Meet Your Board: Jean Martin, Communications Coordinator

Why costuming? What brought you here?

I wanted to be an actress in my youth and I’m also a huge historical and science fiction/fantasy nerd. Costuming lets me leave the real world behind and experience being in these different worlds and portraying different characters. I also love being constantly creative and enjoying my passions with kindred spirits. Lastly, I like being involved and contributing to organizations that I am active in.

What’s your costuming focus?

I do everything from historical to science fiction/fantasy. I particularly love historical dancing and am one of the organizers for the Bay Area English Regency Society (BAERS) and one of the core volunteers for the Period Entertainment and Re-Creation Society (PEERS). I’ve been attending GBACG events since 2005. I also love cosplaying and going to pop culture and science fiction conventions. So I guess my focus is on doing costumes for events as well as occasionally for masquerade/costume contests. I’ve been in group entries that have won awards at local, regional and even global conventions. 

Do you do anything else crafty or artistic?

Photography and digital scrapbooking are my other main artistic outlets. These dovetail nicely with doing costuming as I’m able to share photos I’ve taken of costumers at events and also reminisce about my costumes and the events I go to when I do photo books for myself.

What’s your day job?

I’m a senior blog editor and writer for one of the largest asset management companies in the world. It combines my love of writing, editing, photography and graphic design with my background and experience as a CPA with an MBA.

What was the first costume you made? Is there a picture?

The first costume I made as a costumer (not Halloween) was for my first masquerade at my first time at San Diego Comic-Con in 2005. Why not start at one of the biggest and most prestigious costume contests in the world! My friend Cordelia Willis, who I met through historical dancing, asked me if I wanted to be a courtesan for their group entry. I hadn’t seen the TV series “Firefly” at that point so she had to qualify that she thought I’d be good for the role of Inara because she thought I could pull of the character’s elegant look and not that I looked like I was of that profession LOL. We didn’t win anything, but I was hooked on performing/competing in costume on stage. I was also inspired by the creativity of the other entries and met so many nice people who I became friends with. And yes, there are lots of photos!

What’s on the sewing table now?

My sewing machine LOL. I was really uninspired to sew anything during lockdown and I still haven’t quite gotten my sewing mojo back. Recently, I’ve mostly just been putting together costumes from existing pieces, which I find is also creative and rewarding, especially after I wear them to events and have photos taken. Also, my husband Christopher (who’s also a costumer and GBACG board member) and I were seriously lacking space to sew and store all our costumes. So we recently moved to a bigger apartment (and are slowly moving costumes from storage to make them more easily accessible) and we actually now have a dedicated room for our sewing tables. Who needs a dining room anyway?

What was your first/most memorable costuming disaster/learning moment?

My first costume disaster was doing David Bowie’s costume from his “Jazzin’ for Blue Jean” music video. We were going to do a tribute after he passed away where we would all be different versions of David Bowie and dancing to snippets from several of his hits. I bought this beautiful brocade fabric that was close to what he wore. But it frayed like crazy and I couldn’t even sew it. I tried using pinking shears, fray check and zigzag stitching to no avail. I was so frustrated I wound up throwing it all away. I bought a cotton fabric instead, whose pattern wasn’t as accurate, but it was so much easier to sew and it turned out nicely. In hindsight, I probably should have used a serger.

Costume you’re most proud of?

I was a comic book fan when I was a kid and I especially loved superheroes and superheroines. I always dreamed of costuming as a superheroine, but that wasn’t a thing back then, especially in the Philippines where I grew up. So I was so happy when I was part of an “X-Men: The Musical” group entry for San Diego Comic-Con. I made sure to do an Asian character for representation. I chose Psylocke (comic book version, not movie version) and I was actually surprised to find that working with spandex was easier than expected. What I had the most trouble with was keeping the spandex boot covers up to stay up my thighs. I used sock glue and fashion tape and it barely held together during our tap-dancing routine. It’s funny to realize that what works in drawings isn’t as easy to do in real life.

What’s your holy grail costuming project? The one you dream of doing?

Well, my holy grail is what I mentioned in my old bio when I was previously on the GBACG board before the pandemic. That’s Hedy Lamarr’s star dress from the movie “Ziegfeld Girl.” But I’m probably never going to make that. So on a more realistic level, I have a few yards of the special fabric for the Eighth Doctor’s waistcoat from the “Doctor Who” movie. So I dream of making a femme version of his costume and have a photo taken with Paul McGann, the actor who played the character.

Tell us one (or two or three) things about you that others might not know.

I used to publish and edit a scif-fi fanzine, Science Fiction/San Francisco, where we covered fannish events all over the Bay Area, such as conventions and balls. I did that for a little over 10 years and I enjoyed it very much. But you could only cover the same things so many times and so it got a bit old after a while and my life priorities also changed. I still do write and edit for other fanzines occasionally. And I received my second nomination for the Hugo Awards (the most prestigious literary award in science fiction) this year (my first was last year) as an editor for the Hugo Award-winning fanzine, Journey Planet.