Interesting. Cosplay???
Short for “costumed play”. Basically dress up. If you’ve ever seen the crowd shots of any of the various comicons and seen all the people dressed like characters you recognize (and probably many others you don’t) that’s cosplay. Then the whole Steampunk revolution started, and cosplay dove into this whole “make your own character” thing. Plus of course there’s the old anchor point of nerddome the SCA (medieval re-creationists) who’ve been making their own costumes since the 70s. Suffice it to say that in the nerd community (which is now big enough to be the primary group tent-pole blockbuster movies are targeted at) probably well over 50% have at least rudimentary sewing skills, and at least a quarter are good enough at it that they could (and often do) make some money at it. The costume contingent has gotten so much momentum it’s actually reversed the flow. It used to be some folks were so hardcore they’d put together costumes, now for a lot of folks they want to costume so bad they’re fans of things to get costume ideas.