Bountiful blonde curls, iconic pouty pink lips, an elaborate multi-tiered gown and a golden crown are what make the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom so highly recognized in the world of video games. One UTD cosplayer unveils her take on Princess Peach for Comet Con attendees accepting the challenge of embodying this famous bubbly character.
Biology senior Alondra Torres-Tricoche, along with her friend Lauren Mangu who cosplayed as Princess Daisy, aims to win the cosplay competition this year as Princess Peach with a “magical girl” twist. For Tricoche, adding variations on character design can make cosplay fun; she was inspired to portray Peach more like the superpowered heroines from anime geared toward girls. Since Tricoche is an experienced cosplayer, she’s come up with tricks to make cosplaying easier for her — including a detailed routine that hits the most time consuming tasks first. Her decision to cosplay Princess Peach stems from her lifelong love of the fictional character and how she would always choose to play as her in multiplayer games like “Mario Kart.” The ability to effectively capture the fantastical nature of video games and anime is what makes cosplaying so important to Tricoche.
“I want people to see me and go, ‘That’s literally Princess Peach,’” Tricoche said.
The process of becoming Princess Peach is lengthy, taking several hours despite the character’s seemingly simple design. Tricoche first braids her hair so she can wear the wig cap — hair styling can be one of the most time-consuming parts of cosplay, an effort intensified by Tricoche’s textured hair. To achieve an effective and bright makeup look, Tricoche use a white eyeshadow base; she recommends the base from NYX cosmetics due to its long-lasting wear. This is especially important for ‘packing on’ eyeshadow: putting on enough to show over a dark skin tone.
“I’m dark-skinned,” Tricoche said. “If we want color on our eyes, we have to pack and pack [eyeshadow], and sometimes you pack so much that all you get is fallout, and then you get powder on your cheeks. So, this being a white base, I don’t have to put as much. And it’s still bright.”
Tricoche’s favorite part of the Princess Peach makeup look is her signature pouty lip. She uses three products to match this cartoony ideal: lip liner, lipstick and lip gloss. Tricoche said she thinks it is best to work through cosplay using one’s natural appearance; she mentioned a convention she once attended with several others cosplaying as Princess Peach and how each of them adapted the character in their own unique way. For example, Tricoche’s version of Peach uses a more rounded lip shape.
“At the end of the day, I also have to play into what my natural lip shape is,” Tricoche said.
Tricoche said that other aspects of cosplay makeup are inherently dramatic, a step above more common styles like a smoky eye or contour. This is to ensure that your face doesn’t get lost among intricate costumes and wigs. Tricoche said she draws inspiration from more dramatic makeup styles, like “2016 glam.”
“You remember the blocky brows, the dramatic stuff that we would do at seven in the morning,” Tricoche said. “That’s kind of what I base my cosplay makeup on. Because I think it’s so dramatic that it is so easy just to put it in.”
Tricoche stresses attention to detail in finishing the intricate outfit of the magical girl Princess Peach, going so far as to put on fruit-scented lotion to smell as peachy as Peach. Tricoche also deviates from a traditional Princess Peach cosplay by wearing curly-haired wigs. Though the cosplay community has a reputation for nitpicking about a cosplayer’s appearance, Tricoche said there are plenty of people who are accepting of changes to character design. While some people believe that people of other races shouldn’t cosplay white characters, Tricoche cites the problem of a lack of ethnic diversity in anime and video game characters.
“Why should I have to cosplay from limited options when I can cosplay who I like?” Tricoche said.
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