[Today’s donation was made to National Black Justice Coalition. Click here to see my Pride & Joy Project 2020 Daily Donations List.]
In spite of everything, and by everything I meant the clusterfuck that was the 2016 US presidential election, I found joy and comfort in small(er) things that happened in 2017, like the first Wonder Woman movie that I saw five times at the theater.
I also went to my first Halloween costume party in 2017. It was at The Federal in North Hollywood. I know, I’m so fresh-off-the-boat. For my first Halloween costume, I decided to merge three figures (fictional and real) who have been the most influential for me that year.
The first one is Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess) from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt season 3. This is when he dresses up as Beyoncé in her “Lemonade” video. Titus is probably the best gay character on TV I’ve seen so far. He’s up there with Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz) and Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) from Star Trek: Discovery. I’m a proponent of hiring gay people to play gay characters and trans people to play trans characters, so the casting of these three are *chef’s kiss*.
In the actual Lemonade video, the gown Beyoncé wears is by Peter Dundas from Roberto Cavalli’s Fall/Winter 2016 collection. The version Titus wears, according to Tina Nigro (the show’s costume designer), “is meant to imitate that same found-object, cobbled-together look.”
I used three skirts for the yellow pleated accent and ribbons. I scoured far and wide for the shirt that’s under all that, and I finally found the perfect top on eBay. It was a women’s M shirt by Charlotte Russe. I wore my vintage Juliana brooch to emulate the hook button.
The second character is, of course, Wonder Woman. I wore the boots (surprisingly comfortable to dance in) and made the gauntlets using thin black foam sheets covered with silver contact paper and gold paper trims. I got the tiara and the armlet at the kid’s section in Toys ‘r’ Us.
The last character, and not pictured here because I don’t want to go through what she went through, was Kathy Griffin. I took a Trump mask, splattered red paint on it, cut a hole on the head, sew the neck shut, and used it to cover my purse.
What Kathy Griffin suffered through was an absolute mess and hard evidence that Trump and his cronies abused their powers.
It took me more than fifty tries to get the pose correct so I could show off the ribbons and the way the skirt flies when I spin. When I saw the result and how it matched the photo from Pride & Joy Day 26: The Spin, I know it’s kismet. I feel like Diana when she spins and spins and spins to transform into Wonder Woman.
Photography by Yuska Lutfi Tuanakotta.