Mystery Hunt 2022: Is ̶M̶r̶.̶ ̶M̶u̶s̶i̶c̶ Alexei Lewis Okay?

From the second we needed a Minister of Music for this year’s Mystery Hunt theme, I wanted to play them, largely because I had most of the outfit already. I had one specific visual reference in mind:

There’s also bits of Mr. B. Natural and the Dean’s peanut bar rap from Community in how the character finally shook out, but I had built Mr. Music‘s outfit a few years ago for Quarantine Halloween and wanted to use it publicly for something.

I needed a project to stop from doomscrolling in September/October 2020, so this Halloween costume idea got bumped up to “let’s make this in 2020 anyways”.

For Mystery Hunt, to keep things distinct I grew out a super-scruffy beard (since I couldn’t find a decent fake moustache to keep half-hanging off of my upper lip) and et voila:

Anatomy of ̶a̶ ̶M̶r̶.̶ ̶M̶u̶s̶i̶c̶ an Alexei Lewis costume

The Jacket

This was surprisingly easy! This is a Ro Rox Men’s Parade Jacket Gothic Tailcoat in black. It was $60 on Amazon when I bought it and appears to be more expensive now, so shop around.

Xylophone Bits

If you’re insane like me and want to affix around 2 pounds of metal to your jacket, you will need two of these from Amazon. They are surprisingly easy to dismantle (despite claiming to be “TIGHT And PREOTECT THE BARS FROM REMOVING”) if you have a decent pair of pliers and need something to do with your hands other than doomscroll Twitter on your phone.

I originally affixed the xylophone pieces with some fashion fusion tape. This worked for 2020 but I would hear various xylophone pieces plink-plink-plinking to the floor in my closet over the course of 2021.

The main update I made to this jacket for Mystery Hunt (after also testing and learning that hot glue was basically useless for fully affixing these) was getting a bunch of adhesive velcro coins and squares from Michael’s and using those to affix things, which appears to be working well and held up over the course of wearing this for 3 days. That was under $15 total.

You could also probably, you know, sew them on? I have many skills but that’s not one of them yet.

Patches

ETSY. Etsy is a goldmine for patches and iron-ons. I bought a few sizes of treble clef, and various music note configurations, all in gold. The MUSIC shoulder patches appear to be some kind of easily findable template as well. These were ironed on where possible and have been re-affixed over the past year with hot glue and velcro when they’ve really started coming off the jacket.

Shirt

When I was assembling the costume, I just wanted a disgusting sateen-y gold thing like the original costume. Amazon has tons of these and you should not spend more than $20 on one. I went this this one. I hate it and it’s perfect.

I put some music notes-y Washi tape I found at Michael’s that is barely holding on to this slippery-ass fabric.

For Mystery Hunt, I had a normal cotton button-down with black stars on it, partially because that felt more distinct character-wise and also because I knew I was going to be sweating and didn’t want to be in a gross fake sateen-y shirt for that long.

Pants

after not finding ANYTHING that looked like the Mr. Music pants from the Sack Lunch Bunch, when I put the jacket and glockenspiels in my Amazon cart, Amazon asked if I wanted to buy this BTS-ass suit which has what appear to be the actual pants? Like most fashion-y things from Amazon, take a look at the size chart before ordering.

Alexei/Mr. Music on a Budget

If we had needed it, I was prepared to build another one of these jackets for our team, and this is what the “budget” version would have been:

• Ro Rox parade jacket. That’s kind of non-negotiable
• doing the music notes on the jacket in a gold metallic sharpie/other fabric marker
• getting a bunch of felt from a craft store in the appropriate colors and affixing it using fashion fusion tape/hot glue (you know, since you’re attempting to affix fabric to other fabric instead of metal to fabric) after cutting to size.
• Find some stripe-y pants? I was sitting down for most team interactions so honestly I could have been wearing sweatpants if I wanted.

I still feel very proud about this a year and a half later. Go build your own (and shout me out on social media if you do)

Seven Months Later: Long Term Storage

(added August 2022)

After managing to find the two super-small xylophone pieces that technically belong at the bottom of the jacket, I checked the Mr. Music jacket and found that some of the larger xylophone bars had started to fall off again. Most of them were firmly in place, but I think that while built to hold up to five pounds, the structural integrity of the sticky back of the velcro is not meant to withstand constant weight from the xylophone pieces.

To fix this/make this something that can hold up over a long period of time, I’ve replaced the velcro dots/squares with full velcro tape backing for each piece, and I’m now storing the xylophone pieces in their own little bag (see photo above) to be applied before the jacket gets worn at a Con or whatever. I’ve got a goal of wearing this (and a few other obscure-ish cosplay things) at something like DragonCon next year.