Fantasy mixes with fashion
Convention: Costume enthusiasts gather to show off their creativity with themes such as science fiction and history.
By Marego Athans
SUN STAFF
Bridget Landry is a rocket scientist. No kidding -- she's at work on the Mars Pathfinder scheduled to land on Mars on the Fourth of July.
But yesterday found her amid 400 costume fanatics at the 15th annual Costume-Con at the Baltimore Hilton and Towers, dressed as a "computer pirate" -- draped in floppy disks, computer chips, circuit boards, mice, letter keys and blinking lights.
"It took me two years to collect the hardware," said Landry, 36, who works for Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif.
"People didn't believe that I wanted nonworking disks. I was pulling old computers apart, popping keys off old keyboards."
Such is the life of the costume set. Most of the Costume-Con's 400 members are professionals in other fields by day -- engineers, physicists, doctors, politicians, even employees of secret government agencies -- who spend all year or longer preparing for the annual convention that showcases their imagination.
Many, like Landry, started as teen-agers fascinated with "Star Trek" and "Star Wars," which led them to science fiction conventions, where groupies often appear in costume. They got hooked on the practice of projecting fantasy through clothing.
They found an outlet for their creative longings when Costume-Con was launched in 1982 by author and master costumer Adrrienne Martine-Barnes. It's now held each year in a different part of the country -- featuring competitions and shows on such themes as fantasy, science fiction and historical dress; workshops on wig making, corset construction and how to create fangs and teeth; and tips on making historically authentic underwear.
These people are serious, but mostly they're clever. One prize winner this year: A spoof on a Coca-Cola commercial, featuring a polar bear who had just devoured Santa, appearing in a Santa suit with a Coke in hand, titled "The Claws that Refreshes."
Landry, who helped lead a workshop on "twisted historicals" yesterday, once created Victorian Strauss Waltz gowns in camouflage fabric -- an idea hatched when she became annoyed with out-of-control waltzers and joked to a friend that they needed "waltz police."
This weekend, Landry earned a prize for a parody on Maidenform's "I dreamed" bra campaign. "I dreamed I conquered the galaxy," she declared, modeling a bra with foot-long protruding gold lame-covered cones.
In keeping with fashion show tradition, yesterday's Future Fashion Show closed with a wedding dress. But this one's model was the Bride of Frankenstein and her ghoulish entourage.
Attending the bride were Vladia the Vampire Priestess, wearing a black and red silk, lace, velvet and lame gown, studded with rhinestones; a demented doll with horizontally protruding pigtails, a very stiff Frankenstein carried by his "best man" named Dirge -- really a guy named Rob McKeagney of New Hampshire, a research associate at a nonprofit child welfare agency.
Will Burnham of Ellicott City, the group's Creeply Lord Minister of the Sinister and otherwise a geographic information specialist with a demographic data company, wore a black velveteen robe and a latex head piece displaying a skull with wings.
"I saw `Star Wars' in 1977 at 12 years old and went totally nuts," Burnham said. "Then I realized there were other people my age and older who loved science fiction as much as I did. I realized it was more than just movies and books. It was conventions and costuming and art."