You’re right, Trudy. I noticed that right away.

Tina C.

“Are the days of saving one’s competition costume for the stage fading?”

Elaine, Kevin….BRILLIANT. I will consider making the changes and running past the concomm at our next meeting. Muahahaha.

Dawn does have a point – at much larger cons, there are different habits and cultures cultivated by the sheer size and the number of opportunities for presenting a costume. Dragon*Con has ALWAYS been about showing your most spectacular costumes in the hall, not the masquerade, because the masquerade (at least in the early 2000s) had an awful reputation for not being about the quality of construction at all. Plus, every single fandom track has its own costume contest, held at random points during the day and not involving performance at all. To compete in the Star Wars costume contest you just showed up at the 2pm time slot and let the celebrities ogle you from their chairs. It’s always been “the thing to do” to spend all year building your most amazing costume and then just hang around in the Hyatt lobby to let the photographer circles cluster around you. I don’t know if that’s changed much in the last 10 years, but there you go.

I am fascinated by Byron’s history information, mainly because it might be a case of history repeating itself. Masquerades at mid-sized cons are getting swelled to bursting again, maybe it IS time to re-instill the actual rule to cut down on the number of entries. I don’t think 30-some entries is a bad number for a CC, 40 would be beautiful but I’ll take 30’s. It’s a matter of balancing judging stress, green room time, masquerade length, and judging deliberation against letting everyone who wants to compete be able to compete. Too many entries and your whole schedule and system gets clogged. But make the rules too strict and you scare off the wide-eyed novices and give them the impression that we are a bunch of elitists who don’t want them playing in our pool.

CC34 is definitely trying to court the young crowd, we’ve got a lot of newish anime cons in our area and the midwest is packed full of all kinds of genre cons of various sizes. We don’t know what’s going to show up but at the same time I think we want to balance traditional expectations against what the young folks are “used to.” What they’re used to isn’t always good. We’ve walked out on masquerades at some of these tiny WI cons because they’re just awful. Emcees on the stage making fun of the competitors and interfering in their performances, judges who have no sewing or costume-building skills at all but were picked because they’re friends with the director, rules allowing people to sing entire 5-minute-long songs with a hand mike (badly), limits on the number of walk-ons allowed so that they can let skits have 5 minutes or more….you name it. Every con that starts up runs a masquerade that re-invents the wheel without borrowing from other more successful masquerades, so we’ve seen hilarious and wrong taken to all new levels. So, there’s a lot we’re just NOT going to encourage, no matter how much the youngsters complain that it’s “not what they’re used to.” Tough, you’re not getting a five minute skit to sing Broadway tunes.

Stace

In less a “historian” and more “just a guy who remembers shit.”

Forty and Myrtle wore their “futuricostumes” at the first Worldcon, and the reports I read said it was just them.

At the second Worldcon, more people wore costumes, and there was a costume contest at the dance.

I believe “masquerade” was chosen because it originally was a costume-friendly dance/ball with a contest, but I’ve got no concrete evidence that’s definitely the case.

I do not know when things changed from a simple contest at the dance. There’s plenty of evidence that, through most of the 50’s, masquerades were still a simple affair, and the pros participated. There’s also evidence by the late 60’s of large, complicated stage costumes. John and Bjo Trimble world be the people to ask, they were there, in the middle of it. June Moffatt would also be a primary source.

Well, I think Byron has said it better than I ever could. I would
prefer  not to see the competition costumes in the halls before the
competition, but it should be up to the individual MD.  In our
experience, we see more of the “hall costumes in competition”
at smaller cons/masquerades, in order to encourage more people to enter.
At some cons, if we didn’t recruit hall costumes, we wouldn’t have had a
show.

Stace also made a good point about the size of competition costumes. If
the costume can’t get thru doorways without major contortions, if you
knock over 3 people every time you turn around, or if you need an
entourage just to move, it’s not really suitable for the halls. That
doesn’t mean competition costumes can’t be hall costumes. If we have
large competition costumes, we try our best to design them so they can be
easily modified for hall wear (different headpiece, removable train,
removing wings, etc.) We’ve also occasionally turned hall costumes into
competition costumes, by doing the reverse.

While we would not wear our competition costumes in the halls beforehand,
ultimately the rule should be up to the Masquerade Director, who
hopefully will decide based on what will provide the best show to the
audience.

Sandy

At 09:09 PM 4/17/2015, Byron wrote:

 

I’d like to use a few electrons
to look at how we got here.  Kevin and Andy really are the
historians of costuming, however, and I hope they’ll chime in.

In the beginning there were hall costumes.  There were no
competition costumes because there were no competitions.  In 1939,
Forry Ackerman and Morojo worse costumes Morojo made to the very first
World Science Fiction Convention (NYCon 1).  To the best of my
knowledge, no one else did so.  Over time, as more fen began to wear
them (e.g., E.E. “Doc” Smith, who liked to dress as his Lensman
character, Kimball Kinnison), concoms began to organize events at which
they could show them off.  These were very much masquerade parties,
not stage shows.  As time went on, opportunities were given for
persons in costume to step up to a microphone and talk about their
costume.

The popularity of costume-wearing at SF cons became so great that, by the
time the masquerade party had morphed into a stage show, entries
frequently exceed 100 in number and the Masquerade could run for
hours.  To reduce the size of masquerades, MDs began to use a rule
that no costume seen in the hall before the masquerade could be
entered.  This actually was very effective in cutting the number of
masquerade entries down to a reasonable size (e.g., 50).  The first
version of the ICG’s masquerade guidelines included the suggestion that
such a commonly found rule be included.  That version was adopted by
ballots counted at the 1992 ICG annual meeting (at CC 10).  It
worked.

Costume-Con is a child of SF conventions.  Its structure is very
similar.  Like SF cons, we have programming, social events, a
dealers’ room, and competitions.  The costume exhibit essentially is
a replacement for the SF con art show.  Similar to worldcons, we bid
years in advance for the right to hold a CC and the current members vote
on the bid(s).  While we don’t have the equivalent of the Hugo
awards, the multiple competitions in a sense fill that niche.  We
give tacit recognition to local costuming clubs, especially ICG chapters,
much as local SF clubs participate in the worldcon (especially if they
hold their own local SF conventions).  We’ve even had a Guest of
Honor on occasion (e.g., CC 33).

Since the time we included a “no hall costumes in the
masquerade” guideline in the ICG Guidelines in 1992, the wearing of
hall costumes declined in popularity at SF cons, though not so much at
CCs.  Masquerades also had gotten smaller.  That, I believe,
was the principal reason that the current ICG Fairness Guidelines dropped
that provision when they were adopted in 2006. It was no longer
needed.  It had become common for masquerades at local and regional
sf cons, and even at worldcons, to number fewer than 25.  In 2009,
for example, the Anticipation masquerade (Montreal) had 30 entries; in
2011, the Chicon 7 masquerade had 27.  Costume-Cons followed a
similar trend to smaller masquerades.  The CC 11 SFF masquerade had
43 entries.  The CC 29 SFF masquerade had 32; the CC 31 SFF
masquerade had 31.

At CC 32, the SFF masquerade had 79 entries, 2 1/2 times the number the
year before.  This was not just because of cosplayers attracted to
the first CC in Ontario since CC 13, since even the Historical, which is
lucky to have 20 entries, had 31.  CC 32 also set a new record for
memberships.  At this point, I have absolutely no idea how much pent
up costuming energy there is for CC 33.  Ther has never been a CC in
the South and few southern SF cons have masquerades, so we may get a lot
of members and entries.  The same may be true for 34, in Madison
Wisconsin, although there have been mid-western CCs.  It may not be
true for 35 in Mississauga, only three years after 32 in
Toronto.

So, should you once again exclude hall costumes from the
masquerade?  If you want to, go ahead; the MD’s word is law.
If you believe a CC (or any other con with a masquerade) is likely to
have a very large number of members both desiring to show hall costumes
and to enter the masquerade, you may want to do so in order to reduce the
number of entries.  It worked in the past; it may do so again.
You have other options, however, such as restricting the availability of
some awards.

“Are the days of saving one’s competition costume for the stage
fading?”  Those days are relatively recent — only about 20 yyears
old.  They don’t represent the long-term trend.  Whether
that’s good or bad is up to you.  As one experienced performance
judge, I’m not much concerned about the “wow” factor being reduced
by having seen the costume in the halls.  I generally don’t
remember that I’ve seen the costume in the halls and, anyway, I’m
also looking at it under optimum lighting and as presented to the
audience with the intended soundtrack.  Those factors all are
missing in the halls.  We may want to ask other judges for their
views on this point.

Byron the Boring

On Apr 16, 2015, at 10:03 PM, ‘Nora & Bruce Mai’
casamai@sbcglobal.net [runacc]
<runacc@yahoogroups.com
> wrote:

This oughtta stir some debate:   🙂

New subject:

More of our CC memberships are being filled with the ranks of
costumers coming from the cosplay community.   At conventions
that cater to that demographic, the emphasis is more about wearing their
“wow” costumes in the halls for maximum
effect.     Often, the costume contests are seemingly
more about getting all their fans in one room to cheer them on, rather
than a “masquerade”.   This environment was pretty
much the case in Toronto.   Don’t get me wrong – it was great
having all those new people.   And I applauded efforts to try
to impress our “con culture upon all those new folks
“.

I recognize that we must reach out to these costumers for the sake of
getting new blood, but is there a risk of making too much of an
accommodation?   I remember one person on
Cosplay.com (a forum that, at least
USED to be, a place CC concoms should be paying attention to) said
“I spent a lot of time on my one costume and I want to wear it as
much as I can”.   So, they wore it pretty much
everywhere.   They were not the only ones.   Now, in
some ways, I can’t blame them for thinking that way.   But,
stay with me here.

Any “wow” factor has been lost by the time they get on
stage.   Chances are, the judges will have seen them at some
point, beforehand.   This makes the costume less
“fresh”.   It’s also not as much fun for the judges
because they’ve seen it already – part of the fun for them is the
surprise factor.

I suspect this year’s CC will feel more “old school”, but I
wonder what will happen at CC34 and subsequently, at 35?

Are the days of saving one’s competition costume for the stage
fading?

Should there be more of an effort to encourage people not to wear
their competition costume in the halls before the masquerade?

In my opinion, you have a better masquerade without a
“preview”.

Discuss!

International Costumers’ Guild Archivist

http://www.costume.org/gallery2/main.php

“Those Who Fail to Learn History
Are Doomed to Repeat It;
Those Who Fail To Learn History Correctly –
Why They Are Simply Doomed.”

Achemdro’hm
“The Illusion of Historical Fact”
— C. Y. 4971

Andromeda

 

Bruce, that is definitely a panel topic!  Right up there with “how to present your costume” and “first CC info” panels.

Elaine

I think in the Stage vs. Hall question we need to explain a very important thing:

Masquerade is a balance. It has to be a fair competition for the entrants. It also has to be a good show for the audience.

Saving your work for the audience makes for a better show, and increases the impact on the judges.

We have here in the past, especially leading up to Worldcon being in Toronto and again in Montreal.

We say this over and over.

For CC32 we said it in every panel when we were talking about the masquerades and what it’s like.
That said, we  encouraged it but we weren’t dragons about it either, we had to strike a balance

I have not attended the costume contest at this convention for several
years because a) I don’t want to stand in line for an hour to get a seat
to see things from the waist up, b) I’d rather not stand at the back of
the room for an hour and a half, although standing does provide a better
view than sitting and c) the majority of costumes in the costume contest
are worn in the halls before the contest, often all weekend. Costume
contestants can have pre-recorded music, but very few have it. Of the
few who have music even fewer make good use of it. There is no point to
sitting in a crowded room to watch a costume contest when you’ve seen
most of the costumes better in the halls, even at a distance, and they
do little more than parade around on stage.

Michael

Thanks for the history on that Byron. 🙂

I had always grown up hearing Jacqui Ward talk about the great lengths she went to in keeping her costumes seceret, so in 2003 I was  under the impression that it was at all Worldcons and Costume-Cons.

I guess that’s the minefield when things are guidelines rather than rules,

We all kept the costumes secret, and went so far as to not even talk about them, lest we give a potential judge – or, Ghods forbid! – a competitor! any clues as to what to expect.  It was actually kind of fun!  “I’ve got a secret!”
Elaine

And we had three distinct camps – no, four.  The West, the East, Canada, & Everybody Else!

Elaine

Yeah, cause the Midwest is so vast and confusing to people on the coasts.

Nora
——————————————–

On Fri, 4/24/15, ECM ecmami@hotmail.com [runacc] <runacc@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Subject: RE: [runacc] Hall costumes are becoming the Competition costumes – Dawn, Elaine

And we had three distinct camps – no, four.
The West, the East, Canada, & Everybody Else!

Elaine

To:
runacc@yahoogroups.com
From:
runacc@yahoogroups.com
Date: Fri, 24 Apr
2015 07:18:15 -0500
Subject: RE: [runacc]
Hall costumes are becoming the Competition costumes – Dawn,
Elaine

As I recall, things were much more
competitive then, from what the Pettingers told
us.
Bruce From: runacc@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:runacc@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2015 7:53 PM
To: Betsy D
Subject: RE: [runacc] Hall costumes are
becoming the Competition costumes –
Dawn

We all kept the
costumes secret, and went so far as to not even talk about
them, lest we give a potential judge – or, Ghods forbid! – a
competitor! any clues as to what to expect. It was
actually kind of fun! “I’ve got a
secret!”
Elaine
To: runacc@yahoogroups.com
From: runacc@yahoogroups.com
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 19:16:00 -0400
Subject: RE: [runacc] Hall costumes are
becoming the Competition costumes – Dawn

Thanks for the
history on that Byron. 🙂

I
had always grown up hearing Jacqui Ward talk about the great
lengths she went to in keeping her costumes seceret, so in
2003 I was under the impression that it was at all
Worldcons and Costume-Cons.

I guess that’s the minefield when things
are guidelines rather than rules,some groups do
things one way, others another, others again something in
the middle.
When their are no absolutes
it’s easy to get roasted in the fires of public opinion
for makingunintentional faux
pas.

Dawn McKechnie
– President – Fibre Fantasy Artists of
Canada

To: runacc@yahoogroups.com
From: runacc@yahoogroups.com
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 18:19:35 -0400
Subject: Re: [runacc] Hall costumes are
becoming the Competition costumes – Dawn

I just checked the
Torcon 3 masquerade rules. They did not bar hall costumes
from competing. Byron On Apr 19, 2015, at
1:17 PM, ‘Kaijugal .’ kaijugal@hotmail.com
[runacc] <runacc@yahoogroups.com>
wrote:
We have here in the past, especially leading up
to Worldcon being in Toronto and again in Montreal. (I was
annoyed that at Torcon when I directly questioned people
wearing their competition costumes around in the halls all
day before the Masquerade was told by others, “Not to
worry about it/nobody cares.” as I had always been
under the impression that it was simply not done at that
convention. >_>)

You’re not going to change an entire
culture that has big costumes in the halls for reasons I
already mentioned,
HOWEVER,we can most
certainly indicate that at Costume-Con the EXPECTATION is
that your Masquerade costume is a
surprise,and
encourage that.
Make it something special, like when you dress
up for church.

Dawn McKechnie
– President – Fibre Fantasy Artists of Canada

To: runacc@yahoogroups.com
From: runacc@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2015 11:17:54 -0500
Subject: RE: [runacc] Hall costumes are
becoming the Competition costumes – Dawn

I can certainly understand the reasoning – but
this (CC) is not a huge con, normally. CC32 was an
aberration. Even CC26 was somewhat of an aberration,
because there hadn’t been a West Coast con in so long,
and Kevin and Andy worked their butts off to promote
it. I’m wondering if we need to do some education
about the differences between “hall costumes” and
“competition costumes”? Bruce From: runacc@yahoogroups.com [mailto:runacc@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Saturday,
April 18, 2015 11:09 AM
To: runacc@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE:
[runacc] Hall costumes are becoming the Competition
costumes

“Are
the days of saving one’s competition costume for the
stage fading?” I do not
think so. I think, in
part, the focus on being seen as impressive in the halls it
two fold. 1) And most
notably, the big cons like some of the one here have 5
thousand, twenty thousand, even a hundred thousand
attendees. The masquerade may be limited to only twenty or
fourty or in extreme cases a hundredmasquerade
entries. There is always a scrum for the limited slots in
the masquerade, (even at a show such as Anime North where we
have a Masquerade, Skit, and a specific Workmanship
competition), and the likelihood of you GETTING to show your
impressive, stageworthy costume on stage is low. Quite
frankly it’s a crap
shoot. 2)
Photography. In the old days, the best way of making sure
you’d have a nice picture of your really
impressivecostume was
to enter the masquerade and get a copy of the official
photography photo. Now in the advent of digital photography,
can just as likely get a nice photo with an accomplished fan
photographer elsewhere in the convention without
participating in the
masquerade. I think
therefore some people have become accustomed to wearing the
“impressive things” in the
halls.
Dawn McKechnie
– President – Fibre Fantasy Artists of Canada

To: runacc@yahoogroups.com
From: runacc@yahoogroups.com
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2015 21:19:42 -0400
Subject: Re: [runacc] Hall costumes are
becoming the Competition costumes

I’d like
to use a few electrons to look at how we got here. Kevin
and Andy really are the historians of costuming, however,
and I hope they’ll chime in. In the
beginning there were hall costumes. There were no
competition costumes because there were no competitions.
In 1939, Forry Ackerman and Morojo worse costumes Morojo
made to the very first World Science Fiction Convention
(NYCon 1). To the best of my knowledge, no one else did
so. Over time, as more fen began to wear them (e.g., E.E.
“Doc” Smith, who liked to dress as his Lensman
character, Kimball Kinnison), concoms began to organize
events at which they could show them off. These were very
much masquerade parties, not stage shows. As time went on,
opportunities were given for persons in costume to step up
to a microphone and talk about their
costume. The
popularity of costume-wearing at SF cons became so great
that, by the time the masquerade party had morphed into a
stage show, entries frequently exceed 100 in number and the
“Masquerade” could run for hours. To reduce the size
of masquerades, MDs began to use a rule that no costume seen
in the hall before the masquerade could be entered. This
actually was very effective in cutting the number of
masquerade entries down to a reasonable size (e.g., 50).
The first version of the ICG’s masquerade guidelines
included the suggestion that such a commonly found rule be
included. That version was adopted by ballots counted at
the 1992 ICG annual meeting (at CC 10). It
worked. Costume-Con
is a child of SF conventions. Its structure is very
similar. Like SF cons, we have programming, social events,
a dealers’ room, and competitions. The costume exhibit
essentially is a replacement for the SF con art show.
Similar to worldcons, we bid years in advance for the
right to hold a CC and the current members vote on the
bid(s). While we don’t have the equivalent of the Hugo
awards, the multiple competitions in a sense fill that
niche. We give tacit recognition to local costuming clubs,
especially ICG chapters, much as local SF clubs participate
in the worldcon (especially if they hold their own local SF
conventions). We’ve even had a Guest of Honor on
occasion (e.g., CC 33). Since the
time we included a “no hall costumes in the masquerade”
guideline in the ICG Guidelines in 1992, the wearing of hall
costumes declined in popularity at SF cons, though not so
much at CCs. Masquerades also had gotten smaller. That,
I believe, was the principal reason that the current ICG
Fairness Guidelines dropped that provision when they were
adopted in 2006. It was no longer needed. It had become
common for masquerades at local and regional sf cons, and
even at worldcons, to number fewer than 25. In 2009, for
example, the Anticipation masquerade (Montreal) had 30
entries; in 2011, the Chicon 7 masquerade had 27.
Costume-Cons followed a similar trend to smaller
masquerades. The CC 11 SFF masquerade had 43 entries.
The CC 29 SFF masquerade had 32; the CC 31 SFF masquerade
had 31. At CC 32,
the SFF masquerade had 79 entries, 2 1/2 times the number
the year before. This was not just because of cosplayers
attracted to the first CC in Ontario since CC 13, since even
the Historical, which is lucky to have 20 entries, had 31.
CC 32 also set a new record for memberships. At this
point, I have absolutely no idea how much pent up costuming
energy there is for CC 33. Ther has never been a CC in the
South and few southern SF cons have masquerades, so we may
get a lot of members and entries. The same may be true for
34, in Madison Wisconsin, although there have been
mid-western CCs. It may not be true for 35 in Mississauga,
only three years after 32 in
Toronto. So, should
you once again exclude hall costumes from the masquerade?
If you want to, go ahead; the MD’s word is law. If you
believe a CC (or any other con with a masquerade) is likely
to have a very large number of members both desiring to show
hall costumes and to enter the masquerade, you may want to
do so in order to reduce the number of entries. It worked
in the past; it may do so again. You have other options,
however, such as restricting the availability of some
awards. “Are
the days of saving one’s competition costume for the
stage fading?” Those days are relatively recent — only
about 20 years old. They don’t represent the long-term
trend. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you. As one
experienced performance judge, I’m not much concerned
about the “wow” factor being reduced by having seen the
costume in the halls. I generally don’t remember that
I’ve seen the costume in the halls and, anyway, I’m also
looking at it under optimum lighting and as presented to
the audience with the intended soundtrack. Those factors
all are missing in the halls. We may want to ask other
judges for their views on this
point. Byron the
Boring

On Apr 16,
2015, at 10:03 PM, ‘Nora & Bruce Mai’ casamai@sbcglobal.net [runacc]
<runacc@yahoogroups.com>
wrote: This
oughtta stir some debate: 🙂 New
subject: More of our
CC memberships are being filled with the ranks of costumers
coming from the cosplay community. At conventions that
cater to that demographic, the emphasis is more about
wearing their “wow” costumes in the halls for
maximum effect. Often, the costume contests are
seemingly more about getting all their fans in one room to
cheer them on, rather than a “masquerade”.
This environment was pretty much the case in Toronto.
Don’t get me wrong – it was great having all those new
people. And I applauded efforts to try to impress our
“con culture upon all those new folks
“. I recognize
that we must reach out to these costumers for the sake of
getting new blood, but is there a risk of making too much of
an accommodation? I remember one person on Cosplay.com (a
forum that, at least USED to be, a place CC concoms should
be paying attention to) said “I spent a lot of time on
my one costume and I want to wear it as much as I
can”. So, they wore it pretty much everywhere.
They were not the only ones. Now, in some ways, I
can’t blame them for thinking that way. But, stay
with me here. Any
“wow” factor has been lost by the time they get on
stage. Chances are, the judges will have seen them at
some point, beforehand. This makes the costume less
“fresh”. It’s also not as much fun for the
judges because they’ve seen it already – part of the fun
for them is the surprise factor. I suspect
this year’s CC will feel more “old school”,
but I wonder what will happen at CC34 and subsequently, at
35? Are the
days of saving one’s competition costume for the stage
fading? Should
there be more of an effort to encourage people not to wear
their competition costume in the halls before the
masquerade?In my
opinion, you have a better masquerade without a
“preview”. Discuss!

Well, yeah.  You want I should say “the Middles?”
E

Re: photography…34 already has a photographer lined up. Realtime, the folks who do greenscreen who you might have seen at Teslacon. We’re going to give them all the promotion they want, so if good photos are all people want out of their costumes, then really, they can hang out in the halls and patronize Realtime all day/all weekend and never set foot on stage.

Damaging or staining a costume has been one of the things I’ve tried when exhorting people not to wear their competition costumes in the hall. Despite being one of the most logical reason, it also seems to be the one that falls on deaf ears the most, and I don’t get it. The other thing I try to explain is that competition is a time-consuming process and can be everything from boring to nerve-wracking, so if you’re not comfortable giving up your entire Saturday to the process (orientation, rehearsals, judging, sitting in the green room for hours), then don’t! But that also doesn’t seem to get through to people. Sure, there are small cons where it’s not quite as time-intensive, when they don’t have rehearsals or green room call is like five minutes before stage time, but at cons where space in the masquerade is a premium, it WILL take your Saturday away. You won’t be able to enjoy the con for more than maybe an hour around lunchtime. Putting yourself through that is worth it when the masquerade itself is worth being in (and hopefully winning a little award at), but otherwise…

Maybe I’m just getting old, too. I don’t get sitting around a green room and judging/rehearsal all day in the same costume I’ve worn for two days straight just to go out and do a little circle on the stage. I don’t get how anyone can find that thrilling.

Stace

So, our “knitting circle” (re: costuming nerds) were talking about this yesterday, and my theory was regarding specifically younger costumer/cosplayers, is that they make several costumes a year, so they’re not in the mindset to wear their stage outfits the following year in the halls like many in our community do Nora disagreed, saying it’s more like 1 or 2.

many of the ‘celeb’ cosplayers sure make 12 a year, but they are not all what the old guard would consider stage worthy.
Boo from Monsters inc, is a t shirt wig and bike shorts,

not that some of the things they produce aren’t amazing, just the numbers get inflated by simpler ‘cosplay’ costuming

and I am sure that everyday normal cosplayers do this as well. 1-2 killer pieces, then a bunch of fun stuff.

there’s even a movement to be disney characters from the thrift with no sewing involved at all. just het the colors right.

none of this takes away from the times they throw down and do wonderful work that would win on stage in any era

but they dont make 12 of those a year.

and this is not new at all

I recall an old costume apa article by karen turner ( may have been schnaubelt then ) saying she did 12-15 a year. the ones we all remember from the old VHS tapes, and the rest were 1 weekend pretty star trek dresses. So she always had something new and nice to wear, but they weren’t all “turn of a friendly card”

Ricky

Gravely MacCabre
http://www.castleblood.com
http://facebook.com/gravelymaccabre
http://www.etsy.com/shop/gravelymaccabre

tv show clip samples at
http://www.veoh.com/channels/castleblood

——————————————–

On Mon, 4/27/15, ‘Nora & Bruce Mai’ casamai@sbcglobal.net [runacc] <runacc@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Subject: [runacc] Survey – (was Hall costumes are becoming the Competition costumes…)
To: runacc@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, April 27, 2015, 8:29 AM

So, our
“knitting circle” (re: costuming nerds) were
talking about this yesterday, and my theory was regarding
specifically younger costumer/cosplayers, is that they make
several costumes a year, so they’re not in the mindset
to wear their stage outfits the following year in the halls
like many in our community do Nora disagreed, saying
it’s more like 1 or 2. So for those of you
who are closer to the ground like the MACS and Dawn, etc,
what are your observations? Am I wrong? I’ve had
the impression, from FB and forums, because there are so
many anime/media conventions, that they are producing at
least 3 costumes a year. Maybe they’re not
competition-level? I intend to throw this question out
on the D list, FB and Cosplay.com, to get a better feel of
it for future discussion. Bruce

I know cosplayers who may make 3 costumes per convention, then sell them
after they’ve worn them a few times.

Michael

On 2015-04-27 06:29, ‘Nora & Bruce Mai’ casamai@sbcglobal.net [runacc]
wrote:

> So, our “knitting circle” (re: costuming nerds) were talking about
> this yesterday, and my theory was regarding specifically younger
> costumer/cosplayers, is that they make several costumes a year, so
> they’re not in the mindset to wear their stage outfits the following
> year in the halls like many in our community do Nora disagreed,
> saying it’s more like 1 or 2.
>
> So for those of you who are closer to the ground like the MACS and
> Dawn, etc, what are your observations? Am I wrong? I’ve had
> the impression, from FB and forums, because there are so many
> anime/media conventions, that they are producing at least 3 costumes
> a year. Maybe they’re not competition-level? I intend to throw
> this question out on the D list, FB and Cosplay.com, to get a better
> feel of it for future discussion.
>
> Bruce

As someone who’s speaking from almost entirely the Anime/Gaming/Multigenre costuming and convention-running perspective, there’s really no perception of “competition-worthy”. That doesn’t formally exist in such conventions and is looked on as a bit snobbish (YMMV).

Pretty much what Vicky said. Now, I haven’t gone to a large anime con in years (AnimeCentral, Anime Detour) but when people are talking about churning out 3-8 costumes a year, they’re talking about hall costumes. They want to have things specifically for series/fandom photoshoots and to fill spots in groups with friends, for the most part. But sometimes these hall costumes do end up on stage, whether on a whim or because the masquerade simply exists.

As to the idea that the big cons “don’t care” if you wear your stage costume in the halls? Not always true. At Dragon*Con there is an entirely different culture of costuming, it really can’t be compared to most cons we regularly attend. It’s a special monster. Some of the big anime cons have all-day pre-judging so you’re FORCED to wear your costume in the halls, even for a little bit, something I personally abhor with every fiber of my being. But competition at these same places can be cutthroat. People will lie about commissions, fight for the coveted spots in the show, sandbag with costumes that’ve already won Best in Show elsewhere, etc.

What’s in it for the cosplayers? Sure, winning is “just” a ribbon and a certificate some places, but some places it’s swag. Some places it’s a large trophy (I have 5 sitting on my mantle across the room). So if it’s “just” a certificate, why the vicious competition? Don’t blame Heroes of Cosplay, it was around before that pile of fake drama. Competition is still a thing, in people’s minds, so to dismiss something as simple as “don’t damage your costume or prejudice the judges” as unnecessary isn’t taking the whole picture into account. We’ve all collectively listed a lot of great reasons not to wear your competition piece all weekend, and “we’ve seen it already, it’s boring” is the LEAST of those reasons.

The reason I advocate a rule or at least a guideline is because in a lot of cases, cultivating a habit or a new (old) way of doing things takes time, patience, and a lot of one-on-one handholding. I would say Geek-kon needed at least 5 years of the costume department and masq. directors diligently sticking to their guns and slogging through a routine before people started to catch on that the masquerade is more fun and interesting when you bring your biggest, shiniest thing and really put some effort into it versus wearing closet-raided Naruto costumes and making out with your gf on stage. Actual example, not making that up. But that routine included requiring rehearsals and checking with people before handing them a hall cosplay award for the same costume they were taking to the masquerade. Having rules in place speeds it up – without rules, that transition would have taken a lot more than 5 years.

I don’t know that we’re ever going to come to a consensus but at least understanding where everyone is coming from is important. Plus, it’s very hard to blanket-statement any of this. Every region has different habits and traditions. What flies at Anime Boston is gauche at Anime Detour, and what’s passe on the coasts is still really popular in the Midwest. To a point, we have to let regional cons do what works in their region. But there are some things that aren’t a bad idea to attempt to universally adopt, and that’s why we argue on this list. 🙂

Stace

I don’t think we need to bemoan the
death of tradition. We have to face the fact that costuming has
evolved and that the vast majority of costumers today have come into
the hobby through cosplay. The cons they go to are media and anime
cons. That’s the style of con they’re used to, and it’s not wrong
just because it’s new. Some of those cons have masquerades/cosplay
contests that are poorly run. Some are very well-run. It’s not a Canada
phenomenon, it’s a new-generation phenomenon. Across North America
there are hundreds of large media & anime cons with thousands of
costumers attending. As someone who attends both types of con (older
SF model and newer media/anime model) I often feel caught in the
middle and frustrated with both camps.

If we want CC to survive, to stay
relevant, it needs to evolve and adapt in turn to reflect where
costuming is now. I’m not saying it needs to turn into a media or
anime con, because that’s not the kind of con it is. But some change
is inevitable and necessary to connect with where most costumers are
right now, what they’re expecting and what they’re used to. We can
teach them about costuming tradition while also keeping an open mind
and, importantly, being willing to learn ourselves. Costuming has
exploded in popularity and so much has changed. Rejecting any change
only hurts CC and ensures that it’ll dwindle and fade, and I really
don’t want that to happen. I think we can all play together nicely if
everyone keeps an open mind.

Re: the original topic, it’s a valid point that CC isn’t a
50,000 person con where there’s no way for you to see everyone in the
halls, where your chances of getting onstage are slim, so people tend to aim for hall photoshoots. I get that, but I personally don’t think it needs to be a hard (i.e disqualifiable) rule to keep your
costume secret before the masquerade. It hasn’t always been even at CC/Worldcon, and I think that enforcing it will only cause drama. I do think
that it should be heavily encouraged that people save their “Wow”
costumes for the masquerade, with explanations as to why. A lot of
people already do this and with some work and reinforcement I think
we can get the message across without turning off newcomers.

— Maral Agnerian

(Queues song “Tradition” from FIDDLER ON THE ROOF…)

I think we’re all aware that media con and anime con “con culture” is very different from general science fiction con and Costume-Con “con culture.”

At Dragon*Con and anime cons, it’s all about being seen in the halls, hanging out with other cosplayers, and doing photoshoots. Frankly, this is less stressful then competing in a stage competition where you might actually lose. You also get to be in the costume/character you love for a longer period of time if you’re hanging out in the halls. I can see the plus side of this.

I believe the emphasis on hall costuming vs. competition costuming exists because (1) it’s more fun and less stressful, and (2) this is the generation where everyone gets a gold star just for participating, (3) this is the generation that grew up on anime and Japanese culture, where competition is discouraged for the benefit of the overall group, and (4) some percentage of the costumes are not made by wearer (e.g., they cobbled it together from thrift store clothing, or commissioned someone else to make it for them, or bought a commercially-produced costume online.

Costume-Con grew out of the World Science Fiction masquerade and the make-it-yourself movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s, and has always had strong competition-based roots. Yes, there are “standard” competitions that are written into the ConStitution, but we try to offer a variety of competitions, and encourage each concom to try other types of competitions and events, in order to appeal to a wide variety of tastes. Maybe the Historical competition is too scary, but drawing designs on paper is your thing, or making cool clothes for your dolls, or whatever.

Masquerade rules have not been standardized over the years, and have been at the discretion of each Masquerade Director. Can anyone give me an example where wearing your competition costume in the halls before the competition was explicitly forbidden? My memory of this (which may be inaccurate) is that it has always been put forth as a strongly worded suggestion. As others have pointed out, the more people that see a costume before a competition, the less the element of surprise and pleasure at seeing it for the first time, which may affect the perception of both the audience and the judges. If the competitor doesn’t care and wants to wear their costume in the halls, that’s their prerogative.

Fashion Show is a separate case, because those costumes are special, and seeing them in the halls (or entered in the F&S/F masquerade the night before) is generally considered a no-no. The Fashion Show costumes entered in the Masquerade issue occurred at the very first convention I attended, and it left a lasting impression of impropriety. Again, if you’ve seen it in the halls or in a previous competition, then there is no incentive to attend the Fashion Show and see the design-to-reality magic on stage. And again, I’m not sure if there has ever been a specific proscription spelled out in the rules for Fashion Show participation.
I’m not saying we need a level of paranoid secrecy equal to what was going on at Worldcon in the 80’s, but cosplayers do need to be aware that if they wear their costume in the halls all weekend and also decide to compete it, they may not do as well in competition due to “costume fatigue” (i.e., the judges saying, “Oh, we’ve seen that before.”) This is human nature, and cannot be helped unless we completely sequester the judges all weekend until it is time to judge their event (which is not practical).

The fact is that Costume-Con is a general costuming convention with classes and competitions, and is unique as such. It has not significantly altered its base structure as other trends in costuming have come and gone, and should not now to appeal to groups involved in cosplay, steampunk, etc.  (The world doesn’t need another media/cosplay convention; there are already plenty that do that very well.) However, I do think there is room to maintain the existing base structure of Costume-Con while adding events on a con-by-con basis that might appeal more to cosplayers or other groups.

My two cents.

–Karen

 

On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 3:36 PM, castleb@atlanticbb.net [runacc] <runacc@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Masquerade rules have not been standardized over the years, and have been at the discretion of each Masquerade Director. Can anyone give me an example where wearing your competition costume in the halls before the competition was explicitly forbidden? My memory of this (which may be inaccurate) is that it has always been put forth as a strongly worded suggestion. As others have pointed out, the more people that see a costume before a competition, the less the element of surprise and pleasure at seeing it for the first time, which may affect the perception of both the audience and the judges. If the competitor doesn’t care and wants to wear their costume in the halls, that’s their prerogative.

Fashion Show is a separate case, because those costumes are special, and seeing them in the halls (or entered in the F&S/F masquerade the night before) is generally considered a no-no. The Fashion Show costumes entered in the Masquerade issue occurred at the very first convention I attended, and it left a lasting impression of impropriety. Again, if you’ve seen it in the halls or in a previous competition, then there is no incentive to attend the Fashion Show and see the design-to-reality magic on stage. And again, I’m not sure if there has ever been a specific proscription spelled out in the rules for Fashion Show participation.

Competitions have rules. If you want to compete, you have to follow the rules. If a masquerade director or con chair feels strongly enough, maybe this needs to move from a “suggestion” to a “rule.”

I kind of like the “A costume worn in the halls other than to transport it and yourself to the green room is not eligible for Best in Show” is a nice compromise. You can enter, but if you want the biggest big ribbon, you need to keep it under wraps.

 

“Now, at these large media cons mentioned (Dragon Con, AN, etc.) , their shows are more “costume contests and maybe they don’t care  – this is Costume-Con.   Costume-Con has masquerades.”