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Costuming How To |
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| Many Thanx to Christina Neitz for submitting the Costume Section. | |
| So, now that you're an entertainer at the Renaissance Festival, you need a costume. Your costume is the visible description of your character and tells the audience something about you without you saying a word. It should tell people your station in society: peasant, middle or merchant class, noble, or royalty. It can even tell an observer something about your job: a chef hat on a baker, wheat stalks in the hat of a farmer, or scissors hanging from the belt of a tailor. | As you consider who your character is, decide how much you can afford to pay to make it yourself or to pay someone to make a costume for you. If you have a small budget or don't know if you'll be back next year, think about being a peasant. The cost of fabrics, trims, and accessories do become more expensive as you move up the social ladder. |
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Throughout Europe, many countries had sumptuary laws that dictated what you could wear according to your rank in society and how much you earned per year. This means a peasant could not, by law, wear expensive jewelry or velvet even if he could afford to do it. The middle class was limited by one's station in life as well as income. Merchants, no matter how rich, still had limits, but sometimes elected to pay the fines for dressing above their station. It even had an impact on the nobility; only royal blood could wear purple, knights and their families could wear silver but not gold trims, and so on. Peasants should use cottons (not period but recommended for availability, cost, & durability), linens, and wools of different weights and textures in earthier, worn-looking colors but no jewelry and very little, plain trim. A middle-class person would use better corduroys, wools, finer linens and cottons, a little brocade, richer colors, some simple jewelry, and more and fancier trims. Nobles and Royalty can use velvets, satins, brocades in the widest range of colors with lots of trim and lots of jewelry. |
The silhouette (the outline of you in your costume) of each station changes subtly with the different ranks. The basic shapes are V-shaped for men and two inverted triangles for women. For peasants, the silhouette is so shaped but not very strongly, its more tubular. For the merchant class the v-shapes are more apparent but not extreme. It is achieved with padding, stuffing, and hoopskirts. The upper classes are the trendsetters and fashions at the cutting edge are usually more extreme so the v-shapes are more obvious due to larger hoops, larger quantities of material, and padding. The Costuming Sections is devided into the following parts: |
This page last updated Thursday, July 22, 2004
