<snip> > As far as making any of the periods...they all equal out. Different > difficulties in each, but just as many.
well OK, maybe making them is equally difficult but there is a great deal of difference in _researching_ them. If I want to make an 1860s morning dress I have thousands of fashion plates, contemporary patterns and instructions, photos of real people in real clothes (not an artist's slightly idealised version of what a member of the aristocracy was wearing on a formal occasion) and a few hundred extant garments to copy (obviously a lot of those are in private collections and therefore inaccessible to most members of the general public but you get the point). If I wanted to do the same in the 1560s I've got one extant garment (well Eleanora di Toledo's outfit, which is technically two layers, and a couple of men's garments), a few dozen portraits of the aristocracy dressed to the nines and a few tailors books (which focus heavily on men and are essentially cutting layouts) from later in the century. If I wanted to go back another century to the 15th century we've got portraits (and far fewer of them) a couple of extant men's garments (the 'Mary of Hungary gown' is 14th century isn't it?) and a whole lot of educated guesswork or trial and error. So while the difficulty involved in actually physically constructing any particular garment may be the same, the steps involved before you start making something becomes more and more difficult the further you go back. Elizabeth -------------------------------------------- Elizabeth Walpole Canberra Australia ewalpole[at]tpg.com.au http://au.geocities.com/e_walpole/ _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
