ELI NGUYEN

nguyen.eli@outlook.com ⨳ 571-284-8066
Resume Costume Design Set Design Hair and Makeup Independent Work Visual Art

Rocky Horror Picture Show

University Mall Theaters

Both the bustier and the shorts were made for one of my fellow cast members. I intend to revisit both of these projects soon as I start learning to play Columbia myself.

completed bustier
sequin panel being sewn pattern pieces laid out
columbia timewarp fall columbia right before hot patootie
Columbia's corset is notoriously difficult to replicate because the pattern of colored sequins is very difficult to discern, and even harder to sew thousands of them onto a bustier. I wasn't going to let that stop me. I ordered single-strand sequin trim in gold, red, green, and blue, then cut them into ~1" sections and hand sewed them to a pattern I had traced onto muslin. Once I'd finished the panels, I sewed them to a base bustier that I bought premade. The original is sequined all the way around, but to save myself a little bit of grief I only sequined about 80% of the bustier, leaving the back lacing unaltered.

On January 2nd, 2026 I got incredibly, incredibly lucky

Close up pictures of the original bustier have been accessible for decades, and many have tried to have pieces replicated and to find sequined fabric that achieves a similar effect. Something that perplexed me for a long time was the half-tone sequins visible where one color changes to another. I understood this to be a manufacturing artifact from a different era, as no contemporary sequined garments I have been able to find have this detail. This small 'tell' is how I knew I had found my personal Holy Grail
finding the trim
sample made with original trim
The original bustier, photo credit: Sarah Kucera columbia original bustier
I found it. Completely by chance, while at a fabric store for another project entirely, I found it. Two steps into Vien Dong fabrics in Falls Church VA, tucked in a stack of lace trims, there it was. I'd found the Holy Grail. I'd won the lottery. I'd found the solution to a decades old quandry.
I am 99% certain that it is an exact match for the original, and even more mind blowing, there was about 20 yards of it left on the roll. Needless to say, I immediately bought the entire thing. It's exactly the right colors, in exactly the right order, with the same half-tone sequins as the original, that I haven't seen on anything made within the past 20 years. God bless my friends for tolerating my incessant rambling during the weeks after this. For the amount of time I spent tracking down reference images, the ~100 hours of staring at the sequins as I sewed them on, one by one, to have the exact trim drop into my lap through sheer luck seemed to good to be true.

I made a sample with the trim, slightly diluting it with continuous strands of gold sequins between each line of the trim. I want to preserve as much of it as I can, and I think it still gives the right effect. I plan on making another bustier with the actual trim/dilution method, and hopefully, I should have enough after that to make another. It makes me extremely happy to be able to fill a gap in shadowcast costuming that people have been attempting to fill for quite literally decades.
Columbia's shorts
compilation of columbia's shorts references
The same Columbia who commissioned the original corset asked me to recreate Columbia's shorts a year later. This was, perhaps counterintuitively, more intimidating than making Columbia's bustier. Having gained significantly more confidence in my own sewing abilities after working in the costume shop for a year, I agreed to take on the challenge. This post from the blog Columbia's Closet was incredibly helpful, and also what I believe the actual method used to create the two-tone effect of the stripes on the original.
It was difficult to determine the exact layout and proportion of the stripes, and after carefully scrubbing through the movie, and cross referencing them with the work of others, I was able to determine that there isn't a specific pattern to the stripes at all.

What I wouldn't give to ask Sue Blane about this costume.

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  • Email: nguyen.eli@outlook.com