by Lisa Gregory, photography by Nikola Tzenov
Candace Birger initially hesitated to approach one of her favorite actors, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, of the television show “The Walking Dead.” However, her cosplay alter ego, Immortan Joe from the apocalyptic film series “Mad Max,” wasn’t worried. “I didn’t want to meet him face to face,” she says of Morgan.
“I was scared. But I figured if I had something covering me and showcasing who I am as a person that he would see that instead.” Birger was determined to attend the Walker Stalker Con fan event in New York City. This convention would be the first in which she put “real effort into fabricating a costume,” she says, in the act of cosplay, the practice of dressing up as a character from a movie, book or video game.
Morgan was impressed by her Immortan Joe warlord costume with its disturbing mask yet a slight feminine touch of flowing blond hair. Empowered by her cosplay persona and Morgan’s response to it, Birger took the encounter one step further.
“I just didn’t want to say, ‘Hey, I love your work.’ Everyone else says that. I wanted to stick out a bit,” she says. With a paperback romance novel in hand, she walked up to Morgan during the photo op. “I had found this book with this cover of Fabio, with his long hair, and he’s like holding this lady and tilting her back,” she recalls. “I asked, ‘Can we do this?’
He said, ‘Hell yes.’ He was totally into it. It was lovely. I got a good photo. I got a good story.”
Diverse Careers Lead to Cosplay Passion
Birger navigates the world on her terms. Throughout her life, the wife and mother of two has had diverse careers, including working as a zookeeper, serving as the assistant to former Pennsylvania Rep.
Mike Reese, managing a former bakery and creating her own business, Plexi Cosplay, a cosplay costume and prop-making business. Birger — who also works at Exploration Commons at 50 East in Westminster, where she helps others with their creative endeavors — operates Plexi Cosplay from the basement of her Westminster home.
During the last few years, her business has experienced explosive growth, with clients coming from as far away as South Korea to purchase her cosplay costumes.
Video game companies and even Netflix have requested her creations. The companies use them at conventions or share them on social media to promote a particular game or television series.
According to a Konvoy report, approximately 10 million cosplayers exist worldwide. The cosplay market is expected to reach $8.7 billion by 2033.
Often, the person wearing the costumes is Birger herself. She also constructs costumes for individual buyers, although most of her recent work has been focused on industry clients.
Growing up in Hanover, Pennsylvania, Birger says she was always drawn to the arts. “My mother and I would take ceramics classes,” she says. “I always loved drawing and coloring and making things. I was told that I couldn’t make a living as an artist.” She pivoted to another passion instead — animals. She worked at ZooAmerica at Hersheypark and the Houston Zoo.
“It wasn’t quite hitting what I needed to feel joy in my life,” she says. She then decided to go into the veterinary field “to see if that was better,” she says. “It still wasn’t quite it.”
Coming off a breakup, Birger saw herself at a fork in the road in her life. Her next professional stop would be working at the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. While continuing to look for an opportunity to pursue her passion, the work there allowed her to consider other choices.
Birger charges no less than $10,000 for her costumes, which take several months to make.
“I wanted to figure out what brought me joy,” she says. One night, while scrolling through Facebook posts, “I came across this fancy cake,” she says. “I thought to myself, ‘I think I can do that.’”
And she did, eventually opening up her bakery, Westminster Cake Studio, in downtown Westminster. But, after a few years, her creative interest began to stray once again. “I realized I didn’t care for buttercream icing,” she says.
While working at the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, she had made a friend, “a comic book nerd,” she says, who had introduced her to cosplay. “He really liked going out, and he’s like, ‘I’m going to dress up. You want to dress up too?’”
At first, Birger was content creating costumes from her closet. Her meeting with Jeffrey Dean Morgan nearly a decade ago would change all that as she leaped into more sophisticated costume-making. The idea of becoming someone else through elaborate and intricate creations of her own gave her a sense of comfort.
“I’m an introvert,” she says, but “I am an artist. I am a creator. And I am able to show a person who I am in the smallest amount of time without saying a word. I get to wear my art.”
Building A Business In Cosplay
Birger has frequently won awards for her work at cosplay events, including New York Comic Con, and has even gone on to serve as a judge on panels herself. As word spread about her abilities, her hobby evolved into a business, now employing a staff that assists her in various ways, from a 3D modeling specialist to a photographer for her social media presence.
Birger was thrilled a few years ago when her all-time favorite game, Warframe — developed by Digital Express, a company in Canada — contacted her for a project. “They are one of the largest, if not the largest, free-to-play online games,” she says. “They reached out to me and brought me some ideas, and I gave them my ideas that I thought were better. They took mine, and I got to revolutionize a character, Loid, who is in the game.” She has since worked for them “three years in a row,” she says.
Visiting her basement, one finds an abundance of colors and textures, from plastic swords and shields to flowing wigs. “That’s one of my favorites,” she says, nodding toward a neon green wig. The wig, with its long braids, is part of her Beetle Jinx costume, which comes complete with a mechanical sandworm — a nightmarish creature from the movie.
“It’s two characters mashed up together,” she explains. “Jinx is from ‘Arcane,’ a Netflix show, and mixed with ‘Beetlejuice,’ which is my favorite movie. People love it because it is something unique.”
Other projects have included a set of 15-foot-wide glowing wings inspired by a character in the video game World of Warcraft, a suit of Samurai armor from the video game Assassin’s Creed, and even a realistic Captain Marvel helmet, among numerous others.
While technology such as 3D printers has opened up a whole new world in cosplay, Birger brings ingenuity and innovation to every project. “A good cosplayer-maker is somebody having a good time,” says Birger. “It could be someone that just pulls some stuff out of their closet or someone who has spent $20,000.”
She says she does not feel a sense of ownership upon selling a costume despite the labor of love she has put into it. “A lot of people make a costume, and they feel an emotional attachment to it,” she says. “I like the art of creating something new and then allowing somebody else to bring it to life in a different way. Then I get to take the funds and make something else.”
Not surprisingly, for Birger, it is more about the journey than the destination, whether it be the cosplay costumes she creates or her life and the passions she chooses to pursue. “Do what brings you joy,” she says.
