Costume designer Ireland Reid said that she stumbled into an
opportunity that changed her life. After 15 years of designing outfits for
fitness competitors, she came across a chance to create and wear her own
costume at a comic con event. “Everything just kind of fell in place from
then,” Reid told me while at Salt Lake Comic Con FanXperience 2015 in January.
Now a popular cosplayer, model and geek girl extraordinaire, she travels the
world, appearing at comic and pop culture conventions as a featured guest.
“I get to travel all over […] the world, basically, showing
and creating and designing costumes based upon cosplay characters that I’ve
actually grown up with and learned to love and appreciate,” Reid said. “It’s
pretty exciting.” Some of Reid’s most popular and well-recognized costumes
include Batman nemesis Poison Ivy, Star-Lord of Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men’s
Emma Frost, Jessica Rabbit and outfits inspired by the popular Harry Potter and Assassin’s Creed franchises. When I asked her how many cosplay
outfits she had, in total, she responded that she had “completely lost track,”
but has a room full of mannequins with costumes on them.
Reid loves creating Pokémon-themed
costumes, as well. Aside from her iconic Pikachu and Pichu costumes, she has
several other stylish outfits, including a jewel-encrested Shiny Eevee outfit,
which she debuted in Salt Lake City.
“This is a never-before-seen costume,” Reid said, describing
her Shiny Eevee. “It’s actually been done for three months, so I was pretty
excited to get it out and [have it] see the light of day.”
While she was thrilled to debut her new costume, there was
one thing that Reid was not excited about – the cold Utah weather. It was the
California native’s second trip to the Beehive State, but she had never
experienced wintertime in Utah. “I’m from Southern California,” she said. “It
was around 80 degrees when I left, so this is a change.” (Full disclosure: 40
degrees feels like summer in January for Salt Lake City residents, so if she
was trying to avoid snow and really
cold weather, she picked the right January to visit.) She did have some nice
very things compliments about Utah, however, saying, “I absolutely love this
city. I think it’s absolutely beautiful. Everyone is super friendly and nice. I
love it.”
Reid maintains an incredibly busy schedule, cramming in all
of her modeling, prop making, costume designing, acting and a slew of other
social media shenanigans. While she maintains a cool, professional demeanor
when appearing at conventions, Reid’s bubbly, ultra-nerdy personality is
perhaps most best showcased on
her YouTube channel, where she uploads videos when her limited availability
permits. Reid explained that her videos cover a wide variety of topics. “I do
unveils for [subscription services] Nerd Block, Loot Crate [and] Arcade Block,”
she said. “I also do … a lot of skits – kind of funny or humorous – and then a
lot of behind the scenes of how I make some of my cosplays.”
Ireland Reid’s official social media accounts include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram, and her prints and a more detailed biography can be found on her official
website, Store
Envy and NerdGlam.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment