Interview: Andrew Liptak and the History of Cosplay

Holly speaks with author Andrew Liptak about his upcoming book "The History of Cosplay," and the way that humans have used costume to play, tell stories and even protest throughout time. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Today we
have an interview for you. I recently chatted with Andrew
Liptoc about his upcoming book, Cosplay a History. This book

(00:25):
may surprise you because while that term cosplay is relatively
new in the vernacular, Andrew's book actually covers a lot
of human history. Then that history coverage is not too surprising.
Andrew got his degree in military history. This conversation will
touch on sixteenth century Mummers and Jules Burn and the
earliest instances of costuming at fan conventions. Here are some

(00:48):
names that will sound familiar if you're a regular listener
to the show. Yeah, head's up, listen for that. Hugo
gernsback talk. So here is our chat. So Andrew, first off,
I know that you costume, but lots of people costume
and they don't read a book about its history. So
what made you want to write this book? Um, writing

(01:08):
is the only thing I'm really good at, and I've
been a journalist for more, you know, more than ten
years at this point, and it just seemed like a
good way to put the whole story together rather than
like a series of blog posts or newsletter issues or
a feature article somewhere. Um, there's a lot to the
story of cosplay and it it goes you know, back

(01:30):
hundreds of years. Um, there's a lot to say about
the modern iterations of it where there's um, you know,
in two twenty two everything that everything goes into the
cosplay world, whether it's three D printing, or racial dynamics
or entertainment, the mechanics of the entertainment industry. Um, all
that makes sense to just at least make sense to
me to put it together into one package that's a book,

(01:51):
because understanding the entire context of what cosplay is helps
give you a better picture of how we come to
it today. And you know, it's I've always want to
write a book because I have lots of books. I
would very much like people to have a book that
has my name on it. There you go, I think
that's fair. It is interesting. I'm glad you kind of

(02:12):
set it up like that because I think for most
of us that go to fan conventions or even just
are you know, aware of pop culture. Every generation seems
to think that they're the ones that are costuming and
people weren't really doing it that much before, But we
know that's not true, as our discussion will reveal. UM.
I do want a level set though, because I imagine
any of our listeners, who, as I just said, have

(02:34):
gone to conventions or no pop culture, know what costplay
is kind of intuitively, but I also know because I
remember when it came to the forefront as a replacement
for costuming in fan groups. Um, it's a term that
doesn't necessarily have and agreed on definition, So I want
to know, how do you define cosplay? The word itself

(02:58):
is a mashup of the word costume play, and it
was coined in the nineties by a Japanese writer who
wanted to try to find the right term for it
and couldn't really like costuming didn't quite have the right effects.
Older fans from science fiction fandom called it like, you know,
the like a costume, masquerade or costume in their costumers,

(03:18):
so cosplay seemed to be the right captured the right
tone for it. So you're you're costuming and it's playing.
It's it holds up today because it's it's still in use.
Um my definition is has basically been sort of an
active fandom. Anytime somebody is dressing up as a character
out of that love of fandom, out of that sense
of wanting to become a character, They're dressing up to

(03:40):
relate to a story somehow. And when you think cosplay,
you think superheroes or Star Wars or anime. Um M.
I wanted to make sure that my definition was really broad, because, um,
you know, a story is not always fictional, it could
be nonfictional. So in the book, I include things like,
it's not quite cosplay, but it's sort of under this
big brown umbrella of other activities where somebody is relating

(04:03):
to a story. So I include some things about reenacting
and protesters. I think it's basically see it anytime you're
you're you're dressing up to relate to a story somehow,
whether that that is to you know, dress up as
somebody who is basically doing charitable work at a hospital
or just going to a convention, and basically things like that.
There is an instance of historical cosplay that you talked

(04:23):
about in this book that charmed me so utterly, and
I had not ever read about it before even though
it involves a person that I really really like, uh,
and that is Jules Verne, and he apparently through quite
a party in eighteen seventy seven, and you relay that story,
will you tell us a little bit about it? Yeah?
So Jules Verne, if if you don't know, he's the

(04:45):
science fiction author who wrote twenty thousand leagus under the
Sea from the Earth of the Moon. And he was
a he was a really big author. He was known
all over the world for his stories. It seems like
he had a bit of a that was a troubled
personal life, but like you know, his family had its
ups and downs, and his son was getting into some
trouble and was about to be shipped off to basically

(05:07):
a penal penal colony or or like a really strict
school of some sort, and he basically wanted to take
his family's mind off of the trouble. So they basically
commissioned you basically throw a big party. Is you know
you're about to ship your your ship, your delinquents sent
off to school, why wouldn't you throw a throw a
costume party? And what I when I found most interesting
about this is that when like they sent out invitations

(05:29):
it was apparently very expensive, and they put a lot
of they put a lot of effort into this. People's
showed up to this party dressed as his characters. Um,
I don't remember off the top of my head if
records survived about which what costumes they were, but he
certainly had a really big impact on deliterary world at
the time. So I can't imagine that like, you know,

(05:49):
people were dressing up, you know, with with some of
those you know, influences now that they might not have had,
you know, the direct visual references that they have that
we have today, where you know, you can freeze frame
a movie and you know, get a character from very angle.
But you know, there's certainly a lot of examples of
where people were sort of you know, dressing up to
be inspired, you know, as inspired by this. And you know,
when you're you know, a kid and you're dressing up

(06:11):
for your own costing party, you're doing the same thing.
You're you're trying to, you know, approximate what you imagine
those characters might look like. And um, I really wish
you you know, knew what he might have thought of that.
I imagine that it's pretty you know, like any author
or any TV personality or film actor. You know, we'd
be cut, you know, utterly charmed by the idea of
seeing your characters come to life. And this isn't the

(06:33):
only instance that that one thing that didn't make it
into the book because I learned about it, um like
right after I finished edits is Arthur Cornan Doyle also
did this. Um he didn't he didn't throw a party,
but he would dress up. Um. He's he's obviously the
author known for creating Shark Holmes, but his favorite character
wasn't Sharlock Holmes. It was a guy named a Professor Challenger,
who is featured in a you know, a book called

(06:56):
Lost World where some explorers go off and discovered this
isolated plateau in South America where they're they've discovered dinosaurs
in this in this Lost World. And apparently he dressed
up as his own character every now and then. And
I found that to be a really really fun little anecdote.
And so and there's even there's instances further back. I

(07:17):
was just at Star Wars celebration and I was talking
with somebody in line and they mentioned it. Oh, I
studied our history and there was this Roman emperor who
who dressed up as Hercules, or at least there there
are busts of statues of him dressed up as Hercules.
I think I think that the notion of us dressing
up as characters to sort of relate to the story
is something that has lived with us for a very,
very long time, and it just shows to go about

(07:40):
just how much of storytelling creatures we are. We just
we just really like to sort of immerse ourselves in
the world. In some cases it's just by imagining it,
but in other cases, um, it's by you know, trying
to figure out what outfit this character might of warn
and you know how the might have acted or looked.
And I'm glad you mentioned that, because I really am
fascinated by this. The more I I look through your
book and read all of these stories, I kept being

(08:02):
struck by the fact that I have theoretically always known,
but when you're seeing it all grouped together, it really
drives the point home that there have always been people
doing this throughout history. You go way back through history,
including things like mummers and pagan folk traditions back to
the sixteenth century. So this is something that as a species,

(08:24):
humans have always loved to do. And I'm curious. I
think you're you kind of intimated it just now talking
about how we we are always trying to tell stories.
But why do you think we so instinctively turned to
costumes for everything from warding off evil to just partying
as superheroes and all points in between. Like a costume

(08:46):
is a quick cultural go to almost around the globe
as a way to do this, which I find fascinating. Yeah, So,
as I said, I think we're storytelling creatures. It's it's
our most important technology I think as a species, if
we if we really want to get really philosophical about it,
it's it's the way that we can convey information to

(09:09):
one another. It's it's a way that we share our
values and our adventures and thrills and excitements, and our
imagination is really really great. If you describe something, you
can have a picture of it in your head. What
things like books and now movies or comic books they do,
they allow they allow us to sort of make those
thoughts concrete, which is really this really in my mind,

(09:31):
a really magical way to look at this because it
lets us transfer what was once thought into a sort
of telepathy that we share from personal person, why we
put costumes on and why we pick up props. I
think is just a way to sort of extend that
and just to make those thoughts a little bit more
manifest and to just to bring them those thoughts a
little bit more to life for the benefit of somebody

(09:52):
who's on the on the sidelines, whether that is somebody
in a captive audience on a stage or sitting in
a movie theater or convention. You know, you see these
characters come to life and you can believe for a
second that you know, these stories, these thoughts, these ideas,
these lessons now come together into into the real world.

(10:13):
And that's that's I think one of the real powers
of causplay is that it lets you bring these characters
to life and you know, the we really love you know,
these are these are really phenomenal stories. Like you know,
I'm a that if once people read the book, you'll
see you I'm a big Star Wars fan. Um, this
is a really you know, her story of heroics. It's
this It's a story of how people really triumph over

(10:37):
evil and they make decisions that help them save the world.
And I think that you know, we're always striving to
sort of see those things in the world, and it
made manifest and costumes just help us make that a
little bit better. I don't know about you or or
any listeners, but like when I see Darth Vader, I
get a chill that goes down my spine because you know,
it's it's a real visceral thing. I'm around story trips

(10:59):
a lot more, and and they they're terrible shots, so
I'm not quite as worried about them. But you know,
when when you see when you see other characters that
that you know, really elicit that that sense of fear,
that real gut instinct of emotion, and you know you
see them in front of you, it's it's a really
powerful thing. Um. And I've heard actors talk about this, like, um,

(11:19):
somebody was talking about, you know, coming up against Darth
Dater and that just being really like, oh my god,
it's real because you know, it's it's a really imposing
costume and it's a really imposing character. And the same
thing is like when you see a character that's really heroic.
If I see a you know, a little girl seeing
a so Kotano for the first time, or Princess Leiah,
and it's like their favorite character ever. You know, that's

(11:41):
got to be a really powerful thing for them because they,
you know, all that character represents is now made manifest
and it's no longer an intangible thing. It's a it's
a tangible thing in the real world. And if if
the character is real in the world, everything that they
represent must be too. And so I think that's that's why,

(12:01):
you know, causeplace can be such a powerful thing. That's
a beautiful way to look at it. I had not
really thought about it in those terms. Um, I do
want to talk about some more specific historical things because
I kept finding just gems in the text that jumped
out at me. One of them was your mention of
political protest costumers from the eighteen hundreds who were known

(12:25):
as the Fantasticals. Will you tell us a little bit
about that. Yeah, this is a really fun thing that
I came across, and it was one of those things
that was just like a really crazy, random happenstance just
going through archives. I think I was going through the
Library congress Is Archives online and just trying to like
just typing in costume and just see what popped up.

(12:46):
So the fantasticals were This needs a little bit of
set up just to to fully understand the context. There
was hundreds, There was the US was still a fairly
young nation. There was a lot of the consternation about
the state of the nation's malicious system and you know,
people would be conscripted into helping out, and there was

(13:07):
a lot of corruption and just general disillusionment with the
organizations that were set up to you know, presumably protect
the country or protect the region or whatever. What people
started doing was dressed and this was largely a phenomenon
confined to like the Philadelphia area and the New York
City area, UM, and it expanded a little bit out

(13:27):
from there. But what really it was sort of in
that corner of the country, and what people started doing
was just dressing up as these ridiculous looking soldiers, UM.
And it was really just there's sort of a form
of protest um. It was. It was an idea that like,
you know, if we make this you know, sort of
shinal shina statirical light on the problems that we were seeing.

(13:48):
With this, you know, people will recognize just how how
ridiculous and how many problems are and you know that
we see this today, you know, look at the Daily
Show or take your pick for any any political comedy
routine that's out there. You know, You're satire is a
really is a really powerful tool in and of itself.
And so what these what these folks would do is
they would just dress up on these outlandish uniforms, like

(14:10):
swords that were way too large, or you know, ridiculous
amounts of ornamentation and buttons and ribbons and uniforms. They'll
just throw these really loud parades where they would just
go up and down the street. And I imagine it's
a little bit like you know any any you know,
causeplay group, which that can be described as like it's
a drinking group where sometimes dressed up in costume. You know,

(14:30):
a lot of these guys we get, you know, fantastically
drunk and then run around and make a lot of
noise and drive everybody nuts and then you go off
to do the next one. And like there was a
guy that there was One of the stories there was
that they elected a guy who was probably not all
there like as their leader, and it was just you
know that they were just sort of showing that just
that how ridiculous this this malicious system was and over

(14:55):
over time it sort of became morphed out of that
satirical thing and it became more of like an tuition
in of itself, or you know, this is just the
thing you do. You know on this day you go
and this these loud parades, you honk horns, and you
dress up in these ridiculous costumes, and like a lot
of communities just hated them because they were so obnoxious. Um,
and there's some stories of where they were arrested and

(15:18):
you know because they were like they get chased out
of town because they're just being being just that annoying.
And it's basically just one of those things that just
it sort of just grew with with time. That's just
that's like one example. And and I sort of came
across that while looking at like, you know how with
this idea that costumes can be used to relate to
a story. This is just one example of many throughout

(15:39):
history where this has happened. When I was working for
a text site called The Verge, Handmaid's Tale had just
come out, and um, there was a it was a
major abortion bill in Texas, and um, you know, protesters
started showing up as handmaids from from The Handmaid's Tale
and they still do this today. That there was an
entire organization that's sort of spring up to sort of
try to get handmaids to stand in front of each

(16:02):
state capital across the country. And I think that that's
again costume and can really in bringing these ideas to life.
Is this very tangible thing, and it can really sort
of jolt somebody into thinking, you know, it's realizing what's
what's going on, and you know, this is what we
see a lot. You know that the Tea Party movement
had its own protesters and they dressed up as revolutionary

(16:22):
figures because you know, people relate to those stories. That
makes them recognize and sort of understand what their messaging is.
There's other examples from the book as well. There's a
there's a guy in Turkey who who dressed up as
Darth Vader during some of the protests there. And I'm
sure there's you know, any anytime you have got big,
you know, really big movements, you'll see other people dressing up.

(16:43):
Another another really good example was the suffrage movement, where
women would dress up as Columbia or Um Lady Liberty
and Um you know, there there's some pictures that we
that are included in the book that are from the
National Archives, These phenomenal pictures of these women dressed up
in costume on the capital, you know, at this at
this point in moment where they didn't have as many

(17:04):
rights as they do today, and it's it's just incredible
to see. There is another historical connection to costuming and
cosplay that I wanted to talk about because I know
some of our listeners participate in this group, but not

(17:25):
everyone might know about it, and it's pretty interesting. You
trace in the book the origins of the s c A.
Will you kind of give a brief rundown of what
the s c A is and how it started. Yeah, So,
the the s stands for Society for Creative Anachronism. It's
it's basically the folks who dressed up as as medieval
nights in an armor and there. It's the scope of

(17:47):
the group is a little bit broader than that. It's
it's sort of bringing the you know, the medieval world
to life. Um so, like it's connected to like the
idea of Rentfair's medieval reenactments, and the group itself sort
of comes out of this weird branch of science fiction
fandom nineteen fifties nineteen sixties where cosplay wasn't was sort
of a thing. Dressing up in costume a sort of

(18:07):
a thing at that point. But what happened that there
was a over in Berkeley, California, a bunch of science
fiction fantasy authors sort of got together for like this
UM event at their house and they were basically the
encouraged to dress up as sort of pseudo medieval characters,
and you know, they all showed up, they had a
good time, and then they decided that they would go
do it again and again, and it basically grew into

(18:28):
this much larger group. So UM like authors like Paul
Anderson or marian Z Bradley were part of this, and
it was just this idea of again sort of getting
back to the idea of relating to a story, whether
it is real or fictional. And Medieval Europe has sort
of its own story in and of itself because we
have this really peculiar idea of what is medieval and

(18:50):
like what is actual reality. I think a lot of
ways the the sd A and I'm not a member.
I'm not a member, and this is just like I
sort of touched on book, but they sort of have
just an idea of what medieval Europe might have been like,
and it's sort of really influenced by, like, you know,
the Tale of King Arthur and you know, a lot
of those myths, those fantastic myths that we were probably

(19:13):
all familiar with, and rather than like as is a
straight up historical reenactment group, it was sort of like
playing with the idea of what we think of as
medieval King Arthur's Europe rather than what it actually might
have been like. And I think anytime you start have yeah,
there's sort of this drift towards reality at some point
where you um, you know, stuff will tend to get

(19:35):
a little bit more realistic over time, but for the
most part, it's it's it's sort of a little bit
more informed by this this idea and this this love
of the love of this this um of those of
those stories, and it sort of grew from there. One
of the folks I spoke with talked about how a
couple of years after this, they basically showed up at
at a big convention in California, one of the world

(19:56):
cons and um, you know, there's alongside science fiction off,
there's talking about the future. There are you know, these
people dressed up as knights and turning armor doing demonstrations
in the front lawn of this hotel and um, you know,
hanging out in the hallway. It's interesting just to see
how this sort of started in science fiction fandom, because
that's where sort of all these folks sort of knew
each other from and it sort of grew into its

(20:16):
own things. And now we have this huge network of
of renaissance fairs all over the country. You can go
to you know, established permanent locations that are attractions, or
you know there's you know, the ones that will you know,
it's basically an outdoor convention where they'll you know, show
up with tents and armor and you know, have a
good time over the courts of the weekend. And um,

(20:37):
the essay itself has become this massive organization um that
you know, you know, thousands of people are part of
all over the world, and it's just it's a really
it's a really great example of community and people just
sort of sharing in this this a sharing in a community,
but sharing in this idealized shared story with one another.
It's so fascinating to me, like the level of structure
that exists now and knowing that it just kind of

(20:59):
started with some people wanting to kick around in fun
outfits is pretty great. I'm glad that you mentioned world
Con because you mentioned that in the book is kind
of one of the first real inflection points of this
twentieth century move into convention costuming um that the first
World Con was kind of the first time we saw
it happen. So I am hoping you will talk a

(21:20):
little bit about organized fandom or sometimes disorganized fandom, and
its ties to cosplay history. Yeah, Phantom was a really
strange and very um, sort of wild west of fan
organizations over the years, especially around the New York City
area where a lot of these authors are from. So

(21:40):
science fiction proper, you know, there's I like the light,
I like the like in history to a geologic formation,
so where you have you rarely have definite breaks where
all of a sudden you have one thing that was
one thing and another thing that is a different thing,
you know, right next to each other, where there's a
straight clear line of delineation, and history often has like

(22:01):
these trails that sort of extend out and merge into
other things or they sort of uh change and sort
of weave in and out science. You know, trying to find,
like a put a pin where science fiction comes from
is a really difficult thing to do because you know,
you can always find something that comes before it. Um,
you know, you've got Jill's Fern, but then Jules Verne

(22:22):
wasn't influenced by you know, folks before him, and then
like you know, Mary Shelley had influences and like, you know,
there's academics who say that, you know, science the first
science fictional novel you know, was back in like the
ancient Greek times, and you know it's I I like
to sort of talk about stuff like, you know, what
what does modern bandom and modern cosplay and modern science
fiction look like? And a lot of yeah, and when

(22:44):
it comes to that, like you have a couple of
very clear points that you know, you were definitely in
a point where there is science fiction, but you know
it's it's nebulous as to what sort of came before
or after science fiction had been around for you know,
a little while. There's a there's an influential magazine called
Amazing Stories that was first published in by guy named
Hugo Gernsback. That's largely seen as sort of the birth

(23:06):
of modern science fiction because it was their stories about
the future, about technology, and it's sort of like the
the the early thing that looks the most like what
we have as modern science fic, even though it's today
it would be very outdated. That magazine Amazing Stories was
really influential because AIDS spawned a lot of imentators from
other rival companies who wanted saw that hey there's an

(23:28):
audience for this, let's jump on this bandwagon and go
from there. Um. And there's a lot of fans who
were like, hey, I like these stories, I want to
read more of them, and they were consuming all of
these things. UM. What Gernsback really did that was interesting
was he put a letter column in those magazines, and
it was basically encouraged those fans to write in comments
about the story, Um, just I like this thing, or

(23:50):
you know, I want to meet other science fiction fans,
and he basically set up an actual network of of clubs, UM,
the Science Fiction League, the trying to get you know,
I think his reasons were very self you know, self centered.
I think he was mostly interested in making sure that
he had a block of people that were in you
continually engaged with science fiction fantasy literature. And you know,

(24:14):
they would continue to go back to his magazines over
and over again, regardless of his intentions. Um, you know this,
these clubs really helped get the way to get fans
to talk to each other. They write each other letters
through these magazines. They and they would like, Hey, this
person is from New York too, I'll go try to
you know, I'll track them down. And they would go
and do this, and they formed their own their own

(24:35):
in person clubs where they could get together and talk
about science fiction fantasy books. And this is sort of
where we see the roots of modern pandom is that
they are people who are gathering because of the shared interest.
And when you get a couple of people people to
gather in a room, they have a lot of fun time,
they talked about their favorite stories. They nerd out of it,

(24:56):
and then they realized like, hey, there's more people out
there all over the place, and let's all of us
get together into one big room and talk about the
thing we love the most. And before there were a
handful of other small conventions around the country and around
the world, there was one in the UK that there's
a couple around the United States of these proto conventions,
but this was the first World Science Fiction Convention, was

(25:18):
like a really big officialist type thing. It was it
was a time for the World's Fair that year, and
they attracted fans from all over the country, so not
just in New York based fans, um all of whom
were squabbling with one another and and you know, had
all these they some of them didn't really like each
other very much, but they were able to bring in
fans from you know, California, like Ray Bradberry and Forrest

(25:41):
Ackerman and Morojo Wash I'll get to in just a second,
and they, um, you know, this is a gathering as
a as a community, a real sort of inflection point
for this community that you know, hey, we can get
together and we can talk about this stuff. And look,
there's people that share my that are like me, and

(26:01):
it's it's a real validation for all those people to say, like,
you know, this this is something I don't know. I
don't know many people in my life that really like
this sort of thing, but now there are others out
there that that's a really a validating thing for one's
existence and I think a lot of people who have
been a fan of anything will will sort of recognize that.
So that was, Yeah, that's sort of the foundational base

(26:22):
layer for all this. This big convention happened in nine
and two fans Forest and Morojo. They show up. They
decided to dress up in costume that they're from the
movie called The Things to Come From based off of
an h. Q. Wells book, and um, they sort of
arrived and everyone's like, what the hell are you doing?
This is weird and which is you know, not not

(26:44):
uncommon reaction whenever anybody in costume shows up unexpectedly. He
just hangs around and he gets a couple of pictures
taken of him that the Forest cut pictures of himself
taken and his girlfriend is there with him. Who she
actually she's actually the one who made the costumes. Um,
he has for a long time gotten a lot of
the credit, but she's the one who actually made them.
The next year, the world they decided that hey, we're

(27:06):
gona hold this convention again a year later in Chicago,
and Forest and Morojo show up again in costume, and
a whole bunch of other people show up in costume
and they decided, like, you know, this is really cool.
They walked around the con, they decided to walk out
in public. Um. They got stopped by cop um who
basically thought they were all nuts. And it wasn't until
one of them pulled out his like he was actually

(27:27):
a government worker, and he pulled out his idea and said, no,
I'm not, I'm really not this crazy person. Um. And
they ended up going over to a newspaper office to
say like, hey, we're time travelers in the future. We're
here for our interview that's gonna run tomorrow. Um. And
as far as I could tell that never they didn't
really quite go for that. But it was just an
idea of the just you know, fans being goofy. And
you know, you have to remember these are also kids

(27:48):
that are like eighteen twenty one years old that you know,
the same age as a lot of Cause players today.
So you know, there's a lot of you know, we
the modern day, we like doing a lot of goofy
stuff in in kit and um. It's a nice little
shared point from you know, people a hundred years ago,
we're doing the same thing. What costume ever? Ever? And

(28:10):
then the next year the con went to Denver, and
people did it again, and they decided to hold like
a costume contest at this convention, and um people brought
these really elaborate costumes. They like one of them spent um,
you know, months putting feathers, you know, making a bird
costume like I was like a birdhead. And then another
one fished a big piece of I don't know it

(28:32):
was a glass or plastic like for help us, like
a spaceship helmet. Um. Robert Highlin, who is the author
Starship Troopers, was a guest of honor and he didn't
realize this costume contest, but then he decided, I'm gonna
go a is um the most realistic the world's most
realistic robot. And you know there's just a lot of
other a lot of other stuff like that. And from
from there what happens is that this becomes a pillar

(28:55):
of the of the of the convention scene. Is like
of course, at every on now you have a costume
contest where people get to just it's usually it was
usually like the last day of the convention and people
just go to hang out and have fun, you know,
just have a good time and then throwing some prizes
like the best, the best costumer or you know, it
would vary from from place to place. So what they

(29:16):
would do, um, actually looking at there's a great organization
called FANAC which documents a lot of this stand history,
and what they're doing is they have gotten scans of
a lot of like the documents that they were sending
out to people. So usually what would happen is that
a member of the con would get a couple of
updates ahead of time saying like, you know, this is
where the convention will be, and this is the rate,

(29:36):
and you know this is what we're happening. And you know,
here's a letter from the organizers saying how excited we are.
And like, over time you're starting to see them saying like,
oh yes, and this year we'll have a constume contest again,
which is gonna be our favorite thing. Here's some ideas. Um.
You know, it just became a big pillar. Uh. You
know a big part of this that you know just
happened a year after year. Um, and as it grew,
it became more formalized. Um. You know, the costume contest

(29:59):
was as a masquerade and had rules that were set down.
There's entire organizations that came out of it. U UM,
the Costuming Guild which helps set up those rules, came
out of it, and they set up their own conventions
and programming tracks at World const This sort of because
people were like, they might, yeah, I might the science
fiction stuff is kind of fun, but like, you know,
I really liked sewing. I really like making costumes and

(30:22):
it it sort of helped demonstrate that, like, fandom is
not limited to just being an enthusiast or something you
can you're you know once, fandom can appear in different ways. Um,
it can be a you know, you can write fan fiction,
you can be the super reader who collects all of
the magazines, or you can make the costumes based off
the cover art of of the of the books and

(30:43):
magazine covers. So that's sort of how costuming became a
thing within science fiction fandom. Is it was this, It
just sort of grew little by little as more people
sort of realized and I think it just takes It
just takes one person like forest Or and Moro Hope.
Let's say, oh I really like that character, I can
dress up as them. I have this shirt and my
my wardrobe, or if I do, if I put this

(31:03):
thing on it will make me look like this character.
And you know, as we're storytelling creatures, we've always sort
of gravitated towards adding a prop to you know, we're
making a story, and you know that just helps that
bring it to life just a little bit more. Ah.
And now it's the funnest part. You mentioned some of

(31:30):
these early costumes, and this entire book is really for
someone that loves cosplay and costuming and history. It is
just full of photos that are really astounding. Some of
the earliest of these convention costumes, including Forrest Ackerman's costume
in and others that they're clearly older photos, but there

(31:53):
is an element to them that feels so entirely familiar
to anyone who has been to an event like this
in the modern an era. UM, I want to know
how you managed to get ahold of all of those
amazing photographs. So there's a couple of couple of places. UM.
I've been a five first member for since two thousand
and I've carried a camera with me to a lot

(32:15):
of events, so a whole bunch I took myself over
the years. I announced the book back in two thousand
nineteen Spring two thousand nineteen and actually announced in the
day that I was leaving Star Wars Celebration in Chicago,
and I, you know, we've known that we're gonna be
announcing it that day, so and I was going to
the con. So I was like, all right, well, I
need to start taking pictures for quoting air quotes here research,

(32:38):
not just taking in all the amazing costumes there. But
over the course of two thousand nineteen, I ended up
going to UM celebration, I went to Dragon Con, I
went to Rhode Island Comic Con, and UM. I didn't
make it to New York Comic Con because my daughter
was born like the week before. I wasn't allowed to leave.
I went to Grant State Comic Con with a really

(33:00):
small local convention and Boston Fan Expo, and all along
the way it was it was taking pictures of you know,
the state of the modern of modern cosplay and specifically
looking for you know, costumes that have been three D
printed or that had been made out of foam or
you know, five out first members and you know everything,
you know, anything that sort of struck my eye that
would that would be really cool, you know, just like

(33:20):
a we wanted to document a cool costume, but also
just sort of the idea of like, you know, I'm
looking for stuff that to for this book. Obviously I
wasn't born in the nineteen thirties and and wasn't around
for a lot of those conventions, so some of those
came from some places. There's there's one guy I have
to really call out is John Cooker who is a
longtime fan, science fiction fan, and he had this really

(33:43):
incredible archive of pictures to use UM that he really
graciously let me use for the book. And these were
from you know, all over the place, nineties, nineteen, you know, fifties, sixties,
and it was really you know, his generosity to let
me use those real he helped include them in the book. UM.
And there's other authors to um. The late Mike Resnick

(34:07):
was a long SI he's a science fiction author, UM
who incidentally bought my my first short story for a
magazine called Galaxy's Edge. And he had been a long
time staple in the in the science fiction costuming community,
and UM he had taken pictures of cons for most
of the time that he was doing that. So his

(34:28):
his widow and daughter were able to provide a couple
that we were able to use and just or just generally,
you know, looking through a lot of the pictures that
he that they had was was really great just to
get an idea of the complexity and like the real
craft that was going into these into these costumes, you know,
in the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties. There's other sources as well. UM.
In some cases we went to UM Archives, National Archives,

(34:50):
Library of Congress, Florida. I got some pictures from a
Florida archive of for Halloween. You see, Riverside has a
has a massive science fiction collection UM and fandom collection,
and they had I found I wish I had found
it a little bit earlier in the process because I
probably would have gotten more pictures from there. But there's
a guy who had taken off pictures of cons for years,

(35:11):
and he had some really incredible pictures of UM fans
in costume. UM. There's a really great picture of some
that I included the book about Star Trek fans who
were hanging out at the con at a con UM
and you know, you look at their faces and it
just looks like they were they could have been any
of any of the kids I saw at Star Wars celebration.
You know, the same enthusiasm was there and the same

(35:33):
excitement for being there. Um and actually U so yeah,
like there there's there's a whole lot of places where
were able to source source images from and along the
same lines, you know, we're able to get a lot
of good, um, you know, interviews from folks who were
involved in the fan community from there. Um. There's a
woman named Astord Bear who's the daughter of Paul Anderson,

(35:55):
and she had been in involved in fandom from from
all of her her life. She probably pivotal information about like,
you know, what was what was it like when Star
Trek came in, and she had some great pictures of
herself in Star Trek and a Star Trek costume, um,
and you know, stuff that really impacted. So there's you know,
there's a lot of people here alive who are still
familiar with you know, they were watching you know, the

(36:18):
fan scene and seeing these early these early days of
costuming um, and they were able to you know, share
those memories and and really sort of helped add to
the book in a lot of in a lot of ways. UM.
So um. Yeah that that that's where a lot of
that came from. Is just is a lot of research,
a lot of interviews. It wasn't just all just all
historical folks, um, you know, it was also people who
were involved. Now, Um, you know I talked to people

(36:40):
about you know, three printing and um you know what
was like cow did, like the Internet changed things in
the um um. Adam Savage of the MythBusters was a
really great um source for that. He's been involved in
the costume world for years, and you know, he had
some really great insights into how, you know, the modern
the modern movement has sort of come about. It's interesting

(37:01):
that you mentioned the modern movement because I do, like
I said at the top, there is this sense, I
think for everyone that like they are the first, they
are living through the first great explosion of fan costuming.
But one of the things that I always love seeing,
and you include a lot of it in your your book.
You have a section that specifically about when Star Wars

(37:24):
premiered and how quickly there were people. Certainly they did
not have like the levels of like vacuum formed a
BS plastics that we have today, but almost instantly, by
the end of nineteen seventy seven, there were already people
putting together Stormtrooper costumes. Um, well, you talk about some

(37:44):
of those, because I know that we both share a
love of this particular topic. So if you type in
like nineteen nineteen seventy seven Star Wars costumes, you'll find
some really great examples. Some star Wars dot Com interviewed
a couple of folks. And there's every now and then
you'll see somebody posting a picture. Oh the was me
back in you know, you know June seventy seven that
you worked on this costume. Um, there's a guy I found. Um,

(38:07):
this is actually again some of the stuff just sort
of happened, you know, spontaneously. I think I announced that
I was doing the book and um, you know on Twitter,
and somebody got in touch thing like, oh yeah, my
cousin made these really incredible costumes and you know, in
the nineteen seventies and eighties, and it got me in
touch with him. And this guy named David Ray he
has sadly since passed away. He died not too long

(38:29):
after I spoke with him. Maybe you know, several months
later he had cancer. Um, but I was thrilled to
talk to him, and he he was a really gracious
interviewe because he walked me through what he did, and
he was basically said, well, I was a kid and um,
you know, liked costumes, and I ended up, um going

(38:49):
to see Star Wars you know, thirty or forty times
in theaters, and I just took a notebook with me,
and I would just jot down notes. And sometimes he
would get so wrapped up in the movie that he
would forget to take notes in like darn, I becau
see the movie again, and um, yeah, oh no, twist
my arm. And so he he basically went and he
made stuff out of cardboard. He got an old army helmet. Um,

(39:11):
he would just cobble these costumes together and it looked
really great. I mean like there's a point to where,
like you know, if you know, if you're real accuracy personally, like, oh,
that's not really accurate, but it's it's more like the
spirit behind it. You know, you just see how much
how much he cared about the costume and the character
that you know, he was able to build these really
fantastic looking costumes because like and you know they're good

(39:33):
enough for that the local movie theater like hired him
to basically walk around round nineteen seventy nine, because back
then movies would just run continually. They wouldn't be like
the short you know, three or four weeks that they
run in theaters nowadays, Like you know, Star Wars was
the theaters for months and and the year it got
rereleased a whole bunch of times, and seventy eight and

(39:54):
seventy nine, and so they hired him to basically you
know him and his his his siblings would like they
dressed up in these costumes. They walked around the theater
and you know it's a storm Trooper, starth Vader. Um.
He made a Bobafet costume. He went on and made
um like Batman and um, I want to say, a
Planet of the Apes costumes. Yeah, there's just a lot
of creativity. And you know people were doing these costumes

(40:16):
and really, you know, they're making them out of really
novel ways like you know, you know, cardboarder or sheet
metal or you know, they're throwing stuff together. Um, and
these are not necessarily people within that capital f random
community who might have put the skills to use through
that through the community, but they were just like they're
just coming into a blind and like, you know, this
is how you you know, you know, this is how

(40:38):
I put this together star troper, or make this sort
of helmet, And it's just really a real stroke of
creativity because especially when you consider that, you know, there
weren't the plethora of images that are available these days
like nowadays. Like a really good example of this is
in two thousand sixteen, when right before Rogue One premiered,

(40:58):
Um Lucas Film brought the short Tripper costumes to celebration
in London and people took really the high resolution photos
of all those costumes. They were able to identify some
of the used parts and what went into them, you know,
down to like the ribbing on the undersuit and the
pants and the right brand boot that they bought to

(41:20):
use for that costume. And within months they had already
begun sculpting their own costumes out of this armor in
their vacuum. For me, so I was able to go
to the Rogue one premiere as a short tropper. Before
the film premiered, Um, you know, people had made the
helmets and they made all these other parts and yeah,

(41:40):
they you know, that's we we could do that because
we have all these resources nowadays. But back then, you know,
you you had just you had to go to the
theater over and over again. You might or you might
have like a random it's not very clear picture in
star log or or a newspaper. Um, you certainly didn't
have sort of the hands on access that you had
you have these days, and you know that the world

(42:01):
has changed so much. I mean, video games will release
hundred hundred plus page documents, you know, outlining every single
angle of a character, or here's the paint here's the
exact paint color scheme. Yeah, for for Halo in Finite,
they three four, the three industries released this massive document
for for cause players, So like this is where all
these parts look like, and this is all the colors

(42:21):
you need, and this is what from every angle and
you know, we just these folks did the same thing
without all of that, and it's just really incredible to
see that level of creativity persist. I'm so grateful that
you captured some of those stories for this book because
it is one of those things that, um, I'm I'm
blown away by their workmanship, even though you said like

(42:42):
in a lot of cases they're kind of throwing it together,
but the ingenuity is off the charts. So it's really
really nice that we have a way that that's been
documented for future generations to enjoy. There are so many

(43:04):
little gifts in this book, like for someone that loves costumes.
Like I said, there are just many many things that
I know surprised me. But I want to know to
close out, what was the most surprising thing you learned
while you were researching this. That's that's a hard one.
I've been trying to think about, like what this might be.
There's there's so yeah, there's so many like just random
little anecdotes and then sort of one of the things

(43:25):
about histories, you pull on a thread and there's always
a little bit more of the story. And so I
think one of the things that blew my mind it
really helps shape some of the book was the idea
that the reason that we have you know, you see
so many people using three D printers these days, is
not because they are suddenly like you know, magically widely available.
There's no reason. The patents expired on the original technology.

(43:46):
And because those patents it's expired, companies don't need to
pay license and fees to use the technology, and as
a result, they can make a cheaper device. And if
you it's a little bit cheaper to make, you can
maybe drop the price a bit. And so the price
on the three D printer has gone steadily down. You know,
it's still a couple hundred bucks, but you know it's not.
If you're a dedicated customer and this is something that

(44:08):
you're doing a lot of, you know that that's a
that's an investment you can make in order to make
those parts and that you might be looking to make.
And I mean I have one here at my house.
You know, I never you know, I never would have
thought that I have have a It's a little one,
but you know, I've made costume parts on before. Um,
and I've made a little twice for my kids. And um,
I've got friends who have you know, two or three

(44:28):
of them, and they make entire costumes on them. What
that sort of helped me realize is that the and
and this is sort of a broader picture of of
just the idea of access to to cosplay. As the
price goes down, access goes up. And that appears in
a whole lot of ways. So if you have you know,

(44:49):
you don't need of multi thousands of dollars to make
a vacuum forming machine if you want to make a
short trip, or now you can you can get buy
a three D printer, or if you have access to one,
you may need to own it. You go to a
local library and print up parts. That's something I've done.
You can make a costume that's a lot cheaper than
ever before, and it might still be an investment, but
it's not quite what it used to be. UM. The

(45:12):
same thing goes for materials um e V A phone,
the stuff that is in your yoga mat. You know
that is an incredible cause, you know, material for cause
players to use, and you know, people realize have realized
for years that you know this, you can make really
incredible armor out of it. And there's a lot of
ingenuity that goes that. It's also really cheap. You can
you can go nowadays, you can go to Joan Fabrics
and buy sheets of it. UM you can buy a

(45:34):
yoga mat and you can you know, make parts out
of it. I think that was sort of like the
biggest revelation I had, because it's sort of transformed the
book from my idea of like, all right, these events happen,
and this is sort of what it tells us about
Bandam into an economic story about how this is why
this has expanded. And I really believe that it's it's
sort of the the access to cheaper materials and the

(45:57):
widespread knowledge of how to do this stuff. You know.
You know that's how by um, you know, forums or
or Facebook pages or YouTube, UM, you know, it teaches
a much greater population how to do this. And that's
also helped along by the idea that when you see
sort of cause play in action, whether it's UM through
a faith you know, friend of yours on Facebook who

(46:18):
might have been got been new convention and you have
to see them tag in the picture, or you know,
if you see the main characters on the Big Bang
theory caused playing and it's like, oh, that's the thing
I can do and that and that sort of helps
guide that access along. UM. And so you know that
that was that was a really big revelation that I
had that really helped change the book, is that it's

(46:39):
it's the reason that caused play is exploding so much
is that just more people can do it, more people
can afford to do it, and um, it's not limited
to just a really narrow segment of the population of
of folks. Who can afford to have, you know, to
develp a thousand or two thous on a on a
really high end costume, or or suspend a decade toiling

(46:59):
away on it. Actually, there's another surprising thing that I
learned UM that that's kind of fun. Is that another
technological advance that really helped the introducing the intention of
the blue ray. Because what that did is, you know,
if you're watching on UM in a theater, you can't
pose it. VHS does not quite have the right resolution,

(47:22):
and when you pose it you get all the lines
across UM. But then when you have DVD s come around,
you can, oh you can you can freeze frame it
and you can sort of get a good glimpse of
what a piece of armor is. But even then it's
still not quite as you know, the the the resolution
not quite there. But blue ray did is it really
let you see those those those costumes and a really
high resolution that people have never seen before absent actually

(47:45):
seen the costume in person. If if a studio happened
to like tour them around or um, you know, if
you have to come across one and if you're like
a really wealthy collector or work or whatever. Uh. An
anecdote that was sharing with me from a local Bofet
cost players that once when the blue rays came out,

(48:06):
what they started to do is they freez framed on
Boba Fett as he was walking around his like what
thirteen minutes of screen time, and they recognized like, oh,
this this thing on here on his arm. We've never
quite been able to figure out what it is, but
it's a it's a calculator, and we were able to
They were able to figure out what brand that calculator was,
so then they will go track it down and they

(48:28):
could integrate it into their suits and it was now
just a little bit more accurate. Um, the little bits
on his knees, the little the dark things, those sort
of like bentle picks, and then you just never been
able to see them that resolution before. So that was
another really that was like aha moment for me. It
was like, oh, well, of course, you know, you you
if you can see something, you can you can track
down more information about it and if you can't see it,

(48:49):
it just didn't occurred to me that you just wouldn't
have been able to have seen those things that detail before. Um,
So that was that was a really kind of a
neat revelation. Well, I will say this, Uh, this entire
book is full of fun revelations. So thank you for
writing it and putting it together, and thank you for
spending this time with me today. Thank you for reading it.
I'm really thrill you liked it and that you found
it to be interesting and exciting and full of revelations.

(49:11):
It's been sitting in my head for since two thousand sixteen,
and um, you know it's it's nice to have people
realize that it's not just a nonsense or garbage that
has just poured out of my head. So I really
appreciate it. Andrew, Thank you so much. I really really
appreciate it. Thank you. It's been real joy Andrew. In
case any of our listeners have follow up questions, and

(49:33):
they probably will, where can they find you? You can
find me on Twitter at at Andrew Liptech. You can
find me on Instagram at liptach a A. It's l
I p t a k A. I think I left
Instagram at one point and then when I came back,
Andrew Lipptech has been taken so and then, um, the
other place you can find me is a I read
a newsletter called transfer Orbit and you can find that

(49:55):
at transfer dash orbit dot ghost dot io. And um,
that's where I write about science fiction, fantasy, history, UM,
pop culture, the intersections with real life, and if all
goes well, I'm gonna probably write some more. I'll certainly
be writing more about cosplay. But um, I have an
idea for um something I'm calling the lost chapters, which

(50:16):
is stuff I didn't quite get to for the book.
So I didn't get around to writing a chapter about furries,
which is something I really wanted to do, and just
it sort of ran out of time. Um, there's a
whole bunch of other things that at some point over
the next couple of months I'm gonna be going back
and do a little research and just writing up some
of those things to sort of add on to the book,
because I I really want to learn, I want to
keep learning more about it and um, you know, adding

(50:37):
more to the story. I want to once again thank
Andrew for hanging out with me and talking about a
topic I certainly and pretty obviously love that book, which
is Cosplay a History. Will come out June twenty, but
you can preorder it now wherever books are sold, and
then I have a little listener mail for this one.
That is a special request from our listener, Christie Mean,

(51:01):
who writes Hi, Tracy and Holly. My son, Alex has
been listening to your podcast at bedtime for years. I
turned him onto stuff you missed in history class when
he was having a hard time settling down at night.
Now your show is part of his nightly ritual and
he is always pulling up facts that he learned from it. Recently,
his class visited the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, and

(51:21):
he was excited that he already knew about famous inmate
al Capone because of the show. Alex's birthday is coming
up on June, so what we are doing today is
wishing Alex a very very happy birthday. I hope it
is wonderful and you have a great time, and that
you get all of the love and delight and delicious
things that everyone should get on their birthday. E mean

(51:44):
birth day, I mean weirth day, Alex. I won't sing
that song because I don't like it, but I do
love birthdays, so I hope it's a great one. If
you would like to write to us, you can do
so at History Podcast at I Heart radio dot com.
You can also find us on social media as missed
in his story, and you can subscribe to the show
on the I heart Radio app or wherever you listen

(52:04):
to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
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