Bruce Mai

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(1956 - )

Bruce Mai’s journey into fandom began in his last year of college when he stumbled upon a Dungeons and Dragons game in progress. Returning home, he connected with fellow gamers who introduced him to the local St. Louis science fiction convention, Archon. From D&D, he explored other role-playing games, including the superhero genre, and even co-wrote a superhero RPG that remains unpublished. His next fandom discovery was Doctor Who. Bruce built a Dalek that still resides in his basement. Eventually, he met and married his fellow Doctor Who fan, Nora Mai (née Schneeberger). He served as President of the local Doctor Who club, the St. Louis Celestial Intervention Agency and made a number of appearances on the local PBS station during their on-air pledge drives for the show’s broadcasts. In 1992, he was the assistant chairman to Nora for TARDIScon. Together, they discovered their current fandom—costuming.

In 1991, he and five other fellow costuming enthusiasts (including Nora) from the Doctor Who club co-founded the St. Louis Costumers Guild (aka the St. Louis Ubiquitous Tailoring Society), a chapter of the International Costumers Guild (ICG). He is the chapter's current president. Over the years, he and Nora became more deeply involved in the costuming community, chairing two Costume-Cons and Nora serving as ICG President for three and a half years. In 2010, they were presented with the ICG's Lifetime Achievement Award for their service to the costuming community.

During this time, Bruce and Nora dedicated themselves to assisting archivist Pierre Pettinger in organizing the ICG’s vast image collection estimated to contain half a million costume photos, around 700 masquerade videos, and other miscellaneous data. This work is ongoing, and the collection continues to grow annually. A portion of the material is available online at https://icggallery.org. Bruce focuses on acquiring and cataloging masquerade and related video material, producing videos about convention costuming events and its history for the ICG’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@ICGArchives). Additionally, he creates similar productions for fan conventions he and his fellow archivists attend.

To further the ICG’s mission to “promote the educational, cultural, literary, artistic and theatrical advancement of costume design and construction of all types", Bruce and Nora maintain three Facebook pages and an Instagram account featuring costumes and costumers.

Starting in 2017, Bruce took on the task of researching and writing a chronology of Convention Costuming History. These detailed articles provide a year-by-year account of the people and the costumes they wore, the evolution of costume contests into "masquerades," and significant events that took place at those competitions. The articles also explore how societal issues, such as cultural appropriation, have impacted the hobby, and events like the Pandemic have affected the costuming community. Additionally, Bruce delves into trends in costume creation, technological advancements that have led to more sophisticated designs, and highlights particular artists and their body of work.


Awards, Honors and GoHships:

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