In Which I May Be A Bit Of An Elitist Pig
Dec. 12th, 2007 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serindeI'm on a mailing list for discussion of 14th c. costuming. It's generally pretty informative, and all is fine. Except...a continually-recurring question is one that boils down to, "How can I do it wrong and make it look right?" To me the answer is simple: YOU CAN'T. Wearing a sports bra, or wrapping your breasts, or only wearing one gown and putting fake sleeves underneath, or trying to have some of the fit happening in the chemise--none of these will work if you're trying to replicate that particular look. You may come up with something that passes the squint test from someone who has only seen froofy post-period paintings, but don't delude yourself that it's going to be accurate. It will fit differently, it will feel differently, it will hang differently. You Will Not Look Like The Source Material.
Now, you may not have the facilities or resources to have such a garment fitted to you, which is how it would be done correctly. And that's fair. One does what one can, and sometimes trade-offs must be made. But that's not the way, it seems to me, that a lot of people are approaching the problem. I might be misinterpreting what I'm reading, but there seems to be a strong meme of "I don't wanna do it that way!" with concomitant delusions that it can instead be faked. Bah.
(Jesus H. Christ. I just did a Google Image Search on "cotehardie" and one of the images on the first page is something that looks like a nightie with a black leather girdle laced over it. DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE)
Now, you may not have the facilities or resources to have such a garment fitted to you, which is how it would be done correctly. And that's fair. One does what one can, and sometimes trade-offs must be made. But that's not the way, it seems to me, that a lot of people are approaching the problem. I might be misinterpreting what I'm reading, but there seems to be a strong meme of "I don't wanna do it that way!" with concomitant delusions that it can instead be faked. Bah.
(Jesus H. Christ. I just did a Google Image Search on "cotehardie" and one of the images on the first page is something that looks like a nightie with a black leather girdle laced over it. DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE)
