As every crafter’s favorite holiday approaches, Halloween, its time to start planning your steampunk costume for this year. There are a lot of mainstream outlets selling “steampunk” style costumes, but most of them are awful mainstream crap.

If you really want an authentic steampunk costume, consider buying some wares online from actual merchants to specialize in this and you get a completely unique and low-cost costume that will look worlds better than anything you could buy in a costume store. But perhaps the biggest benefit is that you are helping out the skilled crafters who try to make a living creating beautiful wares.

I highly recommend you take a peek right now at our steampunk clothing section and see if anything on eBay catches your fancy. Crafters typically ramp up production this time of year and there are a LOT of very interesting steampunk-style clothes available right now, from corsets and pants to boots and cufflinks.

A Japanese craftsman named Haruo Suekichi, has finally agreed to sell some of his fantastic steampunk watches that originally gained fame after a gallery of them was posted online last year. He’s selling two glorious steampunk men’s watches, and two steampunk women’s watches in a partnership with Chief magazine. Quite expensive at $1200 and $800 respectively but wow…seriously…wow.

One of the things that attracts me to steampunk (and I’m sure others as well) is the intricacies of the details. While the overall form is nice, the little steampunk refinements that he’s made to this such as the etched faces or the storage compartment are simply brilliant. What fan of steampunk doesn’t like little hidden compartments?!

While the price is a bit much for me personally, I think it reflects the quality of the workmanship. This isn’t something he pieced together in a weekend and the purchaser of such a fine work of art knows it. There’s definitely something to be said for wearing something that was hand-crafted and completely unique in the world.

Purchasing info and more pictures can be found here.  You can also read a fascinating interview with the craftsman here where he talks about his watches.

Male Watch:

Female Watch: