Brightness Shallan Davar
The Stormlight Archive

Inspiration: I was introduced to Brandon Sanderson through his work on The Wheel of Time series. Once I finished WoT I picked up Sanderson’s new book, The Way of Kings and really enjoyed his writing style and the world he built. I liked Shallan in this first book, but it wasn’t until I read the second book, Words of Radiance, that she really won me over and I decided I needed to cosplay her at JordanCon 2015.

Materials/Construction Details: I chose my materials for this costume based on descriptions from the book, which described her wearing blue silk with silver embroidery. Therefore, this costume is completely made out of silk and satin. The skirt portion of the dress is made up of three layers: two of blue silk and one of silver satin. The bottom layer has a crosshatch pattern I referenced from the art in the book. To make this I made several tubes of blue silk, flattened them, and then slip-stitched them together in the correct pattern with no visible stitching. This pattern is only on one panel of the bottom skirt. The next two layers were patterned so that only a sliver of the silver showed in the front. The top layer was embellished with silver embroidered lace along the edge. I hand painted Pattern (Shallan’s spren) on the top layer of the skirt, as he was often described to hide there in the folds of the fabric. I used a slightly darker blue paint so that he would not be super obvious. This detail is probably my favorite part of the costume.

The top portion of the dress was patterned by splicing two different patterns together, one for the main body (an Asian style dress) and one for the sleeves (Simplicity’s Game of Thrones pattern). I made the left sleeve longer than the right so it would completely cover the ‘safe hand’, and closed it up with pearlescent shell buttons. I added a silver cuff to each sleeve and hand embroidered a flower pattern in metallic embroidery floss. Each sleeve took about eight hours to embroider. I also embroidered the same pattern on the belt and collar. The embroidery on the belt includes the ‘lightweaver’ symbol from the series. The back of the belt has cascading pleated tails, alternating between blue and silver to add more detail to the back of the dress. The collar was completed with hand made bias tape in matching silver satin.

Under the dress I wore sensible military style boots, perfect for long walks on the Shattered Plains. Since eye color is very important in this world, I wore Princess Pinky Twilight Blue contacts so that I would have bright, light blue eyes, rather than my natural brown eyes. I love how bright these contacts are!

Wig: I purchased this wig for my Ygritte costume back in 2012. It’s a long lace front wig with a slight wave to it.

Props: I purchased a brown leather satchel, a sketchpad, an old fashioned ink pen, and a couple charcoal pencils. The series includes several sketches of Shallan’s, which I printed out on parchment paper and glued into the sketchpad.

Kaladin cosplay by Seth!