>> However, my overall philosophy for making clothing for reenacting is, >> stick with what I have pretty good knowledge was really worn, rather than the > maybes or the exceptions. > > It isn't a philosophy that I could argue with too strongly, as it certainly > stops the fantasy input one can get, but I also recognise that is > potentially ignores unrecorded clothing, eg that which does not make it into > fashion plates nor survives, the ordinary items of clothing have a far lower > survivability, being remain, reused and then reused again as rags. Absence > of evidence isn't evidence of absence after all.
I got tired of having to break character and pull the documentation for those oddball examples out of my pocket. So even though I like to go for unusual examples, I always avoid the exception-to-the-rule oddball ones. If I get the silhouette right, there's usually a broad range of contemporary detailing possible. I save speculation on the single-instance examples, and on what might have been, for discussion among my fellow costume geeks. One way to avoid the cookie cutter look is to avoid commercial patterns, no matter how accurate. Once it's published, "everyone" has a dress just like it (case in point - Truly Victorian's 1873 polonaise). I don't want to look like everyone else, so over the years I've learned how to make my own patterns. I started out seriously modifying the commercial patterns, and sometimes I still use them as a starting point. -- Carolyn Kayta Barrows -- “The future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed.” -William Gibson -- _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
