Suited & Booted: Moshimo Brings You The Costume Games

Moshimo brings you The Costume Games, kicking off the Rugby World Cup 2015 with five days of well-attired style & sensation

You are being invited to “dress up and play” over five days in September – and you’ll be helped to do so by a group of professionals who have created some of the most enduring and iconic characters of the big screen.
This is the idea behind The Costume Games, the brainchild of Brighton’s popular Japanese restaurant, MOSHIMO, who are putting on the city’s main cultural festivities for the opening weekend of the Rugby World Cup this year.
“Our ambition is to transform the city of Brighton into one big stage where people can act out their fantasies through costume – all with the help of the some of the world’s leading costume designers,” says Nicholas Röhl, co-owner with Karl Jones of MOSHIMO and Festival Director of The Costume Games.
“We want to recreate the feeling we all had as children on discovering a dressing up box. We want to reignite the joy of getting into character – of becoming someone else, or someone you’d like to be, through costume…” says Nicholas.
“Another reason why we’re doing this is because Karl, my business partner, was desperate to try on his Stormtrooper outfit,” he adds.
The idea came out of MOSHIMO’s festival, Brighton Japan, which has over six years become the largest outdoor Cosplay festival in the UK. Cosplay (made up of the words ‘Costume’ and ‘Play’) originated from Japan and involves people dressing up as their favourite film, TV, and gaming characters.
“Cosplay is a growing phenomenon, but it is still relatively niche,” explains Nicholas. “We wanted to open it out to everyone and make The Costume Games the most riotous dressing up event ever.”
One of the big events will be the ‘Viva Las Elvis’ night (Thursday 17th), when the Old Steine ‘Costume’ Gardens will be turned into a Las Vegas Casino to help raise money for Martlets.
“Our target is to get a thousand people dressed as Elvis to come,” says Karl.

To help them with creating The Costume Games MOSHIMO was lucky enough to find Graham Churchyard, who lives in Brighton, who has been the costume special effects supervisor on some very big films: he helped design the Batsuit for Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, has worked on Marvel movies such as Avengers Assemble and Guardians Of The Galaxy, and is presently on the set of the Stars Wars film.
Graham has pulled together an extraordinary team that would only normally be found on the set of the biggest of Hollywood movies to help people dress up and get into character: Academy Award winner Lindy Hemming (Topsy Turvy), Vin Burnham (Batman, The Fifth Element), Day Murch (Batman, Star Wars), and Rob Allsop (Doctor Who, Dredd) will be just some of the costume designers joining him for what is being dubbed ‘Costume Clinics’, where people will be able to create and develop their individual costumes.
“The Costume Games is about people getting dressed up in costume – but we didn’t just want people to dress up, but parts of the city as well,” says Nicholas “This is why we have invited Lady Aiko, a famous Japanese street-artist living in New York, to come and ‘costume’ walls in the city with her daring and beautiful art.”
Lady Aiko will be one of the many artists and members of the general public who will be invited to the Old Steine on Wednesday 16th September to help “costume the gardens”, turning the Old Steine into the home of The Costume Games for the following five days.
Each day of The Costume Games will be themed differently: Wednesday 16th will see Brighton Japan launch the games with a MOSHIMO Supper Club and Japanese entertainment and art, and Friday will see the launch of ‘1980’s Costume Cinema’ with screenings of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Fame.
“We’ll have Gladrags, the wonderful costume charity, on hand to help people get dressed up when they arrive, so nobody can have any excuse not to delve into the dressing up box,” says Nicholas.

The weekend will see the Costume Gardens become base camp for the Costume Carnival – a hive of action where people will visit the Costume Clinic to prepare their costumes for “flash mob” performances and stunts taking place all over the city, followed in the evening by an outrageously funny 70’s Glam Rock Tribute band from Liverpool called Kookachoo.
Sunday 20th is Sing-a-long-Sunday! The Costume Gardens becomes the stage for ever more histrionic delights as both children and adults sing-a-long to screenings of Mary Poppins, Sound Of Music… and – yes – Frozen.
And what will we all do when The Costume Gardens closes its doors on Sunday evening?
We’ll all live happily ever after, is what we’ll do.
The Batsuit, worn by Christian Bale in The Dark Knight, is being displayed at the Brighton Museum until 21st September.
Lady Aiko’s residency in the City is being sponsored by Art Republic, which owns Ink_d gallery, where her work will be exhibited from 11th – 20th September.
www.thecostumegames.com