The joy of dressing up in a costume is as old as time. This timeline traces a history of cosplay.
Cosplay is both a community and a maker culture, and the two are deeply intertwined. Making your own costume and accessories is an essential part of the passion for many cosplayers. That makes it quite a special phenomenon — there aren’t many youth cultures where craft takes centre stage like this.
The costumes in films and TV series are made by professional costume departments with huge budgets. And whatever can’t be made physically gets added in post-production. For the creators of games, animation and comics, the possibilities are completely limitless — they don’t even need to worry about gravity or the properties of real materials. Cosplayers, meanwhile, try to recreate those limitless costumes from the source material in their own bedrooms, with limited budgets, everyday materials, and — unlike the source material — actual gravity!
To make this possible, an extensive culture of open knowledge-sharing and community has grown up around cosplay. On forums like Reddit, video platforms like YouTube, groups on Discord and Facebook, and talks or panel discussions at conventions, cosplayers share what they know. Community and maker culture are therefore inseparable in cosplay. Cosplayers learn from and with each other. While some cosplayers are professional makers, most experts are self-taught through experience. Their costumes, along with any cosplay contests they’ve won, are their main credentials.
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