Costuming Wish List
So I realize that I am probably never going to get to all of these things, but here is an attempt at a list of everything I want to make right now.
Mid-Fifteenth Century Stuff
- Short-sleeved houppelande, based on this picture. Subsequent research has suggested that even the short sleeves may be an "all'antico" thing and may not have really existed.
- New take on "Tentacle Dress". Way back just after rocks had stopped being soft, falashad and I made a houppelande based on a painting from the Palazzo Borromeo that has sleeves made basically of a number of streamers. It wound up getting nicknamed the Tentacle Dress. Now that I think I have a better understanding of how to make a houppelande, and I have a higher quality reproduction of the original image that clearly shows little circle-shaped thingies on all of the streamers, I want to try again.
Gamurras
The gamurra is the fifteenth-century Italian lady's generic under-layer, similar to what might be called a "kirtle" in English. I have made several, each with successive refinements to the cut of the bodice, but mostly in a style from about 1480-1500. Now I want to make:
- 1465-1470 style gamurra, as shown on the girls in the Palazzo Schifanoia frescoes
- olive green brocade with pearl trim at neckline, based on this picture
- crimson silk, to show the prestige and honour of my household. Ideally I will find some crimson figured velvet at some point to make a gown to go over it.
- striped, as shown on Beatrice d'Este in this picture, though I am sort of worried that I'd go to all of the trouble to make it and wind up feeling like a circus clown.
Gowns
- A long time ago I made this (what Viscountess Morrigan is wearing - can't find any pictures of me wearing it) before I stopped being Elizabethan. Now there is just enough of the dark grey beaded silk left to probably make another gown like the Venetian gown I made for Montengarde Twelfth Night this year.
- Ghirlandaio's Sassetti Chapel fresco cycle has probably the best-known and therefore most-copied depictions of late fifteenth-century Florentine women's fashion. The current scholarship is that ladies probably only dressed like this at their weddings and for a short period of time after they had gotten married, and that at all other times women seen in public were more covered up and less flashily dressed; but, as was determined this weekend at Crown, "that's boring". I have a nice blue cotton velveteen with which to attempt the unfitted pink cioppa kind of in the centre of this painting (probably for KA&S) and a copper-colored chenille brocade with which to attempt the fitted brocade cioppa worn by the lady to the right of this painting. Yes I know chenille is not remotely period, but this stuff is otherwise pretty decent with a large pattern, multiple colors and multiple textures.
Accessories
- the girls in the Palazzo Schifanoia frescoes show several interesting hairstyles and headdresses, including hair wrapped into horn shapes, headbandy things that cover only their horns, and coifs with big cutouts on the front. I want to try them all!
- "cofea tranzado" - sometimes called a "long-tailed snood" in English. A stereotypical sort of generic Italian Renaissance headdress, probably because shown on Juliet in the Zefirelli Romeo and Juliet. Actually originally a Spanish style, though adopted in various Italian city-states in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. I think the Italian word might be coazzone. Beatrice d'Este can be seen wearing one in this picture. I had also found a picture of a more working-class version in the Ruth Matilda Anderson book on Hispanic Costume, that looks like it might make a decent headdress for camping.
- new camicia (shift). Might even take a stab at writing up proper documentation for it.
- new apron, also based on the styles seen in the Palazzo Schifanoia frescoes
- fancy indoor chopines, and outdoor stilted clogs (have now seen pictorial evidence for these in Italy)
- bought enough aglets at Crown to make a new set of points. After careful consideration of the colours I like to wear, I think I will make these ones a nice bright yellow.
- girdle with decorative metal plates. Almost all surviving girdles are red (crimson). Having failed in my quest to become a coffee squire this weekend, I am thinking I will go with a black girdle.
- triangular veil (according to one book I read, that is the shape of veil being worn by the ladies in the Sassetti Chapel paintings).
Victor/Victoria
Way back when I first started in the SCA, after I discovered that pre-Revolutionary French fashion was out of period, I chose instead to go with late fifteenth-century Italian men's fashion, and I sure made a dashing young pageboy in my stretch velour tights. Now that I know better, I would like to try again.
Mid-Fifteenth Century Stuff
- Short-sleeved houppelande, based on this picture. Subsequent research has suggested that even the short sleeves may be an "all'antico" thing and may not have really existed.
- New take on "Tentacle Dress". Way back just after rocks had stopped being soft, falashad and I made a houppelande based on a painting from the Palazzo Borromeo that has sleeves made basically of a number of streamers. It wound up getting nicknamed the Tentacle Dress. Now that I think I have a better understanding of how to make a houppelande, and I have a higher quality reproduction of the original image that clearly shows little circle-shaped thingies on all of the streamers, I want to try again.
Gamurras
The gamurra is the fifteenth-century Italian lady's generic under-layer, similar to what might be called a "kirtle" in English. I have made several, each with successive refinements to the cut of the bodice, but mostly in a style from about 1480-1500. Now I want to make:
- 1465-1470 style gamurra, as shown on the girls in the Palazzo Schifanoia frescoes
- olive green brocade with pearl trim at neckline, based on this picture
- crimson silk, to show the prestige and honour of my household. Ideally I will find some crimson figured velvet at some point to make a gown to go over it.
- striped, as shown on Beatrice d'Este in this picture, though I am sort of worried that I'd go to all of the trouble to make it and wind up feeling like a circus clown.
Gowns
- A long time ago I made this (what Viscountess Morrigan is wearing - can't find any pictures of me wearing it) before I stopped being Elizabethan. Now there is just enough of the dark grey beaded silk left to probably make another gown like the Venetian gown I made for Montengarde Twelfth Night this year.
- Ghirlandaio's Sassetti Chapel fresco cycle has probably the best-known and therefore most-copied depictions of late fifteenth-century Florentine women's fashion. The current scholarship is that ladies probably only dressed like this at their weddings and for a short period of time after they had gotten married, and that at all other times women seen in public were more covered up and less flashily dressed; but, as was determined this weekend at Crown, "that's boring". I have a nice blue cotton velveteen with which to attempt the unfitted pink cioppa kind of in the centre of this painting (probably for KA&S) and a copper-colored chenille brocade with which to attempt the fitted brocade cioppa worn by the lady to the right of this painting. Yes I know chenille is not remotely period, but this stuff is otherwise pretty decent with a large pattern, multiple colors and multiple textures.
Accessories
- the girls in the Palazzo Schifanoia frescoes show several interesting hairstyles and headdresses, including hair wrapped into horn shapes, headbandy things that cover only their horns, and coifs with big cutouts on the front. I want to try them all!
- "cofea tranzado" - sometimes called a "long-tailed snood" in English. A stereotypical sort of generic Italian Renaissance headdress, probably because shown on Juliet in the Zefirelli Romeo and Juliet. Actually originally a Spanish style, though adopted in various Italian city-states in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. I think the Italian word might be coazzone. Beatrice d'Este can be seen wearing one in this picture. I had also found a picture of a more working-class version in the Ruth Matilda Anderson book on Hispanic Costume, that looks like it might make a decent headdress for camping.
- new camicia (shift). Might even take a stab at writing up proper documentation for it.
- new apron, also based on the styles seen in the Palazzo Schifanoia frescoes
- fancy indoor chopines, and outdoor stilted clogs (have now seen pictorial evidence for these in Italy)
- bought enough aglets at Crown to make a new set of points. After careful consideration of the colours I like to wear, I think I will make these ones a nice bright yellow.
- girdle with decorative metal plates. Almost all surviving girdles are red (crimson). Having failed in my quest to become a coffee squire this weekend, I am thinking I will go with a black girdle.
- triangular veil (according to one book I read, that is the shape of veil being worn by the ladies in the Sassetti Chapel paintings).
Victor/Victoria
Way back when I first started in the SCA, after I discovered that pre-Revolutionary French fashion was out of period, I chose instead to go with late fifteenth-century Italian men's fashion, and I sure made a dashing young pageboy in my stretch velour tights. Now that I know better, I would like to try again.