you brought it on yourself miss twiddle

In the last week, I did get my act together and finish two projects. So now I have a nice dress for late summer, and something to wear once it gets colder.

First, the dress that I've been haphazardly fiddling with for at least a year. The bodice is based on a 17th century corset pattern, the skirt is made of out of a curtain that I scavenged from my college dorm, and the yoke, which is the part I'm most proud of, was done completely in an ad hoc manner with the scraps from the skirt:

( pics )


The other, embarrassing as it is to admit, was inspired by Star Trek. But not like that! Earlier this summer I watched the first two-ish seasons of DS9, which has extremely spiffy costumes on a lot of the extras. Anyway, there is one episode where one particular lady walks through the screen all the time wearing a fabulous bright-blue jumper with cut outs on the top. I watched the episode rather a lot of times in order to get screencaps (reference pics here and here). My version is in purple corduroy (I swear that it is purple and not brown! Everyone seems to think my cloth was brown.), and is a bit longer and flared, since I am planning to wear it in real life and not on a spandex happy space station!

( pictures )

But the question remains: is watching Star Trek for the costumes more or less dorky than watching it to improve one's Klingon?

…when you spend an afternoon analyzing the clothing in Tamora Pierce novels. You also know that you are a hopelessly irredeemable geek.

Not that there's too much method to it: I swear the description of Thayet's dress from Lioness Rampant is straight out of Gone With The Wind.

But, by the Kel books, she seems to have settled down. Male dress is either "breeches," "shirt" and "tunic" or, on fancy occasions, "hose," "shirt," and "tunic." Women seem to wear either "undergown" and "overrobe (overgown)" or "(under)gown" and "(sleeveless) surcoat."

These are, of course, woefully vague terms. Female costume for just about the entire period consisted of some sort of two-layers of dress. When she says "surcoat," though, I tend to think <link:http://www.silkewerk.com/images/luttrell1.jpg|"sideless> (i.e. mid 14th c), even though I personally tend to imagine them more in standard 15th c. or late 15th c./Burgundian clothes. I think she did mention on Sheroes once that her clothing tends to "Gothic" (or at least she thinks it does).

So fine. But what about the men? I suppose one could call something like this a tunic, as well as this kind of thing. But there isn't anything I would call "breeches" until the 16th century. Which is definitely out of period, at least, as far as I can tell. The other problem would be this "tunic" thing. Men, of course, were wearing robes/houpplandes/surcoats just as long as women (almost) for the 14th-15th centuries. Young men might wear short tunics (although I don't like the word "tunic" at all for this: way too vague and, I mean really: would you call any of these things "tunics" I wouldn't.) But older men would wear longer garments. And I'm sorry: calling this a tunic is stretching it. Really stretching it.

I have to conclude that Tamora Pierce just doesn't like the idea of guys not wearing pants. She'll let them get away with it on fancy-dress occasions, but not normally. None of her Manly Middle-Aged Men are going to be caught dead in an ankle-length gown!

I know, I should just get over it. They're fantasy novels, not historical ones. The author can do what she likes with clothing. But it bugs me. All of this pseudo-medieval fantasy that really isn't bugs me.

When I write my pseudo-medieval fantasy novel… If the women wear pointy hats, the men are going to wear houpplandes, too. With 12+ yards of cloth, if they can afford it. So there.