Item: Charlotte & Co Cashmere Dressing Gown & un-IDed Nightgown.
Appearance: Last Christmas
Combined with: Topshop Faux Fur-Trimmed Parka, UGG Scuffette II Espresso Slippers
Original Retail Price SA Gown: £300
Original Retail Price ALT Gown: £15-£30
Let’s review a fun alt set I put together for Clara’s Last Christmas outfit. I was not going to spend £300 on a nightgown I would never wear and since the robe has never been IDed, I decided to go fully alt with this one.
SA vs. ALT
First of all, the SA robe is still available here if you have £300 to spare (or was at the time I originally wrote this blog post). Sometimes, it really amazes me that everyone keeps saying how the BBC has no budget but can spend £300 on a dressing robe that is featured in only one episode. Well, I don’t have a £300 budget for cashmere dressing robes, so I went on Vinted and found one for £5. I really had my pick among dozens of cheap, blue, long bath and dressing robes and if you go on eBay or Vinted, I’m positive that you will find a very affordable alternative that might not be made from cashmere but will do very well for your Last Christmas cosplay outfit. This isn’t really an outfit you would wear to a convention, but it’s fun for cosplay photos and some scenes can easily be recreated in your own home. This is the primary reason I decided to put together this outfit.
The un-IDed nightgown was more of a challenge. There is a broad selection of vintage nightgowns available on the internet, but I wanted one with long sleeves and a pattern that was a least close to the SA one. The ones I found online were surprisingly expensive. Well, not expensive in that sense, but £20 was a little more than I was willing to spend on an item that was basically just meant for fun. But we do have a little shop in the next village that is run by this lovely woman who moved to Germany from the Fiji islands and I had been there before to buy a nightgown for my grandma while she was in the hospital. I went back there and I indeed found a nightgown that looked suitable for my Last Christmas cosplay. They only had large sizes of old-fashioned nightgowns, but Clara’s isn’t exactly figure-hugging, so I didn’t mind. I ended up paying £5 for it.
A Cheap and Easy Cosplay
So here is my fun Last Christmas cosplay consisting of the cheapest alts I could find for no more than £10. Definitely worth the joke, in my opinion. I’m also slightly tempted to wear it to a con one day just for the fun of it XD
I’ve also been looking into her slippers, but UGG is an expensive brand and £30 – £60 is a bit more than I’m willing to spend on a cosplay that is basically just a joke. However, after I put together my alt set, at least one cosplayer followed the trend and she posted some amazing comparison photos with her own grandmother last Christmas. I loved that idea.
