Perhaps the most iconic characters of Spring 2022 are Loid, Yor, and Anya Forger – the fake family of dangerous misfits who can’t help but love each other! Loid has a variety of suits and casual outfits that you can put together from regular clothes (and adding his black spy gloves would be a nice touch); Yor’s red sweater outfit can be approximated by adding cutouts to two sweaters and layering them on top of one another; and pretty much any of Anya’s casual clothes can be topped off by making black cones out of craft foam and gluing them to a headband. Try adding accessories too, like a white dog plushie for Bond, or you could even bring in more people to cosplay as other characters like Yuri or Franky.

Magical girl/idol characters often have such complex costumes that there’s no way to recreate them without significant sewing experience, but luckily, these three Healers are essentially just wearing pastel choir robes! This would be a great first sewing project (follow a tutorial for a circle skirt or poncho, then add a collar and bow), but you could also use spare sheets or graduation robes to get a similar look. As for the two-toned wigs, you can either buy them outright or try your hand at wig dyeing using fabric dyes or markers.

This Vocaloid-inspired anime boasts plenty of detailed sci-fi character designs, but its main character Empress has a pretty simple look if you pare it down to its basics: a black bikini top, shorts, gloves, sneakers, and leg holster, plus a high collar you could cut out of an existing coat. You can add the white and orange accents with fabric paint, Heat n Bond, and/or bias tape, and it’s completely up to you whether or not you’d like to use body paint to match her ghostly pale skin tone... but if hundreds of Homestuck cosplayers in the 2010s have taught us anything, it’s probably not the best idea. If you do, just make sure the paint is sealed properly!

Everyone’s favorite pink-haired tough girl Shikimori and her timid boyfriend Izumi are easy to cosplay, since most of the time they wear simple school uniforms that can be assembled from existing formal clothes. The real challenge here is in the attitude! For photos, you can recreate memes like “Dude, chill. That’s your girlfriend,” practice your best kabedon, or have Shikimori protect Izumi from danger around the convention center. Or you could even team up with other cosplay couples for a “double date” photo!

Kongming’s ancient Chinese robes would be a tall order for any cosplayer to manifest into reality (not that that’s stopping you from just buying the costume online, of course), but his protégées Eiko and Kabe-Taijin wear more typical clothes that work well for closet cosplay. For Eiko’s color-blocked hoodie, add fabric paint to a plain pink hoodie or cut up and sew together three separate jackets in different colors. Kabe-Taijin’s shirt can also be decorated with fabric paint, or you could use vinyl cutouts from a Cricut machine. If you’re confident in your performance abilities, join a karaoke session or a cosplay lip-sync panel to really bring the characters to life!