Hoshino Mio

Mio grew up in Sendai, where her grandmother ran a small kimono alteration shop and let her sew scraps into doll clothes after school. She moved to Tokyo at eighteen to study pattern-making at a fashion college, started wearing her own original characters to cosplay events in her second year, and released her first swimsuit photo book at twenty-two. She sketches new costumes on the train in a pocket notebook and names each character before she cuts a single piece of fabric. Between events she sells sewing patterns online, takes a weekly stage-makeup class, and keeps a jar of spare star-shaped buttons on her desk that she has been collecting since she was nine.