Greetings!
Although I did a fair bit of craft sewing, embroidery, and crochet from
the time I was about eight, my first attempt at something historical-ish
was in my senior year in high school, for my church's madrigal dinner.
I was playing the head page who turns out to be an evil sorceress. So I
made a sort of fancy tunic thing and put glitter in my hair. My next
exposure--and first exposure to costume research--was for making some
garments for the "human chessboard" my dorm used to do at the Ohio State
Renaissance Fair. This is where I learned such important things as:
the hole for the head in a tunic is lower in front than in back, and
upholstery velvet is a b*tch to sew sometimes :-) The research
consisted of going to the public library and looking at their one book
on historical costume and deciding that "Byzantine" was the look I was
going for.
My first serious attempts came my first year in grad school, when I
joined the SCA. Although my first garment was something I now refer to
as the "Ostrogothic prom dress" (green taffeta bog-style gown), I "got
better" fairly quickly, since being a history grad student did make me
start glomming on to what was a good source and what wasn't fairly
quickly. (The design of that first dress wasn't the issue--I just had no
clue about fabric at the time....)
But I think I have to trace my interest in historical clothing back to
the sixth grade, when we did "Shakespeare in the Schools." I played Hamlet.
Susan
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