Following the deep dive on some of the amazing costuming in the Tournament of Tease, here are more incredible collabs and amazing solo efforts from the Movers Shakers and Innovators showcase at the Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekender 2026.
Sophie Du Mal
The concept for my garden act was inspired by the talking rose, violet, and lily that Alice meets in Through the Looking Glass. My burlesque mother (Macabre Noir in Pittsburgh) co-produced an annual show with a different theme every year, and she trusted me to build this act for her derelict Victorian version of Alice in Wonderland. I wanted to look like an antique doll that fell into and got overtaken by an evil English garden.
I started with help from my ex-husband to make a lifecast of my face, then created the blinking puppets. Originally the petals were made from buckram and decoupaged botanical prints, but I recently replaced them all with EVA foam.
My garden wall set piece was made more portable by my artist friend and housemate Serena Yetter, and my friend Kisa von Teasa added some rhinestones to the under layers.
I was surprised at how heavy the headpiece became – I’d like to find a lighter weight material to replace the foam petals eventually, and make it more portable for travel.
I’m impatient about re-lacing the long center seam in my outer green skirt every time I rehearse, but it’s such a fun reveal. I want to keep refining and upgrading the costume and make it as travel friendly as possible. She’s a beast, but I love her.
Willy LaQueue
The concept is: an entertainer automaton is on the fritz and breaks so wildly his clothes fall off!
The outer spandex suit is by Coquetry Clothing, with a magic pull reveal expertly installed by Moxie Simone from Chicago.
The underlayer bodysuit is a completely custom tailored, transparent latex rubber catsuit with piping that makes me look like I’m segmented into doll parts. I made the concept and Rubber Relief (also from Chicago) brilliantly constructed it from scratch.
Wearing rubber on the BHoF stage was important to me, so I could show my admiration to both the rubber and burlesque communities at the same time. However, rubber clothes often require silicone lubricant to put on, which is banned from the BHoF stage. Garrett from Rubber Relief learned that applying chlorinated liquid to the rubber makes it no longer need lube, so he got the materials, made science happen, and voila! It’s BHoF stage-legal. That process also made the shiny rubber matte, so I looked more like I was made out of old porcelain. Win-win!
I asked Moxie to alter my costume mere weeks before BHoF. We decided on the magic pull reveal and she delivered me the finished product nine hours before my flight to Vegas. The first time I did the reveal in public was on the BHoF stage.
Queerly Femmetastic
This costume is a combination of aesthetics! A mixture of the original Evil Queen, Regina, the evil queen in the television show Once Upon a Time, and Betty Davis, the person who sings the song this act is performed to.
All of the costume pieces are originally from Haus of Bezos (Amazon) and thrift stores, with the exception of the shoes – which are Burju, and the poison apple, which I crocheted myself! I started working on this costume in 2018, and as I have got better at costuming, I’ve updated the pieces to fit the image in my head.
Making sure that everything can fold down to fit in a medium vacuum bag was my biggest challenge. For example, the original skirt was a massive tulle number, and the original cape was a lace and velvet piece with a long train. None of those were easy to pack into a small suitcase! It meant experimenting with lots of different materials over the years until I was happy with the silhouette, movement, and ease of reveals.
The final pieces came together from watching videos of Legends. I saw several who used appliques for pasties and who attached their panels to their panties instead of wearing a panel skirt. First, I found poison apple patches and made them into pasties with the help of many YouTube tutorials from cosplayers on how to use thermoplastic. Then I took the panel skirt I was already using, removed the panels from the belt, and played around with different snap placement until I got the coverage I needed.
I have to steam the satin interior of the cape and the panels of the skirt every time I wear it. They wrinkle so easily! Audience members have walked away with the poison apple a few times, so this is my third one. I’ve also lost weight since I worked on the panty for this costume, so the gusset is not quite in the right place. I’ve added a second rhinestoned panty which I layer to keep things legal on stage.
Kit Katastrophic
The base concept for the costume and act was – as I explained to my friends who helped make everything: Amanda Lepore and Marilyn Monroe have a surrealist baby. Essentially, I wanted to magnify the aesthetic of both and then extrapolate that into a kind of campy, glamorous cryptid. I also wanted to challenge myself with the mask: how can I, as a burlesque performer, connect with the audience if I can’t rely on nuanced facial expressions? My brain decided the answer to that was a giant, kinetic eyeball mask that blinks.
I reached out to a few people with the base design concepts for the mask, dress/overskirt and dropper bottles, and am fortunate enough to have people in my life who responded with ‘Fuck yes, tell me more.’ The mask was made by Derek Tall, who also constructed the base for RiRi’s pizza slice, and is the husband of performer Nina Nightshade. The dress and overskirt were made by Jocelyn Knobs, an incredibly talented drag artist and costumer based out of NYC. The dropper bottles were made by my friend Erin Canfield.
The most challenging aspect was getting the mask to work. Derek and I decided on a kinetic design to cut down on the potential for mechanical failure, with a jaw strap acting as the controlling mechanism for the blinking.
Any challenges working with the final costume were mostly around getting comfortable enough with the weight and feel of the mask, combined with working the jaw strap, that making the mask blink became second nature.
Betsy Bottom Dollar
I’ve always wanted to sing Ladies Who Lunch as a burlesque act, so I started thinking about what character would be a good fit for the song. When Malory Archer popped into my head I got excited about how I could make the whole thing look like a cartoon.
I made everything and hand-painted all the pieces to look two-dimensional. To comply with the ‘no liquids’ rule at BHoF, I swapped out my usual liquid-filled whiskey bottle for a flat 2D one, also painted by hand.
I had never painted a costume before, so after I finished the garment construction and got a proper fit, I was really nervous to start applying paint. I’m an artist, and my methodology when I make a mistake painting is to just paint over it. Clearly that wouldn’t work in this case, so I had to force myself to slow way down.
To make everything travel friendly for BHoF, I also made 2D chair and table covers. I made black covers with the intent to paint white lines dictating the illusion of furniture. But alas, all the paint I tested got quickly absorbed by the fabric, so I switched to sewing white fabric with a zigzag stitch for stretchability. This took so much longer, but was worth it in the end.
I love that this costume is ‘finished’ in the truest sense, because there is nothing more to add – no rhinestones, no extra layers of fringe, no additional feathers. However, my absolute favourite part of the costume is the part that no one actually sees. In the crotch of my merkin I painted a 2D vulva and anus, because it’s all about the details. My cartoon vajayjay cracks me up every time I wear it.
The makeup is now the most challenging part of this costume, because it’s quite time consuming. I tested tons of black eyeliners until I found ones that did not transfer easily. The good news is I also found a brilliant brand of makeup remover to get it all off. The bad news is I brought the nearly empty container of this brilliant makeup remover to BHoF instead of the full one!
Lux LaCroix
This number took a village! I was doing a lot of cons last year and needed new numbers. I’m not a ‘nerd’ – strictly Cosplay for pay, but I appreciate all the artistry and fans!
Topher Bousquet (my Nerd/Cosplay mentor) and I were walking around a con so I could get ideas. I saw a pink bubble with ears and said ‘What’s that?’ He told me it was Jigglypuff and she sings. I said, ‘Like Beyonce?’ And he said not really… But whatever – Beyonce, done. And so it began…
Penny Starr Jr made the costume. I sent her a picture of Jigglypuff and said I need a giant one of these to strip out of into a smaller one, and it all needs to fit in a suitcase. She went to town! She’s absolutely phenomenal and responsible for almost all of my costumes. She pretty much nailed it right away and we were off.
The fabulous Icon Lewis provided the ‘Miss Jiggly-s’ in my music – and we had a number!
Lady Drew Blood
The concept came from my love of avant-garde design; Alexander McQueen is an idol of mine. Iva Handfull, Seraphina Fiero and I joined forces to produce a NIN burlesque show called Pretty Haute Machine, and I have loved Reptile (the song I use) since it came out and knew immediately that song was my first choice. I couldn’t wait to create a number and costume for it.
I drew a design and took it to J Von Stratton to build the outer dress in around 2012. I built everything else and made updates to the dress over the years.
I initially wanted it to lace like a corset, but getting out of it and getting laced INTO it was impossible! So over time I created a system of lacing that allowed it to pull out easily, with help of a trusted off-stage human of course! A zipper was added to allow me to get in, but someone still needs to help adjust the lacing so it zips up. Once I’m in, it fits like a glove.
I recently added the lights in the hem and the light in my mouth, and there are A LOT of bells and whistles – jewelry, fabric bits on the skin, headdress, contacts – so it takes time to get into everything.
Over the years I have changed the choreo only slightly (for example, I turn the dress around and put it back on) but mainly its exactly as it was created over ten years ago. I’m really proud of it and truly love when someone says ‘How did you do that?! That was so cool!’ That’s the highest praise in my opinion.
When I added lights to the hem I wanted the light to glow against the floor – like ground effects under a car – then when I pick it up to spin, the lights show as dots. I had to build a channel and little pockets for each tiny battery pack in the hem.
See also:
Highlights and Photos: Movers Shakers and Innovators (Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend 2026)
Costume Study: Tournament of Tease (BHoF 2026)
Highlights and Photos: Tournament of Tease (Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend 2026)