Historical (and TV) Costuming.

[misslj_author]

This is where I out myself as a costumer and historical reenactor. Although neither of those are really secret. It's been a goodly number of years since I've done anything like this, for several reasons, most having to do with health issues. (And yes, I miss it a LOT). Anyhoodle, before I got involved in historical reenacting (not the SCA), I was

Comments

[acosmistmachine]

Oh my God these are awesome! So much squeeing going on! I love living history by the way. When I was younger one of my dreams was to work at a living history museum. Unfortunately I went on to study a history which is much too modern and theoretical for that. I love the purple costume you're wearing in the middle pictures, so pretty.

[misslj_author]

What history did you end up studying?

I love that gown. The silk was an amazing bargain, it was something like $4 p/meter, and with the green raw silk lining the sleeves, it ended up being prettier than I'd imagined. It was the second historically accurate costume I made.

I really love this hobby. I might not be able to be as physically involved these days, but I do still love the research and my friends, and all of it. I'm really looking forward to the Medieval Fair in May, a group of us are going for the day, and it's like my annual pilgrimage to hang out with other reenactors who have real steel weapons and armour.

[acosmistmachine]

Write now I'm in grad school studying modern American cultural and intellectual history, specifically Asian American and queer history. I grew up in New York though and there are all sorts of living history museums for the colonial period dotted across the state. Not to mention the women's history museum up at Seneca Falls where they do reenactments, but of courss all that is way too early for me.

My brother is working on his degree on Viking Age Iceland though and does reenactments and fairs with his friends all the time. He's slowly but surely putting together his costumes. Which is taking a while because he wants to make as much of it has he can himself and is basically teaching himself how to sew in the process.

Very impressive stuff.

[misslj_author]

That sounds like it would be quite interesting. And I bet some of those museums are just fantastic, so many wonderful artefacts.

Yeah, it does take a bit of time (and money!) to get a good kit together. I got my sword and dagger at mates rates, but it was still a lot, but so very worth it. One of my friends who does Imperial Roman reenacting has two sets of full Roman armour that he made himself, it took him *ages* to do, but the results are amazing. And another friend has just finished his four year project of Sassanid armour for mounted combat. It looks phenomenal, he really looks as if he's stepped out of an illuminated manuscript.

The Byzantine Emperor reenactor above has done years and years of research, too - he went to the anniversary Battle of Hastings reenactment some years ago, before leaving Australia, he got a historically accurate haircut and then had to fill in all sorts of paperwork to get his weapons and armour over to England and back, but he had an amazing time and made the rest of us quite jealous!

[elin_gregory]

Those are lovely photos. You look magnificent. I have a big basket of kids clothes of various periods in the museum and its great to see adults trying to get into them too. I reckon we could up our visitors figures by offering a 'dress up and we'll take your photo service". :)

And the armour!! Fantastic.

[misslj_author]

Thank you

[elin_gregory]

The management have just told us to earn an extra £8k a year so all and any ideas gratefully received. :)

I did pirates summer before last [got a novel out of it too :)] and we decided to do a kids event in the castle grounds. We made hats from black paper and cutlasses from pipe lagging and packing foam, painted faces with moustaches and scars, made eye patches, let them dig for treasure and sail paper boats in a paddling pool. HUGE fun and it was a free event but I think we might have to start charging in future. :( such a pity

[misslj_author]

Yikes, that's a lot to find. Which museum is it, if I can ask?

We found that keeping the money we charged low, or at a gold coin donation (because the Australian $1 and $2 are both coins), that we did better that way than charging a lot. What about something like a [insert period here] picnic? And if you could your local reenactment groups involved and put on a display, you could do a day fair or something? Another thing that people really seemed to be interested in was food. Could you maybe do something like a historical cooking class or something? That would probably go down really well. (Pun not intended!)

[jana_denardo]

these are wonderful outfits

[misslj_author]

Thank you!