I am back with another Cubao outfit, replicated from one of Gong Jun’s Paris Fashion Week looks.
This is the Julien Fournie haute couture outfit GJ wore to walk the L’Oreal Defile show on October 2, 2023.
Naturally, we started with the inner pieces first - pants and shirt.
The pants (the easiest part of any bao outfit) is made in a black stretch sateen (my absolutely favorite fabric to work with). The shirt is a black poly satin thing…I don’t really know what it is, just something I picked up because it was the right sheen. A bit slippery to work with but looks nice overall.
These two pieces will be used multiple times in other outfits so I suspect they will get pretty good use.
The most laborious part was the jacket. The pattern I used is the same as for the shirt but sized up a bit. To get it to fit better, I quickly sewed in some darts in the fronts and back. They don’t look great or are evenly placed, but they get covered up by the beading and collar. But the sewing was the easy part.
And then came the beading.
One sleeve of beading took about an hour.
After about 3 hours of work I had two sleeves and half a collar.
A break for lunch and then the final press. Beading too out 6-7 hours total with breaks in between (I had Legend of Anle playing in the background as a rewatch and I went through 9 episodes).
I am pretty happy with the end result for something I swore I would never make but then had a sudden burst of inspiration. I think it paid off because Julien Fournie himself commented and reposted to his IG stories. 🫣
And I’m not done with the Paris Fashion Week outfits because I have one more in the works. Please look forward to it.
A lot of you may have seen the progress of Cubao’s suit on twitter, but I thought I would take a moment to note down my thoughts while progressing through the suit construction. So here’s a general summary of what I did, why I did it, and what I was thinking while making this tiny suit.
It all started, of course, after seeing Gong Jun walk the red carpet in that gorgeous Jason Wu creation. I was able to watch his walk live between work things; the whole thing only lasted maybe 2 minutes but it was the highlight of my day/week/month.
I was fixated on this suit for days afterwards, but it wasn’t until close to the end of May (probably a good 10 days later) that I decided to try and replicate this suit. It was partially motivated by the fact that my Cubao is the 15 cm version (the more common version is 20 cm) and it’s always so difficult to find doll clothes for that size (though it saves the wallet). Seeing as I have 13 years of cosplay experience, I was like “I’m used to frankensteining patterns to fit me, why not try in small scale? Less fabric, less stitching, how hard can it be?”
I was about to find out.
Having never made doll clothes before, I started by using stockpiled fabric to make mock ups while sourcing out fabric and other notions. First thing on my to-do list was pants. I had a pair of doll pants that were too small and short in the waist for Cubao’s rotund bum, so I deconstructed the pants and used it as a template for a mock up. I added about an inch to the top and about 1/4 of an inch to the bottom hem; after putting them on Cubao, I started pinning to the right height and length in order to determine where the hems and waist should be and the seam amounts. Last step was to add elastic and finish the seams.
This is the mock up in progress (left) and completed (right). It was a pretty simple process and moved pretty easily. Once I found fabric I liked (after purchased 4 other types that didn’t match the color - good thing about doll clothes is you don’t need a lot), I constructed the suit pants. I lined the suit pants since they were a bit translucent, and the extra fabric made them as little more snug than I anticipated, but it still turned out fine. The leg hems were finished by hand because I wanted and almost invisible stitching, and I always finish suit pants by hand. The pants fit well enough that I made two pairs of doll pants out of chambray fabric for my dolls to romp around in with other outfits.
Next was the shirt, and that was a process.
I started off with a pattern I found on Pinterest but original came from Xiaohongshu (I think, I can’t really make out the watermark). There were no measurements on the pattern so I had to undergo some trial and error sizing the pattern up on my printer. The sleeves seemed odd to me, so I initially reworked them to be raglan type sleeves thinking they would work better with Cubao’s mostly straight arms. Mock up #1 ended up fitting very poorly with the collar too low.
I sized up the pattern a smidgen, reprinted, and went back to the original sleeves. For mock up #2, I attempted to change the collar to mimic a more traditional shirt collar, which has two pieces - one neck piece and the actual collar. That turned out to be too much fabric for a little bao.
In the end, with mock up #3, I went back to the original shirt pattern and only omitting the extra fabric piece for the front closure, folding over instead. The collar opening ends up being a little wide, but not as much as my first attempt so I can live with the little gap.
Mock up #1 at the top, #2 on the left, and #3 on the right.
Overall the shirts were relatively easy, except for the sleeves. Sleeves have always been the bane of my cosplay/sewing existence; sewing sleeves on small scale was more difficult than I imagined given the tinier space to work with.
I actually made two suit shirts, one of a textured material and one of the same, slightly stretchy material used in mock ups #2 and #3. The textured material is more appropriate for shirts, but there was no stretch so getting it on Cubao was challenging.
Next came a little bowtie. I don’t have a lot to say about this process as it was pretty simple: sew two rectangles then attach them to an elastic band. Initially I wanted to mimic the double layer of Gong Jun’s bowtie, but that’s too much fabric for a tiny bao.
Last up but the most important part was the jacket. I started with the same shirt pattern but sized up again to ensure there was room to get both bao arms and sleeves in, also to accommodate the lack of stretch in the final fabric. The first mock up had no changes as it was done to see the fit and determine how the collar would be cut. After making the necessary trims, mock up #1 was deconstructed and the pieces were used as a templates to cut out mock up #2. In working with mock up #2, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to do a set in collar as I had hoped. The jacket collar is an important element to the suit so I didn’t want to not incorporate it. In the end, I decided to do stitching to mimic the lines of the collar.
Mock up #1 on the left with the front pinned down, and mock up #2 on the right with the collar stitch placement outlined in red.
Once the jacket was mostly sewn together, I laid it out on some pattern paper and traced around to get the general outline. I then used this outline to design the beading. There was little chance I would be able to replicate the beading exactly without seeing the suit in person, so I tried to incorporate some of the details that caught my eye (notably the swirl like patterns). Initially I had planned to do the beading on mesh fabric, cut it out, then sew it to the suit like actual bead work is done. After my initial attempts, I learned two things: that takes FOREVER on small scale, and the mesh fabric is very noticeable on a suit that small. My sketch was also way more detailed than feasibly possible on doll clothing. I ended up having to simplify the design and sew directly onto the suit jacket.
Initial sketch work on top, and beading process below. I tried to keep a loose tension during the beading so as not to cause any puckering of the jacket.
Miyuki Delica size 15/0 beads were used. Silver beads were the main design element with AB crystal beads as accents. The AB crystals came in two sizes; the larger ones were mostly used to give the design a little bit of dimension. Pearl colored beads were later used for the dangles. 15/0 are tiny beads to work with; most of the silver and AB beads were able to be threaded through a thin sewing needle, but the pearl beads required me to switch between sewing and beading needles to get them strung and sewn. For the dangles, I attempted to follow a similar pattern to the original, looping and hanging in the same places.
After the beading, the arms were sewn up and the sleeve hems, bottom hems, and inner collar were hand stitched down. Initially I had planned to line the jacket to make it a proper jacket. However, after constructing everything I found adding the lining increased the bulk and would make it impossible to get Cubao’s arms + shirt sleeves in.
Last was to add the hand made pipa knot closure in the front and the button knots on the sleeves. Both of these were made with 2.0 mm nylon macrame knotting cord and surprisingly very easy once you get the hang of it. The final touch was the brown shoes; these were purchased off Taobao using Superbuy as a proxy, and they arrived just yesterday, the day after I finished everything.
Overall, I am very pleased with the look. Construction was spaced out because of work and a bit of anxiety on my part. Concessions had to be made since bao clothing is on a much smaller scale. Naturally there was bits and pieces I’m not super pleased with, but overall I’m quite happy with the results. It was a feat, to say the least, replicating such an intricate design for a 15 cm doll. I’m glad I did it, but I’m also glad I don’t do this for a living. 😅
Hope you enjoyed this little insight into the process. If you have any questions, just pop in an ask and I’ll be happy to answer them. 😊
Cubao emulating Gong Jun and wearing his latest bao couture.
15 cm Xiao Cubao in his version of the Elie Saab couture cape from Paris Fashion Week.
This outfit was much more involved than the previous two. It involved a lot of materials and new construction styles.
Materials used included:
-Caviar stretch sateen
-Black casa satin
-Black polyester lining
-Black stretch shirting
-DMC Diamant embroidery thread in light silver
-DMC embroidery floss in black
-3mm flat black sequins
-Miyuki Delica 11/0 in transparent light blue AB
Approximately 42 hours construction time divided into:
-2 hours for the base layers (shirt and pants)
-2-3 hours cape pattern which included figuring out the shape, embellishment design, mock up, and fit
-33 hours hand embroidery, sequins, and beading
-4 hours final sewing
The original ES outfit includes an inner jacket. The bao version includes two faux front panels hand whip stitched to mimic a jacket.
I promises a couple of people their own versions of custom bao suits, but after this I need a break. I suspect, knowing me, it won’t be long because I have a few other outfits I want to replicate.
Cubao’s latest suit is here, just in time to celebrate Gong Jun’s 31st birthday!
The newest suit is inspired by latest collaboration between Jason Wu and Shu embroidery master Kang Ning. Gong Jun wore this suit to the recent Vogue Forces of Fashion event, where all three of them participated in a panel together.
The latest bao suit is fit for 20 cm Cubao, as opposed to the 15 cm Xiao Cubao I normally make for. Because I previously worked with a smaller size, the first step was to size up the patterns. I used the base pants and shirt pattern resized to 117% scale then made mock ups (I got lucky on the size selection and didn’t have to do too much trial and error). Then I sized up the previous pattern used for the Cannes suit (thank you, Jason, for using similar styles) and made another mock up to check the fit.
White sateen serves as the base fabric. This version of sateen is slightly thinner than the one used for the Elie Saab cape and what I am used to, but it was what I had on hand. After the pattern pieces were marked out, I used red pencil lead to trace out the patterns. Kang Ning said she used 10 different colors of silk thread to create the original embroidery; due to my limited real estate and short time frame, I used two colors of cotton embroidery floss. The stitches are mostly short stitches and rather haphazardly placed; the goal was to give a fur like appearance as everyone initially thought the pattern was fur so I wanted to try and replicate that (I hope I did).
Overall embroidery took about 12-14 hours over two days.
Details also include a signature embroidery on the back. I am not sure if this is both Kang Ning’s and Jason’s signature, or just one of them. It is a little detail, but one I really liked and did not want to leave out. The bao version is 1 inch x 1 inch.
Overall, this suit took 5 days to make. Gong Jun’s appearance was on Nov. 23 and the suit was completed on Nov. 27, just in time to post for his birthday.
And thus Cubao(s) now have had 5 custom suits made (in the last 6 months!). We are looking forward to seeing what will appear next.
