Greetings and Felicitations Fellow Costumers. Toni Lay here and I'm in charge of Hall Costume Awards at Costume-Con Fifteen. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a member and former president of the NJ/NY Costumers' Guild (a.k.a. Sick Pups). I've appeared in several costume presentations at World SF Con, Balticons, and Costume-Cons, and I emceed the Future Fashion Show at CC13.
I enjoy doing the Hall Costume Awards, because unlike stage presentations, I get to see the outfits up close and personal. For this reason, I have been asked to handle this activity. I'll be recruiting a collection of knowledgeable, if slightly unbalanced, people to be judges. They will be lurking about the convention, skulking in corners, creeping through the halls, furtively on the lookout for great hall costumes at which they will leap out from behind lobby furniture and present awards. Be advised, the ones standing around wearing long raincoats and offering candy ARE NOT my judges.
Regular Hall Costume awards will be given out throughout the convention as usual. I hope all of you will be wearing hall costumes at CCXV. Hall costumes add atmosphere and flavor to the convention and are much appreciated. And it will give me and my judges something to do. But wait -- there's more!
There will be two categories of special awards for Hall Costumes. First will be "Worst Pun". Gather at Friday's "Callahan's Cross-Stitch Saloon" (where anything can happen!) and present your pun costume in a mini-masquerade. See if your (warped) imagination can induce moans and groans from the audience and provoke chair-throwing from the judges. Pun costumes and the puns themselves must be PG-13 (risqué, yes; offensive, no), and they must make sense (if puns ever make sense). Awards for the "Worst Pun" costumes will be... well... we'll see.
Secondly, at "Murder on the Ornament Express" Saturday afternoon, you are encouraged to wear your Roaring Twenties costumes whilst sashaying across the Miss Marble floor, munching Agatha Crispies from Arthur Conan Doylies under the Raymond Chandeliers (I'm NOT responsible for those!). Costumes can be evening or day wear, marquess or moll. And, as the venue for CCXV has been restored to its 1920's elegance, we will be giving special awards to hall costumes taken from the 1920's. These are pewter rose heart frame pins which hold 1" x 1" pictures. See you there!