Who wants to help me with a renfaire costume?

[WarKitty]

So I've been doing research towards a renfaire costume, and am having some details missing. The character I'm trying to do would be a teenage daughter of a well-off cloth merchant. I had a couple of questions that I've been having trouble finding answers to:

- regarding clothing: what sorts of fabrics would have been used? I know that velvet, most furs, and any fabric with gold or silver, and most silks, are out of the question. It seems like silk isn't quite as bad but I'm having trouble figuring out what I can and can't put it in.

- how much lace on a garment would be realistic? I note that it is one of the things that is not prohibited to a woman of my class.

- regarding jewelry, would coral be an appropriate decoration and how much of it should I use?

- regarding interactions, how forward might a young lady be when seeking a husband? Especially if the desired husband had a title?

- how would she, as an unmarried woman, be addressed?

[GrlumpTheElder]

Firstly, depends what period (by renfair do you mean renaicance or just general re-enactment. - sorry, here in the UK we don't use the term)

Wool would have been used for most clothes (and is relatively cheap). Dyed wool would show a higer status. For other materials, check this page on the Sumptuary laws: http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~cfinlay/sumptuary.html

Lace depends on the period. True Lace (similar to what we have now) wasn't available until the late 15th/Early 16th centuries.

Coral is apropriate if it's small.

Unfortunalty I'm not well versed on etiquette of the period, however the chance of you landing a husband with a title is infinitessimal - although you would be well off, you would still be far below the station of the lowest of the nobles. You'd be much more likely to be married off to another merchant of a member of the town guild your father is a member of.

[Jay R]

Until you have chosen a country (and often a region within a country) as well as a period of time, these questions have no clear answer.

Imagine trying to answer the same question about a daughter of a shop owner today, without knowing if the shop is England, Kazakhstan, Dubai, Rio, Beijing or New Delhi.

[Erloas]

Time period and location are vital pieces of information. In some cases even 20-30 years different at the right point in history could change things a lot, and in other cases hundreds of years could pass without huge changes.

Pretty much no matter what time or place though your under clothing with be made out of linen and you will be wearing layers.

As for the outer layer, there are a few options. Linen was fairly commonly used. Silk was used a lot by the well off, not sure if a cloth merchant would be able to afford it for his kids though. There are however a lot of different types of silks and they would be of varying value and it can be hard to figure out which modern types match the ones made in your timer period. Wool was probably the most commonly used overall. And like silk there are a lot of different types of wool and it takes a bit of research to figure out which modern weaves match traditional weaves. The fabric tended to be very high quality too, probably as good, if not better, then a lot of what is available now.

One of the most important thing to consider is color. Color said a *lot* about your wealth and station. It isn't just the base color, it is also the vibrancy and hue of the color. For instance they would make a vat of blue dye and the first fabrics they dyed with it would be dark, the next few would be lighter, and it would just keep progressing until the cheapest fabrics would be dyed and the color would start out being fairly light and washed out.

Here are a couple links on fiber types (http://historicenterprises.com/fabrics-fibers-and-weaves-c-99_202_203.html) as well as colors (http://historicenterprises.com/fabrics-colors-c-99_202_204.html) to give you a reasonable idea. They have done quite a bit of research on their information, though it isn't necessarily specific to a time or place.

[WarKitty]

So, late renaissance, probably british (either London or Westminster), though possibly Calais. FYI this should also tell you what I mean by "cloth merchant" - British wool trade was HUGE. The cloth merchant's guilds in large trade areas could very well be some of the richest men around.

That said - I don't have a huge budget here. I'm a reasonable seamstress, but I don't have money to invest in lots of new fabric. Nor do I own a sewing machine. We're going to be working with stuff I scavenged from Goodwill and modified, not a pile of fabric that has to be sewn up.

[Aedilred]

So I've been doing research towards a renfaire costume, and am having some details missing. The character I'm trying to do would be a teenage daughter of a well-off cloth merchant. I had a couple of questions that I've been having trouble finding answers to:

- regarding interactions, how forward might a young lady be when seeking a husband? Especially if the desired husband had a title?

If you can get hold of it (it's still in print but might not be easily accessible where you are), I would highly recommend Ian Mortimer's "A Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England" which iirc goes into some detail about social interactions and expectations of 16th century England, and things like sumptuary laws. You might find it answers quite a lot of your questions and gives you some ideas of your own.

When it comes to interactions, I would expect that a young woman would probably be expected to be introduced by her father (or other guardian, perhaps a brother). Since it would be made apparent on introduction whether or not she was married, I suspect it'd be taken almost for granted by any unmarried men she encountered (especially those of a higher class) that she was looking for a good match, so I suppose her focus would be on entertaining her companion with polite but witty conversation while also attempting to draw attention (albeit not in a vulgar way) to how wealthy her father is, and therefore the likely size of any dowry.

That's in public, of course, where standards have to be maintained; in private I daresay she could be as forward as she liked.