably would have gotten without much thought.
For the most part, many people come back… her work is just that good… In fact it is that good to the point that there was a vendor from the Bristol Renaissance Faire that came by the booth and was measured for a corset and declared that in her “dream world” she would have a floor length dress made by Generations of Art that was in a deep dark color. Can’t say I blamed her… so with a card with her measurements she decided that once she had the funds for her “dream dress” she would order via email what she liked and move on from there.
The glorious piece of this? She noticed the work because she saw me in the corseted dress when I went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire earlier in the summer… word of mouth really is one of the best way to advertise your art.
Towards the end of Saturday evening (the day I was legitimately helping out Generations of Art) one guest to the Wizard World Comic Con who purchased the Cannibal style at another convention came by and tried on another corset for size. The person pictured to the right was none other than Melina Perez from the WWE. She is in fact in love with the corset style and doesn’t she look hot in the Cannibal style (aka Assassin’s Creed)?
As the vendor joked (mind you that the below exchanged is paraphrased due to holes in the memory bank):
You know the guys already are speechless when they see you, now they are going to be scared from talking to you!
To which Melina replied:
Well good! I could go through the autographs faster!
And this is why I frequently offer hand massages… but I digress.
After my second day at Wizard World, first in helping out… we went out to Gino’s East on Higgins and enjoyed good pizza, great company and fantastic conversation.
So what would I do for the corset that I managed to work myself into? Well I want it to be an underbust cincher / corset one side denim and the other side I have no idea, though I tickled with the idea of it being leather pieces which I thought would be fun, but time will tell. As for its usage? Well, the FablesCon might be a great place to start.
Anyway, the vendor is constantly working on prototypes, one of a future prototypes is working on a corset that men could wear kind of emulating the Assassin’s Creed costume and setting up the corset so men could wear it as opposed to just women. Ambitious, but I have no doubt that she would succeed in her endeavor. She is also constantly evolving her current styles and designs because a lot of what she has “off the rack” this go around differed significantly from what she had back in March for C2E2.
Looking back, if I knew how much fun I had I would have made a point of clearing out more of my weekend to help out for the whole weekend. Not just for the concept of working into a corset, but because the company was more than entertaining, I met a lot of great people… and had good conversations with brilliant minds. All in all a very memorable weekend on all fronts, with all things considered.