Halloween Costume: Chell from Portal

Last Halloween my friend and I decided to both dress up as Chell from the video game Portal together (neither of us wanted to do it alone since not a lot of people at school would've gotten it, sadly) and I decided to reuse the costume again this year. It's actually a pretty simple costume to put together, assuming you're not aiming to be super accurate and going for the jumpsuit look. I didn't actually wear the shirt tucked in and I layered the tank with a blue sports bra underneath to match the look a little better (not shown in the pictures).

Inspiration photo of Chell (here for larger image)

The pieces making up the costume: orange high-waisted pants from Papaya, boots from Cathy Jean, and a white tank from Forever 21. The tank was actually pretty hard to find since most stores either have ribbed tank tops or thin strapped camisoles--when my friend and I went shopping we unfortunately only found one, so she ended up with a ribbed tank since the one we found was my size. We used iron on decals from Joann's and found the Aperature Laboratories logo online and printed it out. For fun, we added a little Portal logo onto the back as well. I haven't washed the shirt too many times, but it seems to be lasting pretty well without cracking. We went for the iron-ons with the white backgrounds since they supposedly last longer (and are slightly more expensive).

Reference photo (found here) and final product

The finishing touch was the signature companion cube (portal guns are too expensive--and difficult to carry around). I spent the night before Halloween making two out of felt and stuffing, one for me, one to surprise my friend with. I wish I had progress shots from making it, but that was more than a year ago, so I only have the final product with me (one's sitting in my dorm, the other in my friend's dorm room hours away). It was actually sort of tough to make, sewing around all of those small shapes. Some of the pieces aren't even entirely sewn down, but you can't tell from a distance. I really like the way it came out in the end, and everyone who's recognized my costumes seems to have really appreciated it--I still remember random people stopping me in the hallways last year to compliment me on my costume, even though I had to keep explaining over and over again who I was to people who had no idea who I was. The moments when people recognize the Aperature logo and understand my costume definitely make it worth it though. Who needs sexy corn costumes anyway?