Fake it 'till you make it part 3

For the men at the Christmas fair I had to fake it, for the women it was easier to make historically plausible clothes.

I spent most of my time with the costumes sewing skirts for the staff at the entrances. I made the basic 18th century skirt that you tie around your waist, since that makes it easy to adjust them. I also made the skirts fairly wide so that they could wear thermal trousers under them. All in all I made 15 skirts. They are sewn on machine and quickly gathered to a waistband. The wool for the skirts didn't fray so I didn't hem them either. The men working had a cloth tabard, from the museum storage, and dark clothes, and then we also provided caps and scarves for them to wear. The aim was to get a generic late 19th century vibe.

One thing was evident, that I haven't really thought about. It was easily visible who felt comfortable in their clothes, and who felt strange and dressed out. That is also important to remember when working with a lot of extras. The body language can also give a lot to the authenticity, if you can believe that the person wearing is from another time period just from they way the move and stand. For many of the women working at our fair it was clearly unusual to wear a long skirt and walk around in it the whole day.

For the dramatizations we did I played the female characters. And for our poor working woman I would say that those clothes are not fake, they are quite accurate, even if I ended up with a bit more 17th than 18th century.

I'm wearing a simple skirt, a linen apron and a mid-17th century cap. The jacket is a shortgown based on a preserved shortgown from Visby from the middle of the 18th century. That jacket is made to be worn over pocket hoops, so for this version  made it narrower, I also made the sleeves slightly larger. The shortgown is sewn on machine. The only fake thing is the scarf that I wore, but it was cold and I needed something warm around my neck. Overall this is a look that I feel confident in that it is pretty accurate, and not just plausible, for a simple woman in the late 17th and early 18th centuries around here.

The other character was the landlady of the tavern. I needed to make her look like she's from a higher social status than the poor woman. Here I totally mixed what I could use. 

The foundation garment is my 16th century mustard kirtle, I wanted to give her more colour than the greys and browns of the poor woman. The jacket is a grey jacket from the costume storage. The pattern is nice, but the fabric is dreadful. It's ok from a distance. I added a white neckerchief and a white apron for her. I had planned to use a silk cap to cover the hair, but we had a heavy and wet snowfall on the day of the fair so wearing silk outside was out of the question. I stuck with my 17th century cap, but for her I tied it further back to show a bit more hair than for the poor woman.

The rolling pin is there because I've had to chase out one of the customers of the tavern with it.