| First of all, let me tell you that we are doing our best to keep this website as simple as possible (at least concerning the design and graphics) in order to allow you the fastest browsing. Most of websites of this kind
are very impressive in its appearance, but that also gets obvious on your Internet account. Since it already takes alot for this bunch of pictures to download, we would like to give you a break with the rest of the site. |
| There are already lots of very nice and useful websites dealing with same and similar topics (links to some of them listed at the link page) so I've thought about creating a place where you could check tips and
information that on first sight don't seem to be directly related to costume (making). |
| Primarily, this should be the right place for those who would really like to get into some specific era, its customs, laws, culture and ethics. |
| Costuming vs. reconstruction |
| Whoever is into costuming - either by wearing or producing, or only by researching - will surely encounter some very difficult personae who insist on a complete historical accuracy. That mostly
touches the matter of fabrics and accesories for costumes. There is a way for those who, like me, mostly can't afford accurate - and respectively expensive - fabrics to protect themselves from pointing fingers of re-enactors. |
| Namely, there is a big difference between costuming and reconstructing. Costuming doesn't oblige the maker to be completely historically accurate, as long as his/her work
manages to evoke the outer look of some period's clothing. Of course, the costume maker should follow the appropriate cuts in any case because the look and the shape of a costume depend on them. But it doesn't matter that much if he/she will use plastic,
glass or real pearls, real or artificial silk (or even synthetics), or the kind of boning for stays - as far as the appropriate outer look is achieved. |
| On the other hand, there are reconstructors who are using exactly those materials that have been used in some period. Such people mostly do that for the history's and science
sake, to fill up the gaps in knowledge of clothing making. They will later on provide us with such information as HOW some period's clothing was made and, most of all, how it was used. After you put on solid 18th century stays, a bum roll or even a
farthingale, then about 15 meters of silk or brocade over it, adorned with gold embroidery, jewels and pearls and set up a construction of wire cage, your and somebody else's hair on your head and try to walk with that in 7 cm high-heeled shoes, you'll
certainly come to a conclusion that it probably wasn't a daily dress of rococo period. Reconstructors are those who will spend lots of probably somebody else's money to find about that. |
| There are also people who are using reconstructors' methods in order just to have an accurate historical costumes for themselves. Of course, that is something that most of costume makers would
also like to do, but the point is, if you are not able to reconstruct a costume, you don't have to. |
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| There are lots of reasons why you even can't achieve that anymore. Firstly, people today mostly don't have as much time as people of former centuries did. Most costume makers have some other
jobs and to most of them costume making is but a hobby. By the Second World War, when the popularity of radio, TV and cinema started growing and when more and more women started working to fill up the budget, women spent lot of their time in fencing and
embroidering their own clothes. They had no other job so they could easily spend all their effort for those elaborate works. Also, by the mid 19th century and first sewing machines, all the clothes was handmade. Who is up to do the costumes that way
today? Everything with an atribute "handmade" is terribly expensive, hard to make and usually hard to sell because of the high price. |
| Secondly, there is a problem that will appear as soon as you start thinking about reconstructions. There are just some materials that you can't get anymore. One of the best known materials of
that kind is a whalebone. It was used from mid 19th century on as a boning for corsets (therefrom arrives the term of "boning"). They aren't actually bones, but bone-like parts in form of bars under whale's mouth through which it sifts water with
plancton from bigger matter. When people found out that this is a great thing for corsetting (it is solid when dry and can easily be modelled when put to warm water) lots of whales were slaughtered and brought to extinction. But before the whalehunting
was forbidden, millions of corsets were made. Today, those corsets are hard to find and both the fabric and boning is in a very poor state. If you want to make a historically accurate corsets, by all the rules of a game you should use whalebones but -
are you really up to slaughter one for that? |
| The fact is that some of today's materials are far better than anything in history. For instance, corsets with plastic boning are as solid as those with whalebones, but unlike whalebone ones,
they can easily be washed and, what is more important: no animal was harmed during the making of this corset! I share the opinion with some of the costume makers that people of old would have gladly used some of today's materials instead
of those that they had, because they are far cheaper, easier to make or more lightweight. |
| It is upon you to choose which kind of materials or methods you'll use for making of your costumes, but you should only know that you are by no means obliged to follow rules you don't like. And
nobody should mind you for having your own rules. |
