Thought-provoking material, as always - thank you for the time you put into the things you write!
I can't speak to the Rennie piece, as that's not my world, but I know in the SCA there is definitely a tendency for one person to be brave enough to attempt some items from a period source, and then that method gets passed down as gospel - no matter how poor the result. Few people seem to want to do their own research, or they're intimidated, and it's always easier to have someone else say, "Do it like that" and be done with it.
My personal pet peeve at the moment is skirt pleating - I've never been told by anyone teaching German dress construction to use anything except cartridge pleating. I kept saying, "Yes, but the pleats are so thin, they don't look like the images!" I was told to pad the pleats. I padded the pleats until I felt like I was wearing a bum roll around my waist and they STILL didn't look right.
The most recent dress I made, I got a wild hair and decided to use rolled pleats, and sort of figured it out myself...and they look *exactly* like most of the portraits I've seen. I know there are also knife pleats, box pleats, and all kinds of other ways of folding fabric, but I have been confidently assured over and over that cartridge pleating is the only way to do it.
Grrr.
I very much appreciate your willingness to ask questions and disregard "orthodoxy" in the quest for the best re-creation!
The hat illustration was bizarre, btw - there aren't even any petals, and it sure seems to me like most of the barrett styles I've seen have anywhere from two to six petals. It's baffling to me that people do this "pseudo" stuff, but de gustibus est non disputandum, I guess.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regna
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-20 07:20 pm (UTC)I can't speak to the Rennie piece, as that's not my world, but I know in the SCA there is definitely a tendency for one person to be brave enough to attempt some items from a period source, and then that method gets passed down as gospel - no matter how poor the result. Few people seem to want to do their own research, or they're intimidated, and it's always easier to have someone else say, "Do it like that" and be done with it.
My personal pet peeve at the moment is skirt pleating - I've never been told by anyone teaching German dress construction to use anything except cartridge pleating. I kept saying, "Yes, but the pleats are so thin, they don't look like the images!" I was told to pad the pleats. I padded the pleats until I felt like I was wearing a bum roll around my waist and they STILL didn't look right.
The most recent dress I made, I got a wild hair and decided to use rolled pleats, and sort of figured it out myself...and they look *exactly* like most of the portraits I've seen. I know there are also knife pleats, box pleats, and all kinds of other ways of folding fabric, but I have been confidently assured over and over that cartridge pleating is the only way to do it.
Grrr.
I very much appreciate your willingness to ask questions and disregard "orthodoxy" in the quest for the best re-creation!
The hat illustration was bizarre, btw - there aren't even any petals, and it sure seems to me like most of the barrett styles I've seen have anywhere from two to six petals. It's baffling to me that people do this "pseudo" stuff, but de gustibus est non disputandum, I guess.
Thanks for sharing!