I'm not sure if there are differences between hall costume/masquerade (North American/European tradition) and cosplay (Asian/North American tradition) in itself. The terms come from entirely different backgrounds, but appear to have merged in current fan discourse.
My feeling: I did a very tiny bit of con going in the late 80s, early 90s, and I think there used to be more of a difference between the two terms, more of a mental mindset. My impression of hall costume/masqueraders was that costuming was VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS. My first (and only) experience with costuming was very painful, because I had a amateur, slapped-together Old Trek costume, of which I was very proud, and I was wearing it in a world where, my God, if you wore the wrong insignia you'd get torn to pieces. Yes, I should have done more research, but the reaction was so harsh that it permanently turned me off of going to a con in any sort of costume whatsoever.
Then, in the early 90s, cons devoted to manga and anime started appearing, and the "cosplay" term became more prevalent as a direct loanword from Japanese, it in itself a neologism made up of two English words. At Animecon 1991, the first international anime con in the US, the Japanese guests were astounded at the detail of costuming by the American attendees. Going by photos of costuming at Japanese cons in the 1980s, costuming was much more informal and less detailed. You put on an outfit more or less signifying your character in broad strokes and you were done. I believe anime/manga fans took up the term "cosplay" to delineate their own fandom, which at the time was MUCH smaller and more underground in the US than the traditional big Western fandoms.
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Date: 2010-07-31 10:12 pm (UTC)My feeling: I did a very tiny bit of con going in the late 80s, early 90s, and I think there used to be more of a difference between the two terms, more of a mental mindset. My impression of hall costume/masqueraders was that costuming was VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS. My first (and only) experience with costuming was very painful, because I had a amateur, slapped-together Old Trek costume, of which I was very proud, and I was wearing it in a world where, my God, if you wore the wrong insignia you'd get torn to pieces. Yes, I should have done more research, but the reaction was so harsh that it permanently turned me off of going to a con in any sort of costume whatsoever.
Then, in the early 90s, cons devoted to manga and anime started appearing, and the "cosplay" term became more prevalent as a direct loanword from Japanese, it in itself a neologism made up of two English words. At Animecon 1991, the first international anime con in the US, the Japanese guests were astounded at the detail of costuming by the American attendees. Going by photos of costuming at Japanese cons in the 1980s, costuming was much more informal and less detailed. You put on an outfit more or less signifying your character in broad strokes and you were done. I believe anime/manga fans took up the term "cosplay" to delineate their own fandom, which at the time was MUCH smaller and more underground in the US than the traditional big Western fandoms.