As Comic-Con returns this month, fans are once again looking forward to the Saturday night Masquerade — a long-running tradition where costumers go big with handmade outfits and full-on stage performances. Back in 2015, one standout group turned heads by taking the X-Men back to the 18th century, mixing comic book characters with Rococo style, à la Marie Antoinette by way of Sofia Coppola.
Arabella Benson, a longtime Masquerade participant, led the team behind "Let Them Eat Cake Presents: X-Men Days of Future Past, Past," which reimagined Marvel's mutants in powdered wigs, panniers and silk brocade.
"Masquerade can be something as simple as walking onstage and showing off your costume," Benson said at the time, while working on an elaborate, flaming orange wig. "I think that when it’s something at the level of Comic-Con, it’s a really big stage. I think Ballroom 20 is 6,000 or 4,000 people — that’s a lot of people. I think you are perfectly welcome to walk on stage and be beautiful, but you will be kind of overshadowed by the people who do full-on skits, by people who do dance routines."
Like kaiju showgirls stomping Tokyo to "A Chorus Line's" signature "One," or a Tatooine take on "West Side Story's" "America" song with a bunch of Jawas dancing in rainbow-colored petticoats.
In 2011, Benson and her group performed a tango as Gotham villains. "We came up with this group called Arkham Tango and we did this really cool tango, and we thought we were the coolest, sexiest thing that ever was," she recalled. "And then we won Best Humorous. So we learned something there — and that’s OK, because I got to tango with Batman with a rose in my teeth. You can’t go better than that."
The group followed up in 2013 with Marvel Mumbai, a Bollywood-inspired take on the Avengers. By 2015, they went full Rococo with their mutant skit. "We’re getting ready for the Comic-Con Masquerade. Our costumes are on the verge — the very verge — of being done," Benson said at the time. "But we’re down to the little fiddly bits like the hem, and we’re adding some more trim. The nature of our dresses, there can’t really be enough trim. (Fellow costumer Erwyn Hildebrand) dulled a pair of pinking shears cutting my trim. That happens."
A few weeks before the event, Benson had been hand-painting silk wings her Phoenix costume. But by the final days, plans had changed.
"If I have learned anything in Masquerade, it is to roll with the punches," she said. "The beautiful silk wings I was painting had not dried, so I cannot set the dye with the iron so that whole idea has been scrapped. We lost our Wolverine because he got a nice, high-paying job. And as much fun as Masquerade costumes are, work and money is a little bit better."
Her husband, who was originally going to portray Beast, stepped into the Wolverine instead — a key part of the skit's time-travel twist. "Our joke is that Wolverine gets sent too far back by Kitty Pride, instead of going to 1973, he goes to 1773," Benson said.
With just a few days to finish before the 2015 Masquerade, stress was running high. Benson said, "I have to hem it. Once I hem it, I could go onstage with it, but I will know that it didn’t have any beads on it, and that would make me sad. I have Yuly, who still doesn’t have sleeves on her dress, she thinks I don’t know, but there are no sleeves on her dress. And so it’s getting kind of tense. The sun’s going down and we are counting down the hours. I’ve given up on checklists, and Erwyn’s hair is not done. I know that. I know these things because I’m boss queen. I’m gonna let them eat dinner. They can eat dinner. I might even give them some cookies."
The team brought their Rococo X-Men skit to the Masquerade stage that Saturday night, dazzling the crowd with elaborate costuming and historical flair. A decade later, "Let Them Eat Cake Presents: X-Men Days of Future Past, Past" still circulates in Comic-Con memories, a tribute to what happens when comics, couture and creativity collide. I followed up with the group after the show — they didn't win, but their performance (and a few wild entries from that year's Masquerade) are captured in this recap:
