Cosplayers at a Star Trek Convention, 1976
in this house we have endless respect for cosplayers from the days before VCRs.
You couldn’t just rewatch the episode to look at all the details of the costume. You got lucky with press photos showing up in magazines or you just watched the episode/movie while sketching furiously
thinking about that one woman who made a Star Wars flight suit in 1977 entirely from trading cards and sketching details in the theater. or stories I’ve heard about old school Trek cosplayers getting the bizarre seam placements right by photocopying magazines onto overhead transparencies and projecting them onto butcher paper.
I’m a semi old school cosplayer (started in 2001) so some of the old school techniques are still things I learned on (I’ve sketched from stuttering VHS tapes on pause and used the overhead transparency trick)… what we have access to now for costume recreation blows what they had out of the water just in terms of reference material, let alone specialty costume supplies like thermoplastics and cosplay wigs.