So, you wanted to know a little bit about renn garb, huh? Read on for my tips about garb!

Beginners

Well, first a word for beginners - Thrift Shop! Thrift Shop! Thrift Shop! There's all kinds of fun things that you can find in thrift shops. For the ladies, any sort of flowing elastic waist skirt (solid colors), and a billowing pullover blouse without any buttons on it, and a simple solid colored sash is a great start for peasant garb. For footwear, try babydoll shoes or Minnetonka moccasins. On occasion, you can even find vests and such that can easily be altered into bodices. The perfect vest for that alteration is one that is cut wide and under the breast. The only alterations that need be made to a vest like that for a basic bodice is to remove the buttons, take in the waist a bit (bodices are supposed to cinch around the waist and under the breasts), add a stiffening strip and some eyelets, and run a heavy braided or leather shoelace through them to lace them up.

For the guys, at a thrift shop, there's all kinds of cool stuff. Guys, don't be afraid to look in the ladies clothing section. There's all kinds of blouses and stuff in the ladies clothes that are styled after the old peasant shirts and poet shirts - baggy sleeves, pullover, open front, some even have laces up the front. Just be wary of buttons... in the renaissance, the peasants couldn't afford buttons, so everything laced up. Although, if you find that perfect shirt, but it has buttons on it, don't worry, you can always alter it later. For pants, find an old pair of thin sweat pants without pockets. Those will usually work pretty well for basic pants. Engineer boots or Minnetonka moccasins (suede soft soled boots, usually very cheap) work great for footwear.

For both the ladies and guys, chances are that your entire outfit will cost under $30, maybe $70 if you buy the Minnetonka boots.

With that out of the way, let's start getting into the meat of experienced renn garb, or garb for those who feel adventrous with a sewing machine.

Making Clothing

Shirts are quite easy to make, and usually don't take that long. For instance, I'm lousy with a sewing machine, and I made my first shirt! The easiest method of starting off with new garb, unless you're an experienced clothing designer and seamstress is to pick up one of those cheesy Halloween costume patterns from your local fabric store. Simplicity has a bunch of good patterns in their halloween section. Just ignore their fabric list, and use your own. Most of their cosutming patterns ask you to use taffita and polyester fabrics, and while they might look somewhat flashy, they are just no good for realistic looking garb. If you are going for peasant garb, you're going to want to stick with mainly earth tones (brown, earthy greens, off-white, etc.) in cotton. Stay away from the blues and purples. During the renaissance, dyes of this color were hard to come by, and because of this, they were expensive, and usually only found on the garments worn by wealthy merchants and royalty. If you really want to go for peasant garb, make a shirt out of an offwhite cotton fabric, then go play in the mud for a while, let the shirt dry, and then just hose it down to get the chunks off. The real color of a lot of peasant garb was dirt. No pattern is set in stone either. As I understand it, Simplicity patterns alter very easilly to allow for your own personal flare to clothing.

Just a bit of advice on fabric types and colors: During the Renaissance, there was a well defined caste system in place. Typically in any village, you had peasants (farmers and general hired labor, mostly unskilled), Merchants (blacksmiths, traders, bakers, and other artisans), and Nobility. Please keep in mind, this is by no means fully accurate, and is only provided as a rough guideline for basic clothes making - in other words, I know this isn't 100% historically accurate, and it isn't meant to be.. don't bother with hate mail for this! The peasants typically wore clothes that they made themselves. the fabric was often cheap, usually just cotton and wool, and leather on occasion, and was often mended and patched. Merchants could afford better clothes, depending on how good business was for them. A sea trader would be able to afford better clothes than a blacksmith, who would in turn be able to afford better clothes than a baker. As a generality, however, you started seeing finer cloths and more expensive colors coming into the clothes of the merchant. Occasionally you'd see a rough velvet on a merchant, and sometimes blues and purples. Their clothes were typically in better repair and had far fewer mends and patches in them. They typically took pride in how they looked, especially if business was good. Nobles, on the other hand, could pretty much wear whatever they wanted, and usually kept in the height of fashion. Lots of heavy upholstry fabrics, velvets, silk and other fine fabrics, both smooth and textured. They would also wear a lot of bright colors - reds, blues, purples, golds, etc. At a renaissance festival, however, it's more about having fun than the clothing. But, having nice clothes than make people stop and gawk can be fun! I tend to go with a cross between Scottish soldier and wealthy merchant. I have a lot of velvet and leather in my garb collection, but I also wear a traditional hand-wrapped kilt (for information on wrapping a kilt, click here!). My typical garb is a black cotton lace-front poet shirt, a kilt, knee high boots, and a leather Scottish fighting jacket. I must admit, however, that of all the garb I currently wear, I haven't made any of it, besides the kilt. I support the artisans that work so hard to bring their fine wares to the Maryland Rennaissance Festival! Which brings me to the next section...

Buying Garb

The easiest route to getting great garb (but certainly not the cheapest) is to buy it. At the Maryland Renaissance Festival (and at any of them worldwide, in fact), there are a great number of very talented clohiers who make very fine clothes. Prices range from as low as $15-20 for a shirt, all the way up to several thousand dollars for custom made noble's garb. There is usually a vast range of clothes styles as well, from basic peasant garb to merchant class garb to nobles garb, and even fantasy garb and armor. Faires are also among the bast places to find quality footwear in a renaissance style as well, though it's usually not cheap (usually around $300 for basic boots, all the way up to a few thousand for handcrafted custom made leather boots. Oftentimes, you can find shoes significantly cheaper at faire, though I personally much prefer the boots.

Buying garb, as I've mentioned is usually not cheap, however. On any given day at Faire, I'm usually wearing in excess of $1000 worth of garb, but even with as much as it all cost, I must say that I look good in it!