Renaissance Festival Costumes

When the whole family wants a day of playing games, learning new tricks, shopping for artisan crafts of the fun and fabulous variety and eating turkey legs, a trip to a Renaissance festival is in order--and it heightens the fun to wear proper Renaissance festival costumes! Depending on your interest, time, skill and budget, you can buy costumes before you go, rent them at the festival itself or get down and dirty with a fun project and make the costume yourself.

At a Renaissance Faire, the whole family can get in on the fun.

Styles of Renaissance Festival Costumes

Renaissance festivals, more commonly called “faires,” are part craft fair, part historical reenactment and part performance. A celebration of all things 16th century British, they are a fun opportunity to play, eat and lose oneself in a bygone but romantic era. Everyone who works at the faire dresses in proper period costume, or garb, from Queen Elizabeth down to the peasants. Since dressing up is a huge part of the fun, many faire-goers elect to dress in period garb as well.

Garbing oneself as a member of the nobility guarantees you will be looked on admiringly and invited into the festivities throughout the day, but these are the most complex and expensive costumes, as well as being warm. To be a nobleman, you need a good ruffled linen poet shirt, a velvet doublet, embroidered velvet slops (the baggy trousers that are usually cut to mid-thigh), good hose, boots and a jeweled hat.

A noblewoman wears a gown similar to that of the queen, comprising a stiff corset top, heavy petticoat, underskirt, overskirt, ruff and hat.

Many purveyors of goods at the faires dress as Elizabethan merchants. These costumes are generally less fancy versions of the nobility’s garb. Men will wear doublets and slops made of good cotton, which was an expensive fabric in that era, and women will wear heavy cotton skirts, embroidered bodices and big straw hats.

The most popular garb by far is that worn by the peasantry. Colorful, lightweight, sexy or playful and allowing for a lot of accessorizing, as well as being comparatively inexpensive, the peasant look is definitely the way to go in the modern era. Men can wear a basic shirt with simple slops, boots and a hat, women have a jolly time with a blouse, a bodice, an underskirt and shorter overskirt in contrasting colors and either a straw hat or garland of flowers. The peasant look is particularly sexy for plus size women, as it accentuates curves.

Renaissance Festival Costume Accessories

Back in the 16th century, most of the bling was worn on your clothing if you were rich, or on your belt if you weren’t. The accessories at a faire are all going to be of a practical nature. Men and women wear belts and from these hang their pouches, tankards for regular drinking and whatever else they like. A well-laden belt is a nice finish to your garb.

Buying Renaissance Festival Costumes

A good Renaissance costume is forever, so if you’re devoted to faire-going, you should invest in a costume you love. You can usually buy costumes at the faire, which has the advantage of seeing that the cut and color suit you and learning how to truss yourself up properly. However, if you want to arrive already garbed, there are many online shops to browse.

One of the nicest shops for really top-notch garb is Very Merry Seamstress. They make historical clothing in all eras and do custom work for weddings and other big events, but also have a large selection of beautifully made and reasonably priced costumes for faire, from peasantry to nobility. They also include a list of faires and events to wear your garb so that you’re guaranteed to get the most use of it.

Other online shops that offer Renaissance faire costumes include:

• All Things Renaissance
• Renaissance Costumes Clothing
• Renaissance Faire Costumes

For more information and photographs, go to Ren Faire.com, the official Faire site. They also provide links for patterns should you wish to make a Renaissance costume yourself, and references if you really want to delve the history of these marvelous outfits. Hazzah!

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