In Which I May Be A Bit Of An Elitist Pig

[serinde]

I'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)

Comments

[briony530.livejournal.com]

Then we're both elitist pigs. We have certain people up this way who squee "and even tho' it was done *this* way it looks like a period fit"!

Guess what. It looks like a costume.

And what I don't get is (aside from some of the issues you mentioned above) most of the time this reinventing of the wheel ends up being more work than just doing it the period way, and there's no increase in comfort of wear.

[elibalin.livejournal.com]

[lillilah]

There are two types of people who do this, I think: those who are afraid to do anything other than the way they did their last dress and those who believe that they know better than those foolish people in the past. The know-it-alls bug me more.

[marietta-sca.livejournal.com]

(hug)

I'm there with you, babe.

If I'm not going to do something properly, I know that it is going to look like its wrong ;) and I accept it.

[naudia.livejournal.com]

To throw all else out the window, it seems to me that going to the people most concerned with exacts with the purpose of obtaining an approximate is looking for trouble.

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

If you want something that looks right without going to the trouble of doing it right yourself, hire someone else to do it for you. Sheesh, that's not so hard is it? Do they complain that they want their lawns to be short, but they don't want to either mow them themselves or hire someone to do it? If so, they need to be shot. Preferably with a period weapon on perfectly manircured grass.