In 1995 Ian McKellen's Richard III came into the theatres. I saw it a couple of times. I liked the idea of 1930's uniforms for the War of the Roses. Also at this time the East German Army had a huge going-out-of-business sale, and NVA uniforms could easily be bought by mail order.

I was toying with the idea of turning an East German uniform into something resembling one of the uniforms in Richard III. I was working towards a Halloween costume in 1998, when Ayse said "You should go to the party as Miles!" My mind had been avoiding this idea previously; Miles was so strong a character that it felt like lese majeste or something to portray him. But I was convinced, and slapped things together in a couple of evenings. Here is the result.

If you look closely you can see that the hat badge is a (poorly hand embroidered) white rose of York. It's supposed to be the Barrayaran undress uniform. (Yes, I know it's not green enough. This will be addressed later.)

The next year I was talked into going to OryCon. I re-did the uniform, improving some details. The most important change was the hat badge. Fortunately, my cheap sewing machine chose that time to cease to function, so I was able to buy, with a clear conscience, a Husqvarna Rose sewing machine that does embroidery.

On the right is a picture taken at Orycon in 1999.

This version won a hall costume award, but was also once mistaken for a Dendarii uniform (despite the "Vorkosigan" name tag and the eye-of-Horus) insignia. I was also told "it should be greener". On reflection, I agreed. The East German army uniforms are a sort of grey-green, rather more grey than green.

To the left is what I'm calling version 1.1.

For the 2000 Orycon, a group of my friends convinced my girlfriend and myself to do a group of costumes. I made up a couple more Barrayaran undress uniforms, and modified mine to match. I added plastic nametags made by TAP plastics, and made the medal uniforms consistent across all three uniforms. (Ivan got only one ribbon, Simon Ilyan had a lot, and Miles had several, but some extra-fancy ones.) In an attempt to green up the costumes, I uncovered or added green piping. For the final group, I made myself a grey suit and auditor's chain, and wore the uniform a different day.

It still wasn't really green, though. I poked around some more on the internet until I found East German Police uniforms, which are the same cut, but green. I assembled version 2.0 (right), which made its debut at Orycon in 2001.

The hat badge is perhaps the best part. Nowhere in Bujold's books could I find a mention of colours for the Imperium, so I wasn't able to do my original concept of a cockade surrounded by a wreath. I settled on a monogram of GvB in cyrillic letters. Even if Barrayar doesn't use cyrillic, it could easily have been used in an archaic context such as monograms. Since all the noble names begin with the prefix Vor-, I used the first distinct letter in Gregor Vorbarra's last name, too. For the crown above the monogram, I wanted something suggestive of eastern Europe, and used something similar to the crown on pre-communist Bulgarian insignia. The wreath of laurel leaves was copied from a WRNS cap badge illustration in a book I had, chosen because it was the right shape.

The collar patches (red for lieutenant) on version 2.0 still aren't quite right. From the books it's clear that the collar tabs are plastic, and mounted behind the organizational insignia, much like early soviet rank insignia, I believe. But, the Horus eyes I was using were small, and would not have been clearly visible enough.

In the left hand picture you can see that the Horus eye on the left hand collar is upside down; I could only find ones that faced in one direction.

I have since discovered that you can buy excellent Horus eyes online, at SoftWear, so I bought a pair and a sleeve patch, too. I had a pair of red plastic rectangles cut at the local Tap Plastics (1" x 3/4", if anyone cares), and modified the costume. On the right is a picture showing the difference between the old and new collar insignia.

I'm still not convinced version 2.1 is aesthetically better, but it is closer to what was described in the books.