ICG President Kevin Roche reports on the state of the International Costumers’ Guild at its 2025 Annual Meeting on April 12, 2025.
Members and Chapters
As noted in our Treasurer’s report, membership is slightly up (15%) from last year. While we do not have any new chapters, we did have one start to form (stymied by life chaos for the members, alas), and serious inquiries about the process from a second group. I hope they come together in the year to come; I know several of us did reach out to encourage them to join an existing chapter of ICG in the meantime.
Real-life costume activities are definitely on the rise, though the “classic” fan-run conventions many of us love to attend are definitely under duress as the hotel/hospitality industry tries to make back all the income it lost during the worst of the pandemic – as we obviously know well, since that is why we are holding this year’s meeting here on Zoom rather than at Costume-Con 43.
I do want to encourage you to attend the virtual Future Fashion Show and Single Pattern Contest this evening at 8PM CDT. The event will include announcement of the 2025 ICG Lifetime Achievement Award and this year’s annual ICG Archives Memorial video. I’d also like to acknowledge the very recent passing of longtime ICG member, costumer extraordinaire, and friend Elaine Mami.
Board Action
The board had no major actions to deal with in 2024, and did approve our 2025 budget on time.
Officers Selection
Four of our five incumbent officers, myself included, are willing to stand for reelection for another year. Our Corresponding Secretary Merrily Wolf has expressed a desire to utilize her talents elsewhere in the ICG, and our Recording Secretary Anne Davenport is willing to serve in the dual role of both Corresponding and Recording Secretaries. This combination of offices is allowed within our bylaws (and the proposed new bylaws) without requiring any amendments to the documents.
Committees
As all our standing committees are also submitting reports for this meeting, I am not going to steal their thunder in this report by quoting all of them. I do wish to congratulate the Publications Committee on its successful launch of the ICG Press on with the publication of the ICG Masquerade Guidelines, Myrtle R Douglas: Mother of Convention Costuming, and the wonderful re-publication of The Masquerade Handbook, long a dream of numerous ICG members.
Documents Review Committee
I also wish to acknowledge the hard work of the Documents Review Committee. They accomplished the herculean task of restructuring and revising our governing documents over the last year, which is why we are able to consider re-issuing our Bylaws and Standing Rules today.
For that reason, I am recognizing Chair Leslie Johnston and the members of the Documents Review Committee with a President’s Award today, for their patient and diligent work on rewriting the ICG Bylaws and Standing Rules with clarity and in contemporary corporate structure, while maintaining the unique nature of the International Costumers Guild.
This has been one of my long-term goals as ICG President, and I am very pleased with the result. I hope you will support their efforts as we work through that part of today’s agenda, including fixing some accidental elisions we discovered after the required advance publication date for today’s meeting.
I will note that this process requires some rather specific parliamentary procedures, and thank you for your patience as I walked us through them while chairing the meeting.
In addition, there is a new SR based on a matter of Maryland corporate code regarding how the Board of Directors makes decisions via the online Board GoogleGroup. The issue was brought to my attention by an attorney specializing in non-profit governance, and I will explain it at that point in the agenda.
Participation in your ICG processes
Repeating myself from 2024:
The ICG by its very nature relies on volunteers to keep running, and it seems the pool of people willing to do the work has shrunk to several handfuls of dedicated but also exhausted people. PLEASE consider getting involved as a chapter officer or in one of the corporate-level projects! Again, while chapter events are how most of us gather for fun and celebration of costume, our ICG-level projects are significant and important. There is no other collection of experience and talent like the ICG.
A Personal Note
I stepped into the role of President in 2020 when requested to at a moment of executive crisis in the ICG, and I thank you for all the support (and argument) you have given me over the past five years. We’ve made some significant modernization changes in how we conduct business over those years, with revision of the governing documents a much needed step. We are however, at our core, an organization rooted in our art of costume, and I am beginning to find the president’s role interfering with the joy I take in (and the time I need for) costuming. For that reason, I do not intend to stand for re-election in 2026. I am announcing this now, so there is time to search for a qualified and interested nominee and arrange a smooth succession.
That is all I have to say this year; I do hope in 2026 we can instead have our Annual Meeting in person again, as esoterically garbed as is our wont.
And, again repeating myself from every year since 2020: here’s to a healthier and more spectacularly costumed year to come!
Kevin Roche
President, International Costumers’ Guild
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