IKEA Battles Cosplay Clutter In Singaporean ‘Bedroom Stories’ Campaign [Video]

As a cosplayer who currently resides in a rather cozy secret lair (aka a small apartment in Boston), one of my continuous obstacles is being able to neatly organize all of my clothing, collectibles, and costumes in a confined space, while still maintaining enough space for sewing and prop-building. Ever since I started cosplaying, I've always been envious of the spacious secret headquarters and hideouts of the characters that I was emulating, especially the heroes who had the space to display all of their previous incarnations of their costumes and their entire artillery of weapons and gadgets. Since most of us will probably never be able to own our own Batcave (let alone, Wayne Manor), organization is the best weapon for storing your alter-egos and preventing the chaotic mess of fabric and Worbla in your limited work space.

In an installment of IKEA Singapore's series of "IKEA Bedroom Stories" commercials, Frank (civil servant by day, cosplayer by night) describes his room as an "organized mess" of costumes, craft supplies, and action figures. Like many cosplayers, Frank struggles to keep his limited space tidy and orderly while working on costumes and props, which often results in an inevitable chaos of fabric and scattered costume pieces (an issue that I am all too familiar with during convention season).

Luckily for Frank, IKEA Singapore hooked his room up with a complete makeover, including a chic wardrobe unit to store his clothing and costumes, and a proper work station with enough storage space to organize his craft and art supplies.

Besides the helpful tips for cosplayers, this IKEA commercial is a major mark of visibility for cosplay culture in national media. Just not our national media. Here in the US we're still far away from the cosplaying hobby being so pervasive as to endear commercial products to massive amounts of consumers, but it's cool to see that Singapore -- hometown of CA's own Senior Editor Andy Khouri, incidentally -- is evidently so well populated with cosplayers that they're appearing in huge ad campaigns.