Alucard Costume Construction

Interested in making your own Alucard costume? Read on to see how I made mine!

Design & Components

As Alucard's costume exists only as drawings in the manga and anime, the prospective costumer might be intimidated about where to begin--but fortunately, most of the Hellsing characters (Alucard included) wear largely Victorian-inspired clothing.

Like many Victorian outfits, Alucard's costume is made up of many parts and layers that cover the whole body:

• A long, red frockcoat with caped shoulders
• A huge boater-style hat
• A long, grey, double-breasted vest
• Generic pants matching the vest
• A white shirt with a Victorian collar
• A long bow tie
• Gloves with attached sleeve cuffs
• Orange-tinted sunglasses & vampire eyes
• Boots

Alucard's Victorian Frockcoat

Alucard's distinctive red coat was at first a sticking point, for I couldn't find a contemporary coat pattern close enough to its style to modify, and although I knew it to be of Victorian-era cut, searches for "Victorian coat pattern" didn't turn up much of use.

However, I learned from another Alucard cosplayer's site that the garment is a frockcoat, which allowed me to narrow my search. I went with Wingeo's #324 1830s - 50s Frockcoat pattern--with modifications, of course, for the shoulder capes and its length.

View Coat Construction Details

Alucard's Vest

Alucard's vest is a fairly plain long double-breasted waistcoat--long enough to cover the pelvic area from shy Victorian eyes.

The vest is one of the costume pieces I feel most proud of as it's of a higher quality than many store-bought pieces of clothing, is nitpickingly accurate in scale, and was actually easy to make despite the extensive pattern modifications I had to make.

View Vest Construction Details

Alucard's Pants

There's not much to say about Alucard's pants; they're really just a pair of plain dark grey pants matching the vest in coloration.

That said, the pants were a pain to sew--chiefly because the pattern's directions were poor and I didn't transfer all the markings to the cut pieces like I should have.

View Pants Construction Details

Alucard's Hat

Alucard's distinctive hat is another signature part of his costume and a totally new undertaking for me. Technically speaking, the hat is a "boater" and is of the same hue as his frockcoat with lighter salmon-colored bands circling it.

I purchased a book on hat making and ordered the necessary supplies; overall, the hat wasn't too difficult to make and turned out rather well for a greenhorn attempt.

View Hat Construction Details

Gloves & Cuffs

Alucard's white gloves certainly conform to Victorian fashion--excepting the magic circle sigil upon each of them. Attached are a pair of French-style shirt sleeve cuffs at the wrists that are clearly distinct from his shirt.

Despite their apparent simplicity, the gloves were one of the last pieces of the costume to come together; I had problems finding suitable men's gloves and then getting Alucard's sigil onto them.

View Gloves Construction Details

Glasses & Contact Lenses

Alucard wears a pair of orange-tinted protective glasses (like those of steel workers or welders of the past) that have a shroud on each side. I had to find both the right frames and lenses and then carry out my own additional modifications. Though not "perfect" in the sense of being an exact replica of Alucard's glasses, the pair I used for my costume are rather good.

Note that Alucard also shares the distinctive blood-red eyes of the vampires of the Hellsing series; for those, I decided to splurge on Wild Eyes contact lenses.

View Glasses Construction Details

Guns

Alucard carries some massive firepower: a .454 Casull automatic and a 13 mm (about .50 caliber) hand-cannon firing explosive blessed mercury bullets. Although I didn't have time to fashion any guns in time for NekoCon 6, I have since purchased the pair of solid resin 1:1 scale models (although I think the Jackal is a more like a 1.5:1 scale). I will either simply include them in my costume, or perhaps use them as the basis for casting from-scratch models so that I can say I "made" them like the rest of my costume.