Last weekend I went to a zombie walk in Paris. There were probably thousands of zombies, and it was a lot of fun.
That day I woke up late, and still had no idea what to wear or do for make up. While searching around for something I could use, I found a bottle of cheap liquid latex I'd bought on a whim back in England, thinking "I'll surely be able to use this some day."
It was my absolute first time working with liquid latex, so obviously I have a lot to learn, but it was fun, and I want to use it again some time soon.
The metro lighting made me look kinda yellow, but I hadn't had much sleep that night, and I was slightly hung over (this turned out to be very helpful for getting in character), so my skin was actually paler than death (even before makeup!) haha.
Last weekend was the Paris Manga & Sci-fi Show. The event itself wasn't very interesting; mostly just shops, and it was very overcrowded, but I still had fun hanging out with people~
I didn't bring any actual cosplays to France, so I did my usual lazy thing where I just throw together some clothes and a wig in the morning and try my hardest to look like an anime character:
Skirt: Rose Melody (Taobao) Blouse: Warehouse Tights: Lockshop Shoes: Bodyline Veil: Piece of material I found in my house lol
I have no idea what I was supposed to be, but I had fun being it anyway~
I actually went alone, but after looking around everything once I ran into Christophe and a couple of his friends, so I joined them. Soon after that we found the adorable Nicole, who I'd briefly spoken to on Tumblr before. She joined us too. c:
I loooove when people incorporate fandom T-shirts (her wig is kinda hiding it, but it's L from Death Note's logo) into good outfits rather than just wearing them with jeans or something C:
From that point onwards we pretty much wandered around chatting in English (as it's Nicole's first language too) while Christophe made us be in photos with like every single cosplay he (or we) liked haha
Sashaaaa
We also had fun borrowing weapons for photos~
I felt like a video game character 8D
That night was Nuit Blanche (a yearly event where loads of museums/shops/galleries etc. in Paris stay open really late/all night), so after Paris Manga finished, Nicole and I decided to go home and get changed then meet up later.
First we went to Notre Dame. I was super happy that it was part of Nuit Blanche, because since I first saw Notre Dame at night (it looks like a beautiful, crazy vampire castle), I'd desperately wanted to go inside it at night. It wasn't very well lit, so there was a lot you couldn't see at all, but it was still super cool! It was my first time going inside, though, so I'd like to go back some time when it's actually light enough to see. I'm generally not a fan of tourist attractions, but Notre Dame is just gorgeous.
It was wonderfully creepy with the terrible lighting.
Notre Dame selfies lol
Neither of us really knew what there was to do because there was so much that there wasn't really a list or anything, so we decided to just wander for a bit and see if we could find anything. We didn't come across much, but I was just happy that I could go inside Notre Dame haha. In the end we went to a crêperie, then wandered around a while longer before calling it a night.
On Tuesday, VAMPS played in Paris. It was such a fun day!
If any of you happen to not know VAMPS, I highly recommend them! The vocalist is Hyde of L'Arc-en-Ciel. I've never been particularly interested in L'Arc, but I do like Hyde's voice, and VAMPS is much more to my taste.
This is the song that made me a fan of VAMPS.
The venue was L'Olympia, which was actually a little smaller than I'd expected. It was a good size.
I'd originally planned to get to the venue at about 12, because I wanted to make sure I had a good view of the stage, but that didn't quite work out as planned, and I ended up arriving at about 2pm. Fortunately, it was a Tuesday so there weren't too many people there.
That day I went for a vampire-esque make up look, of course.
I spent the next 5 hours or so going to Starbucks a lot, and talking with other fans a bit. It was a little cold (and I didn't bring a coat haha), but time passed a lot faster than I'd expected it to.
At about 7.30, they let us in. I got a decent spot a few rows from the front, and slightly right of the centre because I wanted to see K.A.Z (guitarist) too.
Hyde! Even without Photoshop he looks much younger than he is (somewhere in his 40's)! He was also surprisingly tiny.
As for the live itself, it was great! The first thing that struck me was Hyde's amazing contact lenses, which I failed to capture with my iPhone haha. At first it looked like he wasn't wearing contacts at all, but occasionally (I guess when UV lights shined on them) they'd glow white, like a demon. It was really cool.
K.A.Z
Their music works extremely well live, so much so that I suspect at least a few of the songs were composed with lives in mind. There are lots of sort of... chanting(?) and shouting parts where the crowd can join in, which was fun. The best live songs were, in my opinion, HUNTING, REVOLUTION, and SEX BLOOD ROCK N' ROLL.
Hyde played the guitar too sometimes
Hyde and K.A.Z are the only official members of VAMPS, but I also want to mention the support members, because they were great. They were all really lively and enthusiastic (usually more so than the official members), and generally very fun. I actually kind of wish I'd stood more towards the left of the stage, because the bassist was great, and I would have liked to see him a little better.
Hyde was the only one to speak to the crowd, but he did it quite a few times, and was pretty entertaining. He made a pretty good stab at French (most of it was understandable, and the pronunciation was surprisingly good), and also spoke some English and Japanese.
After the live some of us waited outside to see the band off. We were waiting at the artists' entrance, but strangely, they actually left through the main entrance, so we missed them. :< But I still had fun chatting with other fans, and we didn't have to wait for too long~
I bought a T-shirt. It's a little bigger than I prefer, but I really liked the design.
I'm super late with this entry (as always!), but a couple of weekends ago there was an event in Paris for Japanese fashion and general "kawaii culture". I was busy moving into my new home on the Saturday, so I only went to the event on Sunday.
What I wore (most of my clothes were still in England at that point, so I didn't have much to choose from):
T-shirt: Zara Shorts: d.i.a.
Heart garter: Creepyyeha
Skeleton garter: Noctex
Necklace: Glavil by tutuHA
Make up
As the event was new (I think it was the first one, actually), there wasn't a huge amount of things to do, but it was still pretty interesting, and I got to hang out with internet friends who had come from various parts of Europe, which was awesome. C: There were a few music performances, but somehow I missed all of the ones I wanted to see haha. orz I did watch Anna Tsuchiya's one, though. Her music isn't really my thing, but her performance was good.
