Today we’d like to introduce you to Victoria Fisher.
Hi Victoria, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Hey! I’m Vicki and I’m a cosplayer! I started 12 years ago now. My sister was making herself a dress and she had extra green fabric. We had learned to follow patterns and work a sewing machine together. We had the idea to turn the scraps into an Anna dress from Frozen (it had come out about a year ago and we both loved it!). We made Anna for me and an Elsa dress for her to match! From scrap fabric, paints, and a trip to goodwill, my first cosplay was born! Ironically I’m the oldest, but we went by personality when choosing our characters.
The next year my college roommate told me about an event she thought we would enjoy together: Rose City Comicon. We were broke college students so we scrimped and saved to go just one day. The costume I had was that Anna. I saved a little extra for a wig and my roommate got an anime character. We figured out public transit and were off! I was instantly hooked! The children who gasped as they saw “the real Anna” and the young adults who happily shared their passions! The culture, the costumes, the unbridled nerdiness! This was going to stay with me for a lifetime!
I had a decade of honing my skills and making friends when I decided to revisit my first cosplay. I remade Anna’s coronation dress for my 10 year cosplay anniversary. I found an old video of me twirling while waiting for the Max at my first con and stitched my new video to it. It blew up. 35 million combined views across my social media platforms and still climbing. I had started doing a couple small podcast guest spots before this and gained a bit of confidence, but my momentum skyrocketed suddenly. I have been recognized out in the wild because of that one video and all the work I put in for a whole decade.
That was 2 years ago. I’ve now been a cosplay guest, have been on panels at cons here in the US and Canada, have worked with some brands, have been accepted to compete at my very first Comicon, Rose City, and I made it all the way to Disney’s D23 Mousequerade costume contest stage.
I put my heart and soul into each cosplay and I’m both so proud and flabbergasted to look at where I am today.
I try to use my platform to focus on issues in the cosplay community and beyond. If I’m going to be raised up, I want to take people who haven’t gotten the same opportunities to come with me. I frequently share other cosplayers, creatives, and artists on my page so they are visible for others to check out. I host small events that I like to keep free for my local cosplay community. I also host online cosplay opportunities where I ask people around the world to make a cosplay to fit a specific theme and we all share each other’s pictures to show off our work even when we are miles or oceans apart. I am trying really hard to be a plus sized, disability, and LGBTQIA+ advocate too as those are communities I am a part of. Every body is a cosplay body.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has most definitely not been a smooth road. There’s personal troubles I experience like the growing pains of learning new skills and not being instantly good at something. Sometimes a design aspect simply doesn’t work and I have to problem solve. I think every designer, artist, or crafter experiences these struggles and it’s all a part of learning and growing. You should see the seams on my early work!
I think a bigger problem has been the darker side of posting online. I’ve talked about the benefits and my success is quite visible, but you don’t see that I get a hate comment nearly every day. Most come from the fact that I’m living in a plus sized body. It can be frustrating to put now twelve years into your craft and have people only see your body size. I decided that I don’t want to be like the people who comment these obscene things to me at all. So if I’m going to be the opposite of these trolls I will be determined to love myself fiercely. Somewhere along the way I started to believe it too. I do love myself fiercely. I want to encourage others to as well.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I cosplay. That means putting on a costume (cos) and having fun (play). It’s like having Halloween any day of the year. I also make most of my costumes.
Side note because there are sometimes gatekeepers in the community: you are a valid cosplayer whether you make or buy your costume, whether you wear a wig or not, whether you just pull out your costume from pieces you already have in your closet (closet cosplay), genderbend, crossplay, mashups, furries, etc. Don’t let anyone tell you that you aren’t valid.
I am a cosmaker. I have the most skills in sewing because I have had the most experience with it. I’ve also learned wig styling, foam smithing, crochet, digital art, painting, and prop making. There’s so many subsets of skills! Even within sewing! I know: corsetry, hand embroidery, pattern making, draping, fabric manipulation, digitizing and machine embroidery and a lot more that I can’t remember right now. I love acquiring new skills and trying them out, seeing what can combine together to make something new.
There are a few things I’m really proud of. My Coronation Anna ten year anniversary dress is one of them. It made it on the stage at D23 (Disney’s convention) and I got to high five Nina West in it! While thanking Jodi Benson for being there to hand out awards, she grasped my arms and thanked me too! I’ll never forget those moments and twirling on stage!
I’m also proud of my Rapunzel cosplay. It took about 6 iterations to get her looking exactly where I wanted her. She is my favorite princess and feels so much like me that I had to get it right. I learned to follow my heart in the design and now I have something I love wearing.
I think there’s a few things that set me apart from others. I love to see characters in a different light. Copying a character’s outfit exactly is a skill. It’s something I have tried and it’s not for me but I applaud those who prefer making screen accurate looks because that is hard! I like seeing a character and adding more. My Anna has gold accents on her gown that aren’t featured in the film. I like to make everything sparkle with glitter, sequins and rhinestones. The skirts I make are always more full so I can twirl better. I spent so much of my life trying not to be seen that cosplaying my way has healed some of that childhood trauma. I’m here, I’m unashamedly me! This is what I mean when I say I put myself into my art. Sometimes I cosplay characters because someone said I could not. Sometimes I use a technique (or a bald cap) because someone said I couldn’t. I can. I’m more than ordinary. I matter. I think my vulnerability about my story shines through my art and my social media channels and that’s what makes me stand out.
What matters most to you? Why?
When I am hosting a cosplay group and someone in the group chat says they can no longer participate, I always say that is more important. The new job, new baby, chronic illness flare, sickness, finances; these are all good reasons to not do the cosplay. I know that sounds like a weird answer to this question, “life matters more than the art.” But if you’re stressing yourself out so much that you can’t enjoy this hobby, why are you doing it? I used to cosplay characters I didn’t care about because the group needed the character. My heart wasn’t in the projects, and the finished pieces were far from my best work. When I’m passionate about something I will produce the most amazing things you’ve ever seen. I can’t do that if I’m in a chronic flare up. I can’t do it if life is literally telling me to focus on something else. The art can wait, my kids cannot. And when I am back in my sewing loft, full of energy or emotions I want to express in fabric, then I can do my best work. I have to hold all aspects of life and pay attention to what the universe says the now needs. I can’t settle for what other people think I should be or how I should allocate my time. Between my disabilities, my family, and my passions, I choose. And I choose me.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vicksipixiecosplay?igsi=MXQ5Z2p0Zm9odTV1OA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1EZGRLMDDK/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@vicksipixiecosplay?si=jvM6L_mUhpx8WaeS
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@vicksipixiecosplay?_r=1&_t=ZT-99SegzEg3Is
