Vanessa

For several years, Irvin had been working with a Little Mermaid theme for the Mermaid Parade, beginning in 2016 with one of his cosplaying peaks: Ursula. In 2018, he built on that by cosplaying Ursula's deceptive human form, Vanessa.

The key to cosplaying Vanessa is to recreate the iconic scene where she stares into a mirror, and sees a reflection of her true self - Ursula. So Irvin set about creating that mirror, to carry around with him the entire day. He used photoshop to combine the frame of the mirror from the actual movie with a portrait of himself as Ursula, got it printed huge, and after a lot of diligent cutting and gluing, had an enormous cardboard "mirror" he could carry around the entire day. (Handles in the back were made with duct tape - sometimes the simplest solution is best.) Irvin therefore got to spend the entire day cackling at a purple image of himself.

From there, it was just a matter of recreating Vanessa's look from that scene, where she's getting read for her wedding. Long brown hair, a white dress that Irvin had bought years ago, and the same shell necklace he'd used for Ursula. Evidently, Irvin looked like a very convincing woman in that costume - he was chased into the men's bathroom by a concerned security guard hollering, "Miss! MISS! That's the men's room!"

Unfortunately, there was a dearth of Ursulas at the parade Irvin could take pictures with (they'd really been in vogue the last few years, but apparently had become passe). But with the mirror, plenty of people figured out the costume, and were duly impressed. As usual, Irvin got a very impressive sunburn that day, and had a lot of fun getting photos of the mirror (which now hangs proudly on Irvin's wall to welcome visitors). He crashed at his mother's the night after so as to go to the Father's Day BarBQ the next day, and brought the mirror along, where it was propped up on a table to terrify little children.