Have you ever given something a brief once over and walked away because it doesn’t seem to interest you, only to learn later that it’s 100% up your alley?

I had seen the Her Universe Fashion Show talked about briefly a few years back, their products do appeal to the nerd in me but I never looked into it further. Until last year when a fashion content creator I follow mentioned she’d be judging the show that go around. Given the fashion she made…well, it suddenly became something I wanted to know more about. Turns out it is a contest! And not just any contest, but one that hosts “geek couture” from regular people!

Geek couture is not a costume. It’s meant to be inspired by something in pop culture that has the geeky or nerdy connotation applied to it. For example, it would be taking inspiration from Iron Man and turning it into an amazing evening gown in red and gold with other details of relative significance to the character. This would most likely be in terms of his very specific suit markings finding their way onto the gown. You are meant to look at it and understand it is an artistic rendering of a fan’s love. These details are put there by someone who loves the material and they’re meant to be spotted by others who also love the material. And in that moment, those parties can bond over the shared love of the fandom.

Now, to the people who don’t know me, this is my jam. I have a spreadsheet with well over a hundred designs of fashion looks that were inspired by various fandoms from cartoons, books, animes…you name it. I’m sure I have more, I just haven’t seen those sketchbooks and journals in many years and I consider them lost.

I remember talking about this when I was in college (getting my degree in fashion), a long time ago, as part of learning to forecast trends. Popular media often creates spin-offs in fashion, this is not new, and we are taught to look at the projects in development and set to release in a year or two. This is because of how long the manufacturing process takes, you want to time the release of your line with the release of the media to capitalize on it the best.

What is new though, or was becoming the new thing at that time, was geek culture becoming more mainstream. Iron Man was just out at the time and there was a huge surge in people wanting Iron Man merchandise. We talked about how things in the red and gold combo were selling faster than they could be stocked. I for one was very excited because I had always been a nerdier kid. It was a time when I was learning about cosplay, I was meeting other like-minded people who watched anime and went to conventions. I remember thinking to myself that I wanted to take the geek and high-end fashion and make them one thing.

“Geek” and “nerd” still had a very low value attached to them at the time. And my idea to move forward with eco-friendly/sustainable, plus-size costume lingerie inspired by these types of things earned me the response of confusion for the most part. People just didn’t make that much for geeks because it wasn’t believed to make that much money because no one (i.e. designers and manufacturers) thought there was a real demand for it. Even more so if you were making it for fat people. So, I put it on the backburner. I put a lot on the backburner, but that’s a different story…

Fast forward a decade and there’s a tweet from someone I admire, who’s out there making geek-inspired evening gowns every other day, about a contest for people to design fancy high-end fashion clothes inspired by geeky things…and I realized, it’s time. There is now a term for the thing I wanted to do, there are runway shows and contests and so much more inclusivity when it comes to both geek and plus size, and the ability to get fabrics that line up with my ideals (though I am a sucker for some pretty non-sustainable fabrics).

Anyways, I have submitted 3 looks to the contest this year and now, it’s time to start doing what I’ve been wanting to do for years. Let’s get to making some theatrical, dramatic, plus-size costume lingerie loungewear. Or as I always affectionately called it, loungerie. Geek effing loungerie.