My name is Amber, I’m 26 years old and I am originally from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. My middle name is Camilla, hence the name Camilla Costumes :). In June of 2023 I moved to London, United Kingdom and that is where I live today with my incredible husband who I married in February of 2024. I have three fashion degrees: Basic dressmaking, Advanced tailoring and dressmaking and finally lingerie making.
I always loved to sew and when I was just 10 years old, I asked my grandma if she could teach me how to sew. She was an incredible seamstress, so she taught me all the basics and we made a couple garments together.
I started cosplaying in January of 2017 and soon after that I decided I wanted to start making my own costumes. At this point I hadn’t been behind a sewing machine for some years, but I instantly loved it again. That’s when I realised I was serious about pursuing a career in this field. The school I went to is called Danckaerts Modevakschool and they are very old school when it comes to teaching. We didn’t really do projects or anything like that. We just sewed, sewed, sewed, learn how to construct garments and drafted a load of patterns every week. I spent four years at this school and as mentioned before, I got three different degrees here.
After finishing my education in the Netherlands, I moved to London. Here I started doing freelance work for the film and theatre industry and I still do this to this day. It was my biggest dream to do this as a job and I am so happy it came true.
As mentioned on my homepage, I absolutely love historical fashion. I own several books on how to draft and create historical garments and have done a load of research into different era’s and what women wore during this time. It’s a big interest of mine!
Besides sewing I have a lot of other hobbies as well. I’ve actually got so many I never know which one to do. Besides sewing I love to crochet as well. I taught myself how to do this when I moved to London, but couldn’t work yet. It seemed like the perfect time to learn a new skill and now I’m always working on new crochet projects. I love playing video games, some of my favourites are all the FromSoft games, Horizon Zero Dawn and Undertale. I love to read. My favourite author is Sarah J Maas. I love drawing and painting. This is actually my oldest hobby, I’ve been doing this since before I even know how a sewing machine worked. I can also play the piano and had lessons for a few years when I was younger.
Camilla Costumes 