Costume College is held yearly in Woodland Hills, CA and hosted over 650 costume professionals and enthusiasts from all over the world.
It. Was. Amazing.
Granted this was my first Costume College, but wow what an experience!
My first experience was dragging my 97lbs of luggage into the hotel to see a small group of ladies sewing in the lobby! OMG my people! After a hugely stressful week at work, losing my wallet in the airport (was later recovered) and just hours and hours of travel time I had finally arrived and there were people hand-sewing who looked up and smiled. It was the best. I stashed my luggage and hung out in the lobby instead of taking a desperately needed nap. Meeting and chatting with people was totally worth it.
I think the experience might be better for non locals who are starved for costume events than for locals. It was an amazing experience to see so many costume enthusiasts in the same room, so many costumes all at once. That simply does not happen in Kansas. Even at cons and the renaissance festival the pickings are slim slim in comparison to this. If I had this locally, regularly and knew a lot of the people I might be less stunned by it all. In future years, because I am totally going back, the classes will eventually get repetitive, the heat of traveling in July and the effort of it all will be more noticeable.
I am planning what I will offer to teach. Making ostrich feather plumes for sure! The materials are easy to pack for that. Altering sun hats into period hats. Making a petticoat from a bed skirt.
I also met cute spaniels.
Thursday night
The first night had a galaxy theme and people went all out. This was when I saw the bizarre nature of Costume College for the first time. In a crowded, fun, party space there were people in perfect 1830s gowns, two women as coneheads and a woman with an entire Star Trek space battle embroidered onto her dress all standing next to each other, chatting. After barely four hours of sleep it was a lot to take in. It was so fantastic I couldn’t stop smiling, but also brain jarring. Woah.
