Utopian Coat: Dream of Cloudless Skies

Their coats were more than Hive markers, they were windows to another world. Griffincloth was developed for camouflage, a flexible, fabric-like surface which could display in real time the video feed of objects on the other side, making an object properly equipped with Griffincloth invisible. A tent of Griffincloth need not blemish the landscape, and a cop in Griffincloth need not fear being shot on the approach, but these wondersmiths would not leave it at that. Utopian coats are dream visions, created by covering a long trench coat with Griffincloth and programming the computer to process the real image before projecting it, substituting gold for gray, marble for brick, fish for birds, whatever the Utopian imagines.

Too Like The Lightning, Chapter the Thirteenth

This is a second attempt at making a Utopian Coat from the Terra Ignota series. It is in many ways an improvement on my previous Utopian Coat, with fancier fabric and a custom cut.

The foremost [Utopian] stepped forward between me and Tully’s warriors, and let his coat switch from invisibility mode to his Utopia, a storm-black sky where lightning cities appeared and disappeared fast as the pouring rain.

Too Like The Lightning, Chapter the Twenty-Eighth

If a Utopian coat can show a sea of storms, then it too can show a cloudless sky.

Which came first: the fabric or the vision? The desire to make another coat. Then the fabric, in January 2025. Construction began in late July. Then, at about 3:15 p.m. on August 14, 2025, the actual concept for what the coat was meant to show, as I was filling out its Masquerade entry form.

Such con crunch, yet I also had time to go to panels.

Awards

This costume won a “Novices to Notice” award at the Masquerade costume contest at WorldCon 2025 in Seattle.

It also won a costume ribbon at the 2025 WorldCon in Seattle, from a member of the NY/NY Costumers’ Guild.

The vizor

The Griffincloth surfaces make them seem transparent, so projected eyes meet ours, and seem to smile and squint as real eyes do, but, if the coats can transform day to night or earth to stars, surely the visors can replace their true expressions with what they want us to see. Too Like The Lightning, Chapter the Thirteenth

Back in the late ’90s there was a trend of putting holographic-eyeball stickers on swimming goggles. I wish I had had some of those, to give this vizor a semblance of human eyes beneath the mask.

The vizor is a set of Melpomenia Oversized Future Sunglasses from Amazon, with a custom clip JB-welded onto the nose bridge so that the vizor can be worn atop my existing prescription glasses.

Parts:

• Melpomenia Oversized Future Sunglasses
  • microfiber cloth for cleaning
  • container for carrying; these glasses are about 10cm by 10cm by 20cm when folded, and are susceptible to being crushed. If you don’t have a container to safely pack them, you’re gonna end up wearing these on your face or head for every travel leg.
• JB Weld Plastic Bonder High Strength Structural Adhesive 15 minute
  • toothpick for mixing
  • waxed paper for mixing surface
  • strip of masking tape or duck tape to hold the clip in place as it cures
  • nippers for trimming away spare JB Weld
• Nose clip extension
  • at minimum, you’ll need a 3D printer and a slicer
  • if this specific clip design doesn’t work with your glasses, you’ll need OpenSCAD to modify the clip before exporting a new STL and slicing it.
• black marker or paint, to disguise the clip

The coat

This coat is based on Simplicity pattern S9630, View C, with some differences:

• The wearer is a size 34, according to the pattern, and the pattern used was a size 44.
• The oversized coat allows the front to be closed with a zipper. The zipper is mounted to zip from top to bottom, to fasten the coat at the throat like a cloak would be.
• The collar is replaced with a two-piece hood patterned on a hoodie.
• The single-piece sleeves, instead of being finished on the bottom edge, are joined by a zipper running from the armpit to the cuff. This allows the sleeves to be unzipped for better heat management and mobility for the wearer. The free edges swing free; the zipper is located inwards from the edge. This also means that the lining is sewn at all four edges, instead of being a tube attached only at the wrist.

Parts:

• The main cloth is a dichroic mirror fabric sold from various vendors on marketplaces including Amazon, Etsy, and Alibaba. This pattern comes in several colors; the one I used is the blue-pink one. Here’s a sample listing, but searches for “dichroic mirror fabric” will turn it up on many crafting marketplaces. I would be very surprised if you found this in your local fabric store.
• The sleeve lining cloth is a metallic navy blue rayon.
• One 30” zipper for the front seam
• Two 30” zippers for the sleeves, trimmed to size
• Sewing materials
  • seam ripper
  • cloth and paper scissors
  • cloth marking device (I used a white Sharpie paint marker)
  • sewing needles
  • black thread
  • invisible thread (for polygon reattachment)
  • horsehair braid for face side of hood, coat skirt hem
  • (recommended) sewing machine with a stretch cloth stitch

Sewing notes:

• I did not make the mock vest that is included in the pattern.
• The little mirror tiles are flexible sheets of plastic that are sewn onto the stretch velvet fabric. You may wish to use a seamripper to remove the polygons from areas where you plan to sew. This will require a quality seam ripper. If you find that your seam ripper is too short, consider putting the barrel of a cheap Bic ballpoint pen around your seamripper’s handle to make it easier to wield.
• This fabric is a stretch velvet; it’s gonna do weird things. Pin your seams first, baste by hand, then run through your sewing machine. Check your sewing machine’s recommended stretch fabric stitches.
• If you want to (re)attach polygons, a standard needle loaded with “invisible” fine transparent thread is sufficient.
• If hand-sewing on a train or boat, you will want to use safety pins instead of straight pins. You’ll get stabbed less, and they’re easier to find on the floor. Sewing on a plane is not recommended due to lack of elbow room.
• Amtrak roommettes, singly occupied, allow you to pull out the opposite bench and use it as a sewing desk. Skinnier and more-flexible sewists may be able to slip their legs underneath the pulled-out bench and sit under it.

U-Beast

The shoulder Panoctopus is a small BLÅVINGAD held to the jacket with curtain weight clips.

After Halloween 2025, the

Later Improvements

For Halloween 2025, an 18-pointed sun was added, based on a shirt worn by Dr. Palmer at Worldcon 2025. Due to an error made when cutting the design, the tongues of flame on the sun are mirrored. The original’s fips pointed clockwise, and were forked.

If you’d like to make your own, you can download an SVG template.

Next steps

Just because the costume has been worn once doesn’t mean it’s done being worn. Here’s what remained after Worldcon 2025:

• Add a Delian Sun based on Dr. Palmer’s shirt design
  • Add SVG for that here: sun.svg.
• Redo front zipper with a flap to cover its shininess
  • remove old zipper
  • add horsehair
  • add structural cotton duck
• Add a button or other closure at the throat
• Take in seams
• Add horsehair braid to bottom hemline
• Patch all the weird tiny holes along the main seams.
• Reinforce the vertical seams with a non-stretchy fabric, such as 1” black nylon webbing
• Add lining fabric to torso and hood
• Add pockets, or daisy-chain webbing (or both) inside the coat for holding things, with a hip belt that can be cinched to bear weight:
  • Flask
  • Pens
  • Large book, or A4 paper slot
  • Make some other things to be held inside the coat
• Add the missing epaulets, and an appropriate number of stripes (one)
• Make a shoulder flag for Utopia
• Add retroreflective tape along the lower hems, for safety and visibility on this coat which is otherwise merely extremely flashy.
• Props for the pockets

His fist slammed my cheek against the bars hard enough to splash blood on Saladin’s cheek. “What was Apollo doing? There are more than twenty weapons inside this, a third of them lethal!” He let the coat fall open, so all could see the pockets and slots within, the glint of handles. “Do you have any idea how devastating this could be if it fell into the wrong hands? Did Apollo?” Seven Surrenders, Chapter the Sixth