Maria - Silent Hill 2 Remake



Cost: $187
Costume Purchased In: March 2025
Time to Make Modifications: 8 hours
Timeline of Purchase and Modification: March 2025 - May 2026


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Information

Cosplaying from the Silent Hill 2 Remake kind of seemed like a no brainer. Silent Hill 2 is one of my all-time favourite pieces of media and I was really excited when I heard it was going to be remade for a new generation. To be honest, one of my first thoughts was the Cosplay potential of an outfit redesign for Maria since over a decade ago, I Cosplayed Maria from the original game. The costume really took me out of my comfort zone with the design and I got some really great thematic photos while wearing it. I will say that I wasn't wowed by her redesign. The new design is definitely a little more simplified from her bright cheetah print skirt in the original, but it's a lot more practical. Now it's a red coat over a black dress with an animal print pattern in the dress fabric.

Once I settled on Cosplaying Maria, I debated about thrifting the jacket, but by early 2025, I started seeing costumes for sale through various Cosplay sites that included the dress and jacket. They were often around $100 or under and I figured for that price, it might be worth just buying the costume. I ended up finding one Cosplay store on Aliexpress selling the costume with an animal print design in the dress. The animal print patterning is something most mass produced costume sellers seem to miss with the costume. It was a bit more expensive and didn't include the choker, but I thought it would be worth it. My measurements at the time were at the high end of the small range for the size chart, so I decided to size up to medium. I ordered the costume in March. At the same time, I also ordered a blonde wig that had added wefts at the crown that were dark and a choker necklace that looked pretty identical to the game design. The wig was a bob style and looked like it would match pretty well for Maria. Both items were also from sellers on Aliexpress.

When I finally got the costume a few weeks later, I was shocked by how oversized and poorly made the costume was. I expected the dress to be made of a stretchy type material, but it was a thin, cheap fabric (probably to accommodate the print) and it fit like a sack with no shaping. The jacket was also very big with a belt that was super oversized and didn't have a way to stay up on the jacket. I was quite disappointed and left a bad review for the seller. I didn't get any sort of refund and the seller ended up taking the listing down a few days later. The quality was really bad for the price.

I was so bummed about the state of the costume that I shelved it for a while. I had originally hoped to wear it to cons and events in the summer of 2025, but instead, I started researching what I would need to fix it up. I bought a snap kit from Aliexpress in May 2025 so I could shorten the belt on the jacket. I used the coin and rubber band technique to pinch in the back of the jacket and make the sizing at least slightly less crazy big on me. Pleather is pretty unforgiving for taking the whole jacket apart to take in the back and side seams, so I just had to live with the oversized look. I pretty much left the costume alone until 2026 after that.

In January of 2026, I took apart parts of the dress. I removed bra cups that were inside a mesh piece in the bust area of the dress. It wasn't really doing anything for me. The dress originally had a zipper in a side seam, but I removed it and created a back seam in the dress, so I could give the costume more shape and put the zipper in the back seam. I took in the side seams as well as hemmed the dress as it was a little long on me. All the alterations took a few hours and since the material isn't stretchy, the fit isn't perfect, but it's much better than it was.

I set the costume aside for a bit after that, but finally got around to fixing the jacket and styling the wig in April and May 2026. I sewed loops of thin string to the side seams of the jacket at about waist level to make belt loops. In May, I decided to finally tackle adjusting the belt and dyeing the wig. I cut off part of the pleather belt that loops at the front of the jacket. I hand sewed the edge closed. I tested the belt and used the snap kit to add new snaps to the belt so the fit was better. It turned out to be pretty easy to do and helped a lot with the fit. I do wish the jacket had shorter sleeves as Maria's jacket seems to be more like 3/4 sleeves, but of course the sleeves are not tailored to the character design. It's also missing front pockets so that's unfortunate. With my adjustments, the jacket was wearable.

As for the wig, I had purchased bottles of Rit dye from Walmart in the spring of 2025 in the colour Super Pink. It's specifically for synthetic materials. Annoyingly, they made me buy two bottles when ordering online so I have quite a bit leftover. I bought gloves and a pot from Dollarama for the cause since the dye makes any pot potentially not really safe to cook with afterward. I followed the instructions and heated the water before adding a small amount of dish soap and then part of the bottle of dye. Usually you would be submerging the wig and leaving it for something like 20 minutes to absorb the colour, but since I just wanted to dye the ends of the wig, I kind of just held the wig over the pot and dunked the ends of the wig. I left it for about 7 minutes, and then washed the dye out. The colour was a bit faint, so I brought the wig back and held it under for another few minutes. After letting it dry for a day, I still didn't think the colour was very strong (it was fairly muted). I made up another pot of dye and submerged the ends for about 10 minutes. This time I felt like the colour was a little stronger. It's not super pink, but it's easy to see the colour difference from the rest of the wig. I think it turned out pretty well. I soaked the ends of the wig in some fabric softener to make the hair soft and then I had to tackle styling the wig.

Maria's hair is pretty much a bob and the wig I bought, due to the extra hair at the crown that forms the dark roots, was a bit heavy on top and thin at the bottom. After heating up the ends thanks to the dye, the ends of the wig were falling a little straight and flat. I tried using a straightener to curl under the ends to give it more of a bob look. That didn't really make too much of a difference, and it just damaged the fibers a bit. I tried hair spraying the ends and curling it around hair curlers using got2b hair spray, but the styling didn't really hold up. The first con I was planning to bring the costume to was YetiCon 2026 and I had a lot to pack, so I just packed the wig flat and left it with little styling. I wish the wig had more volume to feel a bit more accurate, but the wig looked nice enough as is. The rest of the look is finished with some accessories. I bought some semi sheer tights. I used the same boots as Ashley as they're brown and comfy, so they work well enough for Maria. For jewelry, I wore a bracelet with crescent moon charms I've had for years and a silver costume jewlery ring I had bought for my original Maria costume years ago. I also used a butterfly temporary tattoo from a set of temp tattoos I bought well over a decade ago also for my original Maria costume. I stocked up on any butterfly themed tattoos I found in stores back then just in case I wanted to wear Maria several times. I would love to find tattoos that are little more accurate to hers in the game, so I'll always keep an eye out at places like accessory stores and dollar stores.

In the end, buying a Maria costume kind of turned into almost making the costume myself. I had to practically remake the entire dress and I do wish the dress was higher quality. Probably thrifting a jacket would have been better than what I got, but all and all, with the alterations, the costume turned out pretty nicely and it was a cool experience Cosplaying from the Silent Hill 2 Remake. It was awesome to get some photos at YetiCon thanks to Stillvisions where some of the hotels in the village have a nice look to emulate the Lakeview hotel. It was kind of a goal when deciding to Cosplay Maria. I thought it would be great to shoot at Blue Mountain. Hopefully I'll get to wear the costume to more events and maybe run into some other Silent Hill 2 Cosplayers!

Events/Conventions this costume was worn to
YetiCon 2026 (Saturday)

Photo Credits
Stillvisions


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