Take it from a master of disguise: Costumes don’t have to be creepy to wow people.
A Florida-based artist and cosplayer who goes by Alyson Tabbitha has amassed 1.1 million Instagram followers and nearly 400,000 YouTube subscribers, for her dazzling transformations into characters like Captain Jack Sparrow, Wonder Woman and Lydia Deetz from “Beetlejuice.” ”
Her costumes seem so real that she is often accused of faking it.
But she maintains that it is a self-taught “one woman show”.
“I don’t put filters on my photos,” Tabbitha told The Post. “When I started this a few years ago, and my photos went viral, people were like, ‘Oh, it’s just Photoshop.’ I’ve had people say that I have a team of stylists. It’s very flattering.
Those in doubt can go to Tabbitha’s YouTube channel, which features elaborate step-by-step tutorials.
“I wear them in public, so the makeup and costume have to be convincing. They have to move and translate well in real life,” said Tabbitha, who declined to give his age.
She is now a popular attraction at cosplay conventions and has garnered social media sponsorships from companies like Disney, Netflix, Lionsgate and HBO Max. She has even received offers from Hollywood makeup artists to shadow them on set.
But surprisingly, Tabbitha, who does everything from putting on makeup, sewing her own costumes, building sets, and modeling the outfits, fell into the “hobby” by accident.
Captain Jack Sparrow
As a child, she was homeschooled and her parents fostered her love of art. Her first cosplay models were her Barbie dolls. She “she would cut their hair and paint their faces. I started making Joker dolls and selling them on eBay and making money when she was 14 years old.”
As a pre-teen, Tabbitha, whose mother taught her how to sew, was Captain Jack Sparrow for Halloween. “My mom said, ‘Hmm, a grown man, that’s an interesting option.’ That was the first costume I really worked hard on.”
The “Pirates of the Caribbean” fan continued to take on greater challenges with her costumes, posting a photo of herself as the silver-screen swashbuckler on Facebook in 2014. Someone later shared it on Tumblr. “It went viral and people started asking me if she had a cosplay page. I was like, what is a cosplay page? I was always hard on Halloween, but I didn’t know anything about cosplay itself. I fell into it.
Captain America
As an artist who can draw, sew, and sculpt, she enjoys cosplay as a unique multifaceted art form. Her tools of the trade are simple: craft foam, popsicle sticks, a glue gun, drugstore makeup, and lots of imagination.
“I like to cosplay on a budget and show people how they can do it in affordable ways,” Tabbitha said of her community, where people spend thousands of dollars to dress up. “I use ELF eyeshadow to outline my face in a beige brown. I think I use that more than anything. It costs $2.”
But now, when it comes to Halloween, Tabbitha likes to be minimalist. “I’m probably going to be a generic vampire. I cosplay all year long, so for Halloween I like to go back to basics.”
For trick-or-treaters looking to make a Tabbitha-level splash, here’s how she achieves her most elaborate and enchanting looks.
Wonder Woman
Johnny Depp’s movies are an endless well of inspiration for Tabbitha. “He’s one of my favorite actors and a good example of someone who really transforms into characters,” he said, adding that he has looks for the Mad Hatter and Sweeney Todd set to film.
To transform into Captain Jack Sparrow, he relied on a few basic tools (his glue gun, a wig, craft paint) and an odd one: a pile of his own hair clippings.
“I was a weird kid. I cut my hair myself and sometimes put it away. I also used some synthetic hair. As disgusting as it sounds, my real hair in my Jack Sparrow wig.” To make her matted mane, she wrapped the real and fake locks in her hands with some glue, painted them, and attached them to a wig that she had previously thinned. She dyed a white shirt with puff sleeves with brown gouache craft paint to make it look worn and dirty. She then added accessories, including a vest, leather belt and hair beads, and heavily contoured her face to mimic Depp’s chiseled bone structure.
Lydia Deetz from ‘Beetlejuice’‘
Tabbitha completed the look with her version of Depp’s intense gaze. “Expression is just as important to sell the character. It’s 10 to 20 percent of the look, and the rest is makeup.”
Winona [Ryder] She is one of the actresses I naturally resemble the most. I also understand Natalie Portman very much,” she said.
Tabbitha called “Beetlejuice” a classic, but admits that she loves Ryder more than the movie. To create the look, she wore the red lace dress from the Halloween Costumes site and rummaged through the stash of wigs she’s been amassing since he was younger. “Before cosplaying, she would collect wigs and buy them on sale after Halloween. This one was $10.”
She teased the black headdress into a “messy pineapple” and used makeup to accentuate her own bone structure and give her the dark red circles under her eyes. But she credits the bouffant bargain. “I think a well-groomed wig is more accurate than makeup.”
Gal Gadot’s version of Wonder Woman comes with easy hair and makeup, but her corseted appearance is another story. This superhero armor was very labor intensive and took Tabbitha two whole weeks to build.
Mystique from ‘X-Men‘
The bodice and armbands were made from TreeFLX, which is a moldable thermoplastic. “It comes in sheets. You heat it up with a heat gun and you can form the material,” said Tabbitha, who molded a dress form and then fitted it to her body. “I built the details, cut out craft foam, glued them onto the base, and then painted them,” she said.
Tabbitha’s sartorial sex change came courtesy of a professionally made, stuffed costume, a stylized wig, and makeup. “Sometimes a company sends me a costume, so I thought it would be fun to switch it up,” she said.
The rest of the process consisted of hiding her feminine facial features. “When I dress as a man, I don’t need to wear a lot of makeup. It’s mainly about erasing my features and then contouring my face to make them look stronger. I also used false eyebrows,” she said.
And Tabbitha admits that he is a very handsome man.
“I don’t have a boyfriend right now and sometimes I look in the mirror and say, ‘Why can’t I find a man like the one in the mirror?'” she laughed.
Tabbitha admits that the shape-shifting blue femme fatale, who has been played by Jennifer Lawrence and Rebecca Romijn, is “probably one of my most dramatic looks.” She started out with a simple blue jumpsuit, but gave it some internal architecture by gluing a chest shelf into the fabric. She then covered her face with blue makeup from Mehron: a cosmetics company used by special effects artists.
Harley Quinn from ‘Suicide Squad‘
She then applied layers of face paint to give it some texture. “For the scales, I use a blue mesh or lace net and put puffy t-shirt paint on the net. I let it dry and put it right on my face.”
For the finishing touches, he inserted yellow contact lenses into his eyes. Lucky for her, he doesn’t have sensitive eyes. “I can rub my eyes. It is no problem.”
“I sewed it completely from scratch,” Tabbitha said of the red bodice dress, adding that she normally shops at JoAnn’s fabric and craft store, looking for deals and using coupons. She said the entire look, which was based on Margot Robbie’s portrayal of the Joker’s former deranged flame, only took three days to complete. “I like to work fast.”
The artist also hand-drawn Quinn’s tattoos with eyeliner. He wore a blonde lace front wig, cut it short in the back, and then used a hot glue gun to secure the red and black strips. For the final dramatic image, he worked with photographer David Love. “Sometimes I build a set myself or find a location. Or sometimes I work with David, who is a composite artist. He will superimpose me into an element.”