Category: Costume College

Right! Costume College! I went! I taught some classes! I went to parties! I dressed up! I didn’t sleep much! I kicked people out of my room at ungodly hours!

The longer report: the classes I taught went well — I ran out of time to do an actual GOOD styling job in the wig class, but it seemed like people were happy with getting the theory. Phew! I taught “Turkish Influence on 18th Century Fashion & the Zone Bodice,” “Draping the 18th c. Robe a la Francaise,” and “1770s Big Hair – How to Style a Wig into a ‘Pouf.'”

I only managed to sneak in a few classes: “Stays and the Body” was quite interesting, especially as I haven’t studied early 18th c. stays very much. Looking at the changes in silhouette and patterning was quite interesting. Sally Queen’s jacket lecture touched on some of the points I made in my 18th c. Turkish class, plus listening to her talk is ALWAYS great. And Trystan’s Macaroni class was fabulous — I love men in crazy late 18th c. costume! – even if I almost fell asleep at the end from lack of sleep.

The socializing was, as always, fabulous, altho everyone at my gala table was ready to fall asleep (too much fun the night before, plus the snoozerific music didn’t help — hello, it’s dinner at Versailles! Ever heard of playing 18th century music??), but once we got up and started dancing things improved. It was lots of fun to wear my Nell Gwyn costume, even if as soon as I put it on I had an overwhelming desire to be wearing jeans. Besides that costume, I really didn’t dress up (okay, wore the 1920s dress on Friday, but didn’t bother on Sat. & Sun.). Too tired!

All in all, it was fun if not 1000% fabulous… but that was mostly my burnout from Costume Con. However, as you can guess from my last post, shopping was great and I have tons of ideas for this year’s costumes!

And, most important – pictures!

For the first time that I have ever seen, and I’ve been going to Costume College for many years now, they actually have their classes listed on their website BEFORE memberships have sold out. This means, if you haven’t yet bought a membership, that you can see which classes will be on offer before purchasing – for the first time ever. You don’t get to see the class schedule (which hasn’t yet been mailed out, and only goes to those with memberships), so you don’t know which classes overlap and which ones have limited attendance… but you can get a much clearer idea if the classes will appeal to you. So if you’ve hemmed and hawed about going, you’ve got some more information to help you make that decision!

(And note: memberships WILL sell out ahead of time, so if you’re thinking of going, get your money in soon… plus that way you will get into some of the limited classes. If you wait too long, you probably won’t, and those can sometimes be some of the coolest classes).