Static Styling at Maurice’s
As the only career fashionista at my Maurice’s location, I am often tasked with putting together looks and spare mannequin outfits that are not corporate directed. Learning to style outside of my own eccentricities has been a wonderful gift that I look forward to perfecting further.
Bell Attends Chicago Comicon (C2E2)
The following post was taken from my personal Blog, Catalogue Bell. In this post, I explain my first experience cosplaying, how my job differs while at conventions vs. on the back end of Sirius. During this, I also did a recap of my favorite handmade cosplays from the convention that I later got to share this with my peers in Sociopsychology of Dress during Spring ’25 semester as a final lecture upon Dr. McCracken’s request.
Playing with Petunia: Bell’s First Cosplay Experience
Amidst the surprisingly small-town feel of Chicago’s concrete sprawl, lies the McCormick Place Convention Center. This year, we at Sirius Entertainment joined the chaos by exhibiting out of Artist’s Alley for the first time at this show since 2011.
Now that I am an integrated part of the Sirius team, I took it upon myself to surprise my Dad (and Sirius’ Sole Proprietor) with a cosplay of one of our properties’ most iconic characters; Petunia. An undertaking I have been creating, sourcing and fine-tuning since the beginning of the year, I finally revealed the look and took it for a test run at a locally-brewed “comic-con” being held at Southside Mall last month. As my first ever cosplay, I am pleased and relieved to say that the whole look, including my thick blue makeup, held up all day. God willing as I woke up at 6am to get into all of this for a show that opens at 10am! It truly was a marathon to sport this across Chicago for nearly 18 hours and across over 10 miles of walking (according to my FitBit) by the time we got to our hotel.
From left to right: 1. A sassy Petunia guard’s Sirius Entertainment’s booth at S-21 (Also the image we posted to PE social media). 2. Poison Elves Issue #64, Drew Hayes cover and the inspiration for this Petunia iteration. 3. Eisner Award winning artist Jill Thompson, friend of Petunia (and Horans), creator of Scary Godmother and beloved former Sirius’ artist.
The strategic nature of my Petunia cosplay, and one of my main purposes while attending conventions, revolves around the long-standing tradition of a “Booth-Babe”. Within the male-dominated comic industry, a booth babe refers to a beautiful woman staffing your companies’ booth as the interactive eye-candy that gets the majority single, male with a lot of disposable income customer base coming to your table. Through the 90’s, my mother, who doubled as Sirius’ letterer (this was back before the digital standardization of comic creation) was also our booth babe. Today, it is me who doubles as the Editing Assistant to my father and the Poison Elves themed sales bait while at shows.
Regardless of us exceeding our sales goals at this show, the Petunia cosplay serves a whole secondary purpose; visual word-of-mouth. You see, within the modern cosplay community, at a convention of this magnitude, there is a whole culture around photographing cosplayers. Being a cosplay supporter is now its own hobby that, like many things, exists on a spectrum. This can range from someone asking to snap pics for their phone’s personal collection, a freelance photographer with his own social media presence whose show gallery you’ll wind up on and all the way up to catching the eye of media companies in attendance at the show or the actual convention representatives.
Both at the booth and away from it, I was consistently photographed across this spectrum with my knowledge by well over 100 people and likely many more for the heaps of men who do not ask for consent when grabbing these photos. Being the Bell of our row, I was gifted original portrait art from a peer who found me striking, several stickers and/or small art prints, a packet of zines, mini figurines while walking around, etc. You truly cannot underestimate the power being sexy has over all people at these shows.
And that brings me to the “all”. Not only is my job to be sexually desirable to our customer base, but to act as the beautifully brazen liaison for getting other men’s attention in the industry. The line between customer, exhibitor and organizer at any comic show is extremely blurred. I consistently help my Dad reel in male artists we’d like to work with or in buttering up retailers, freelancers, company reps, etc. Since re-entering the convention scene, my appearance has secured things like a PBS interview for the Comic Culture segment, free original art, and a (still unrevealed to the public) cover deal with one of Marvel’s most highly sought after artists.
For Petunia, the most special part of this trip was meeting a long-time fan and Kickstarter Backer named Marco who was nearly in tears with excitement when he came and found us. Marco excitedly let slip that his birthday was the following day and that his return to comic book collecting was thanks to his now 4 years of sobriety, much similar to my Dad’s 10+ years that have led us to Sirius’ reactivation. We loaded Marco up with extra goodies, exclusive looks at art yet-to-be released and featured him in a photo with Petunia to our Kickstarter Backer’s show update. It is always cathartic for me, and especially my Dad, to be earnestly praised for his commitment to preserving one of his best friend’s impossibly unique body of work for the many that continue to love and relate to him. Drew Lives and Sirius Rocks!
Cosplayers I Accosted
From my six-foot-fairy-in-pumps perch behind the booth, I collected a series of cosplays I found impressive, clever or some mixture of the two. All individuals photographed where asked to be photographed in hopes of including them in a little report for my Fashion School peers, all of whom eagerly accepted.
One of my favorite veins of cosplay is absurdity for absurdities’ sake. Here we have a shrimp in shrimp drag and a pink, “yassified” Sorin from Lord of the Rings. These kinds of looks always make me giggle and typically come from very funny and creative young women. The most DaDa-ist subgenre in this vein is the “Sexy ____” where one takes typically a male villain character (like Sorin), dawns fishnets and heels with disturbing accuracy to the character’s features otherwise, thus creating a very humorous juxtaposition.
Here we have my favorite gowns, made from scratch! The first is a gloriously creative and thorough take on My Little Pony season two’s finale, “A Canterlot Wedding” in which Princess Cadence is impersonated by decaying fairy pony in hopes of deceptively marrying into royalty. The cosplay shows the impersonation mid-break down, very impressive!
The second is this robust Harlequin in a faux Elizabethan, very Queen of Hearts inspired gown. This is just a fantastically regal re-work of a character that is often over-cosplayed.
Next we have some very creative suits! This Sgt Pepper (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) totally blew me away! These two had in fact made both suits from scratch. They were simply so well done, so detail heavy and totally popped in real life, such an exciting find!
For those enjoying Ben Stiller’s latest project “Severance”, we have a very creative and easter-egg heavy cosplay. The show is based around office workers who surgically separate themselves into a consciousness that attends their job and the one that lives outside of it. This gentleman’s headpiece perfectly replicates the aesthetics of the show’s claymation intro sequence and tactfully incorporates the few novelties the “working” characters are allowed in their sterile environment.
These last two where the most technically impressive I saw outside of those dawning a full transformer or foam armor suit. Considering those kinds of cosplay are typically not made by the individual wearing it anymore with the increase in ready-made fine cosplay houses, I chose to omit them. Both of these individuals reported making these cosplays from scratch.
The first, BMO from “Adventure Time”, may seem very simple at a glance. What made this cosplay so impressive was the fact that the head piece, made out of the shell from an old tube TV, actually emoted with the wearer. This person installed a new screen with a face tracking algorithm and feedback cam to have the little BMO face change with the individual speaking, smiling, squinting and so on. A true feat of coding, engineering and wearability!
The second, a full fursuit, was being worn by a very talented gentleman in his 60s. This fursuit is a very stylized though accurate crossover between typical furry aesthetics and the TaunTaun, a fictional equine creature from Star Wars. It is atypical to see a cross-over fursuit of any kind and this one is clearly one of this gentleman’s greatest prides as it was pristine in both construction and maintained appearance over the years.
Thus concludes this brief survey of 2025’s C2E2 lewks. The Sirius team looks forward to coming back to this show next year! Till then, we will see everyone in June for Heroes Con down in Charlotte, NC. Enjoy this final photo of me as a “cyber sex kitten” with the best Finn and Jake (“Adventure Time”) I’ve seen, hehe!
Photoshoot at Overlook Mountain House Ruins
In late October of last year, my good friend Nikola and I hiked Overlook Mountain Ruins to completion with a whole photoshoot kit on our backs. While we look rosy and daring, it was just below freezing during this shoot. Much of this was shot by a very talented friend we made that trip named Val who we had met at a concert the night before. A memorable day with some unforgettable photos. In all transparency, my seemingly innate ability to manage the set, makeup, transport, timing, costume, etc. made me reconsider my degree path to where I am now.
Nikola in a vintage white slip, lying in ash as the sun slips up past her.
Bell and Nikola excited by the stairs to nowhere.
Nikola enjoys a short, voyeuristic prayer under a Graffiti shrine to Christ.
Gone is her frock, Nikola, a very talented poet, cozies into a window while the spirit of inspiration hovers above in a handmade
