Eretria is a main character in The Shannara Chronicles, based on the character of the same name in The Elfstones of Shannara. She is a Rover and the adopted daughter of Cephalo, the leader of their caravan of Rovers.
Eretria Costume: By Laura Bielaczyc
When I was told I should make a costume from The Shannara Chronicles, my first thought was to be Eretria! Not only is she the one I look like the most in the series, I like the way her character develops. Most of Eretria’s costume pieces were things I thought I could just pull out of my closet from past costumes. The most difficult piece was her orange jacket of course.
This is an image of the finished product at DragonCon 2016. That is me in the middle with Michael Bielaczyc as Allanon to the left and Paul Bielaczyc as the Dagda Mor to the right.
I usually try to make most of my costumes from scratch, but unfortunately I didn’t have time to do that this year. So, what better place to find most of my costuming pieces than good ol’ Goodwill.
I go into Goodwill with the mindset of finding something similar that I can hack up and turn into exactly what I need.
This Jacket is a pretty close example of the one I found there, except mine had a zipper front, collar and ruffles! That was a lot to have to remove, this jacket below would have been much easier to work with.
I also purchased several belts for all of the detail work on Eretria’s jacket similar to these:
For the trim work on the edge of the jacket I used leather trim similar to this:
For the shoulder armor, I started with veg-tan leather scraps I had lying around. I dyed them black and decorated it with a lot of rivets and eyelets like these below. I saved a few spots on the leather to use the rivets to connect the leather armor to the jacket.
I couldn’t find big eyelets like the ones on Eretria’s jacket, so I popped the ones out of one of the belts I bought from Goodwill. I used those to make part of the sleeve detail shown in this picture:
Here is my version:
My version of Eretria’s jacket isn’t exactly like the one on The Shannara Chronicles, but I’m fine with that. Some of the details are a little different such as the buckles in the front. I did a mix of black and brown leather because she’s a rover and Eretria’s going to use whatever she can find or steal to make her clothing! The studded detail down the front was made using a wide belt from Goodwill that I cut in half longways. I used the leather belt that I ripped the eyelets out of to make a support for the buckles. The black pouch on the sleeve was made using scrap leather I had from another project. Here is my version of her jacket:
