German Costume Pet peeves

Over the weekend I've been working updating my website so that the new site has all the information that the old site has, and putting the referrer URL's in the system so that all the search engine links and folks bookmarks will point to the new pages. Painful, but necessary!

This afternoon, I've been going through beothuk's pictures of Avacal's investiture, which landsknecht_po and his lovely wife rectangularcat did the stepping up clothes for.

dameroseline did an interesting thing in her Cranach dress class at Costume College, where she took pictures of modern reproductions that she had collected and we did a "Spot what's wrong with this dress excercise" to help develop an eye for getting the harmonious whole.
It was a great idea, not sure I'm bold enough to do it myself in my next class! I'm not sure I could pull it off without someone getting offended.

Which brings me to my pet peeve list for current German reenactor clothing:
- Waistlines too low on dresses and 'rock
- Hair down loose when it should be in braids, or up.
- Hats the wrong size or the wrong colors, or the wrong style to go with the outfit.

Edited to add It occurred to me that it may appear that I'm faulting landsknecht_po's tailoring. I'm not, his stuff is fine. My comments pertain to the populace and other instances of German re-enactor clothing around the world.

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I think my next articles will be on how to get the waistline in the right place.

More than the fit, getting the waistline in the right spot makes such a huge difference in the look of the garment. Don't get me wrong, fit is important too, but bodies change over time, we put on weight and lose it, folks did back then too. But the waistline stays at the same spot even when it changes sizes.

Its really all about proportion and getting the horizontal lines right.