hi There Aurora,
Firstly, nice to hear you will be fursuiting for the first time at ConFuzzled. As a long time fursuiter, I can speak with experience the fun you will have running around in your suit.
With regards to what you shoudl wear underneath, this largly comes down to whether or not you are wearing a full body fursuit or just a partial.
In both instances, its ideal to wear some sort of head piece underneath your fursuit head in order to prevent sweat getting into the foam and stitch work, and also to try and keep sweat out of your eyes. Commonly, people will wear head bands or, as I prefer myself, a balaclava
If you are wearing a partial, then usually, whatever clothes you are wearing as the costume should do. If you are a heavy sweater, you may want to consider wearing some sort of vest or under shirt that is thin but absorbs most of the moisture. Most importantly, wear a good anti-persperant to prevent sweating under the arms.
If you are wearing a full body fursuit, this really varies for many people. The most common thing for people to wear is a lycra under body suit:
These suits are excellent at absording sweat and also keeping you cool.
Another option is, as above, to wear vest/thin t-shirt material. Again these are usually very good at absording the surface moisture from you, and keeping it from soaking through the fur.
It is vitally important that you do not wear to much clothing or items that do not allow your body to breathe. If you cut off all air flow to the suit by putting lots of clothing on top, you will suffocate underneath, heat will build up rapidly, and you will struggle to keep cool. Therefore, if/when choosing a costume for your suit, be wise with how you design it and my advice would be to limit what you wear with it.
As for feet, this varies. On all of my fursuits, I do not need to wear socks, and ifnact prefer not to as my feet often get very hot and sweaty in suit. If you have shoe based feet for your suit (which mine is not) you may want to consider socks. If however, like mine, you have foam based feet with no real insides, you coudl consider perhaps wearing slippers inside.
The most important thing of all is ensuring that you keep yoru suit dry after you have worn it. Be sure to air it out at the convention and carry some form of anti-bach or febreeze spray that you can use to kill bacteria. This will help keeping the suit fresh and, as is often overlooked, stop it from smelling and keep it dry. This is important for people that will want to hug you in fursuit.
The convention provides a very basic sewing kit for on site repairs, but these are for only minor jobs. Hopefully you wont need use of them. if however you are worried, it never goes a miss to have some emergency repair kits of your own with you, especially if you know of known issues on your suit and already know how to best repair them.
Lastly, as for how long you should wear the suit? Well, that is entirely up to the individual. Some people cannot last an hour before they are exhausted, where as some veteran fursuiters can go 48+ hours in their fursuits without taking them off (not something I would enjoy myself, but have done a 16 hour session before in fursuit). It is about exercising common sense. If you are feeling tired, over heated and very low on energy, take a break. Remember that when you are running around in fursuit, you will use twice teh energy than you ordinarily would, and will get tired quicker. Be sure to keep yourself hydrated with regular drinks of water and, when you are winding down out of fursuit, drink an energy drink or lucozade to replenish your sugar levels.
A bit long winded, but hopefully an indepth answer for you that covers all your questions.
Kind Regards,
Rizzorat
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Venue Liaison &
Head of Fursuit Relations
