#oneaday Day 810: Fancy Dress

I love dressing up. Perhaps it’s just part of my own inherent immaturity which I continue to cling desperately to as my 31st birthday approaches, but I love putting on a stupid costume that will get some laughs and playing a role. Oddly enough, it often actually makes me feel more confident than I do usually, perhaps because I’m kind of stepping out of my own skin for a little while and pretending to be someone else. Or perhaps it’s because I associate it with acting, something I enjoy a great deal but haven’t had the opportunity to do since university. (God, that was a depressingly long time ago now. Fuck.)

[Editor’s note: It took some persuading to get Pete out of his sulk after coming to that realisation.]

My apologies. I was just… OH GOD

[Editor’s note: And again.]

I’m fine. I’m fine.

ANYWAY.

Fancy dress. It’s fun. And, on past occasions where it’s been part of the social engagement I was attending, it is usually associated with a thoroughly silly, funny night out. I don’t remember doing it much as a kid, but I certainly remember doing it a hell of a lot at university. The local charity shops tended to do a roaring trade around “social season” at the student union and local bars.

The earliest one I remember was a 70s night at our university hall of residence bar. Our flat was pretty good at socialising with one another, but we’d been consistently frustrated with the fact that none of the rest of the building seemed interested in going out or getting to know each other. (We discovered this within the first couple of weeks living there, when we attempted to organise a pub crawl and ended up being the only attendees.) We figured that the fun and frolics of a dressing-up opportunity would encourage a few people to make it out and make an effort.

We were, sadly, a bit wrong. People came out, all right, but when we got to the bar, we were pretty much the only people there who were in costume. I don’t regret a thing, because it was around this point I discovered that moustaches are fun despite the fact that I was, at the time, incapable of growing my own. (If you have seen my face recently, you will doubt there was ever a time when I was incapable of growing facial hair, but it is, in fact, true; the most I could summon up at the age of 18 was a small, lop-sided patch on my chin.) As such, I found myself wearing an awesome stick-on moustache combined with a velvet jacket, frilled shirt and, uh, a pair of jeans. (The charity shops didn’t have any suitable flares or, to digress for a moment, “bell-end trousers” as they were memorably referred to on Just A Minute the other day.)

Said moustache found its way all the way around our social group after we’d had a few of the hall bar’s notorious cocktails (Juicy Lucy: 1 shot vodka, 1 shot blue curaçao, 2 shots Taboo, top up the rest of a pint glass with equal parts orange juice and lemonade, looks like water with Fairy Liquid in it and turns your poo green if you have too many; Passion Wagon: 1 bottle Reef, 1 shot Passoa, possibly the laziest cocktail of all time) and eventually alighted delicately back on my face rotated a full 180 degrees from its intended position, making me look more like a shitfaced Hercule Poirot than a 70s porn star. I don’t remember much of what happened after that.

Or there was the Halloween party where I dressed up in the Scream costume. It was about the time Scary Movie had hit the cinema, so there was a lot of “WAAAZAAAAAAPPP”-ing from behind the mask. Coincidentally, wearing a full black robe and covering my face entirely, I felt incredibly confident. Perhaps I should become a ninja. Or some sort of cultist. Or a Sith.

Or the “Gangster Night” where I decided that the thing to do would be to dress up like 70s Guy again, complete with afro wig, stick-on moustache and hideous shirt. The band we had at university to pass our “Ensemble 1” unit — The Coconut Scratch Orchestra — was also performing, so I also had to negotiate a saxophone around my furry top lip and excessive amount of head hair.

I think one of my favourite dress-up occasions, however, was the time a group of ex-university musicians were playing in the band for a local pantomime and we made an executive decision to do the second half of one performance in full costume. I dressed up as a fairy. I looked beautiful, I’ll have you know. And in fact, my costume was so good that when I took it off, it was mistaken for an actual costume from the show and pinched while I was socialising. When I returned to retrieve it, it was long gone, never to be seen again. I was very disappointed. I spent quite a lot of money on it and had rather enjoyed having long blonde hair for a little while. My only physical memento of the occasion was a saxophone reed forever stained with slutty red lipstick, though there are also photographs of my magical magnificence located somewhere on the Internet. You’ll have to track those down yourself, though.

I’ve never crossed the line from “fancy dress” into “cosplay”, however. I guess technically the Scream outfit was sort of cosplay, but not really. No, I’m talking about being such a fan of a particular character that I really, really want to dress up as them.

Part of the reason for this is that many of my favourite characters are simply incompatible with any or all of the following: my body shape, my age or my genitals. The facial hair is also an issue. Much as I would love to put on a frilly cravat and do a Miles Edgeworth, shaving my beard off after it having such a long-term residence on my face would just be weird. Which also puts any sort of cross-dressing scenario out of the window, too, which most people will likely be delighted to hear. (That said, my fairy costume saw me sporting a beard, so…) With the type of guy I am, the best possible outcome would probably be from some sort of “big dude in armour” type of arrangement, though I’m not sure there are that many big dudes in armour that I’m particularly fond of. Reyn from Xenoblade, perhaps. Though then we’re back to the beard problem again. What a bunch of jokers.

I’m also never quite sure if there’s a stigma attached to cosplaying at all. It’s certainly a sign that you’re taking your fandom of a particular thing over a very well-marked line, but does it make you into a hardcore “nerd”? It certainly broadcasts loud and clear that you’re interested in something, and could well be a good conversation starter at conventions and the like. (Obviously I’m not suggesting walking down the street dressed like Cloud Strife or anything) For women, there’s the “perving men” angle to consider, too, but at the same time you might argue that by dressing up in a distinctive costume you want people to notice you (just not probably quite like “that”).

Anyway. I’m rambling, largely because it’s 1:25 and my concentration is lapsing somewhat. So I’ll leave that there.

Do me a favour, though; next party you throw, make it a fancy dress one. (And invite me, obviously.) I haven’t been to one for ages.