Costuming

My first costume I wore that I can remember was a store bought Tinker Bell outfit. I loved that mask. I can still remember the smell of it. I wore it for a number of Halloweens. At the end of the evening, my mother would take the costume from me (probably with protest) and put it back into its box where it would stay until the next Halloween. I remember when my father and mother made my brother a Jawa costume. My father made the eyes out of LEDs and my mother free formed the costume. They received a lot of compliments on that one.

At my first science fiction convention, a Mini Con in Atlanta (I still have the button that was the badge), I saw adults wearing really good original Trek costumes. Fantasy Fair in Atlanta was were I saw my first real Costume Contest in all its glory. My first costume was one of the faceless drones from the Hellfire Club in a costume entitled “X-Men vs. The Hellfire Club” after that I was off and running. I entered a World Con as Blake from Blake 7 before most of the Science Fiction community knew what Blake 7 was. I then started to help with the contests eventually even running or co-running a few. About the time I started doing theater full time, i stopped costuming for convention. It was a matter of time and interest.

I met my friends Jeff and Angelo over a bottle of spirit gum at a contest. We put together one of the first Vincent costumes off of some grainy photos in Starlog and a couple of the shows. I was the one in the costume because one of our other friends had said that Men can play Women but Women can’t play Men. So we took that as a challenge. We enter me as Calvin Hobbs right when the comic strip was starting. I still remember going to the door of the hotel room having spent about 3 hours in the makeup chair and having Angelo shout “Wait!’. I turned and he held up a couple of rolled tube socks and said “Do you want to hang to the left or right?” We won that night and got to spend sometime afterwards talking to George R.R. Martin who complimented us on the job.

After Yale, I started building puppets again. A few were entered in costume contests. Sergio Argones will always remember me for my “Star Trek: The Muppet Generation”. At the time, I didn’t make clothing for anything bigger than a puppet. I rejoined with costumers that I had been friends with for years. They asked me when I was going to do another costume. I said that unless inspired, I was done with it.

Fast forward to Shoreleave. Ariel wants to do a costume that her father and her came up with. So I make a Tigger costume for her. She wins most humorous for “Crouching Tigger, Hidden Dragon”. Since then I have done a number of costumes for the David Family for various science fiction conventions and ren faires. Now I have a chance to do a costume I have wanted to do for years. I have my warm bodies I need, I just need clever and cheap ways to create armor and I’ll have the last piece of the puzzle. It will be a lot of work for about 1 minutes worth of stage time but if I can pull it off, I’ll probably “retire” with it. Until Caroline comes up with a really clever idea for a costume......