Costumes and Disguises

Ever since I was hee-knigh to a hassgropper [1] I've loved to dress up. I guess it's very typical of little girls to play with clothes, but I was never very interested in style or anything silly like that. I happily wore mismatched socks and stained sweatshirts to school (especially on school picture day, it seemed), but I used any excuse to try on the long swirly skirts in the back of my closet.

One of my favorite dress-up toys was a floral skirt my mother had bought at a garage sale for cutting up as scrap material. I immediately seized it and used it as everything from skirt to hair. (I always wanted long hair; unfortunately mine is so fine that it just doesn't look good long.) Of course I always lusted after fancier clothes, and occasionally I got them, and that's what this page is about.

Look through and enjoy. The pictures are relatively small here, so that the text has a little bit of space, but the pictures themselves are linked to bigger versions; the ones that don't are already as big as they get.

Right: The story starts not with me, but with my parents. As you can see, my father dresses up too sometimes. He has an excuse though; he's a professor, and since his PhD is from Harvard, he wears Harvard colors. It's easy to pick out the Harvard graduates in any crowd of academic gowns, because they're all bright pink. Yes, pink is a boy's color. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. :-)

As my father would say, just another thing you can do with a Harvard PhD.

The rest of my family likes to dress up too sometimes; I can only remember my mother wearing a costume once (see below), but my brother has had a few notable costumes. In addition to trying on the samurai armor like me, he made a set of Roman armor for Latin class in high school. The sword is still lying around in a back closet, I think. He was involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism for a while (I'm not sure how active he is any more), and at one point my mother made a couple of shifts for him, as well as a sparkly doublet. Maybe there's something genetic in this affinity for costumes?

Left: This picture was taken at my brother's Eagle ceremony. I think he was 17, so I must have been 9. (Ralph is the bit of tan shirt behind me.) The interesting thing about this photo is that it neatly encompasses two passions of mine. I'm wearing a floor-length dress (laced and ruffled, no less) and holding a book. The book I'm displaying is The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper. The dress is one of my favorites; Mom made it for me around Christmas in third grade, I think, and I loved it. Though it's not strictly a costume (at least it wasn't made with that intention), I wore it to school one day for a book report, a biography report actually. We were supposed to dress up like our subject, and mine was Catherine the Great. I even had a makeshift hoop skirt made from a hula hoop (it didn't work very well). I wore that dress for ages, until I couldn't fit into it any more. That was a very sad day.

Right: This is, obviously, me in samurai armor. We were on a trip to Japan in the summer of 1989, and we visited a museum which had a section of traditional clothes to try on. There were different things like farmer's habits, samurai armor, and lots of other costumes that I don't remember. My brother, of course, tried on the samurai armor, which was small for him since he's a European male; then I wanted to try. The Japanese woman working the exhibit tried to convince me not to, but I've never been easily dissuaded when I've got my mind set on something.

Like the previous picture, this shows a lot about me; I wasn't content with being put into a pre-defined role, or rather, with having a role denied to me (in this case, that of a warrior). Okay, it's only a small incident, but it's an attitude which characterizes much of my relation to the world. It's not a good idea to tell me I can't do something (especially that I may not do it), unless you really want me to prove you wrong.

Left: From right to left, me, Mom, and Dad. My mother is, obviously, an Evil Stepmother; my father's some sort of prince or something (but he disdains to be a Man in Tights). Those are my parents' only Halloween costumes. As for me, I have no idea what I was trying to be. I wore a floor-length black dress and painted my face white. That was not one of my better ideas. I wouldn't put this picture up at all, actually, except that I wanted to show my parents' costumes. They don't dress up too much, but there's the occasional exception.

By the way, the picture was taken at a Halloween square dance. Yes, my parents square dance, and so did I, for a couple of years. I took classes with them, and for a while I was active, but eventually I got tired of the fact that the next-youngest person around was usually over 40. It's been years since I went to a dance, and these days I doubt that I could follow anything but the most basic calls.

Right: This is my french maid costume. This picture was taken when I was four days short of 15 years old. It's not the greatest costume I've ever worn, or at least I didn't pull it off very well. Notice, however, the eyelashes. They were my favorite part of the costume. Huge things that knock into my glasses when I blink. Gotta love 'em. :-)

I wore this garb for a couple of Halloweens afterwards, too; the last time I wore it was in 1997, senior year of high school. I've got a better costume now. I don't think this one really fits my personality, anyway. I used to say it was because I'm not sexy enough, but I think it's more that I'm not conventionally sexy enough. I just don't know how to do it. For some reason I tend look better in slightly non-conventional outfits that I choose or make myself, and in which I feel more comfortable. In this outfit, I felt sort of like a maid trying on her employer's clothes.

Below: Here, in April 1999, I'm dressed up as an ancient Greek. (I used to know what part of Greece, and what time period, but I've forgotten.) That semester I had taken a history class called "Bonds of Intimacy," on gender and sexuality in ancient Greece. That day there was a history department picnic on Skinner Green, and a few of us from this class decided to dress up. We met in the professor's office beforehand, made laurel wreathes, and pinned curtains on each other. (Unfortunately, the dressing up was more fun than the picnic itself.)

Afterwards, I went to my German 102 language lab; it was our last meeting, so we had it across the street at the Thirsty Mind. I'm on the right, obviously; next to me is Antje, our German assistant, and the two others are my classmates (whose names have, unfortunately, completely fled my consciousness).

Right: Back view of me and my best friend Al at Scarborough Faire Renaissance Festival in June 1995. Ever since I was little and came to Scarborough Faire with my family, I had wanted to rent a costume there, so finally I decided to spend my own money on one. It was $60 to rent that costume for the day, and it was worth every penny. (Al's was simpler and less expensive than mine; the next year when we went together, I rented a simple one while she went for the elaborate insanity.) That particular costume had never been worn before, and it looked great on me; people kept asking me if my mother had made it for me. It was so much fun that I wanted one of my own.

So I made one. I had to wait a few of years; a couple of summers later (1996 I think) I went to yet another festival with Al and found a book about making garb, so I bought that; however, I had to wait until after I'd come back from France before putting the project into practice. It took nearly a year, from the first planning stages until I had something I could actually wear, but it was totally worth it. My mother says she wouldn't have started if she'd realized what it entailed; I don't think I would have, either. It looks complicated, and I suppose it is, but it wasn't really that hard to make. I just read the book, got a general idea of what I wanted the final product to look like, and followed the instructions. Admittedly some things could have been better, but we didn't make any huge mistakes. And in some ways, Elizabethan garb is very simple once you've got the hoopskirt and corset done, because then both the skirt and bodice are straight-sided triangles. No curves or anything, though protruding cleavage is a plus. <g>

The project isn't finished yet, though. After I'd gotten something I can wear (i.e. all the undergarments plus underskirt, overskirt, and bodice), I put (over-)sleeves on the bodice and made some headwear. Then comes the push to accessorise... I bought some vaguely authentic-looking costume jewellery in Wal-Mart, and then in summer of 2000 I went to Scarborough Faire again. This was the first time I'd worn my own garb there (in fact, I drove the minivan down there in hoopskirt, corset, bumroll and all), and I really noticed a difference in the way shopkeepers catered to me. I had planned on buying a bodice dagger, but I ended up buying a freshwater pearl and garnet necklace and a feathered fan in addition. Too much money spent perhaps, but I enjoyed it.

I've worn my garb for Halloween a couple of times at Mount Holyoke. It's not really the sort of thing to wear for Halloween, but when else can I wear it, really? The best place is a renaissance festival, because it's designed for people in funny awkward clothing, but those are relatively few. Besides, it's fun to get "Best Costume" at a party, even if there are only 15 people there.

I'd wear it to class, but the practicalities are intimidating. First of all, I need assistance to put the thing on, and then to take it off. Finding people to undo a couple of knots is fine (especially since I can undo everything but the top couple of layers by myself), but people tend not to meet my eyes when I ask for volunteers to help me assume battle armor.

Even if I get it on, chairs and desks these days aren't designed for voluminous petticoats, hoopskirts, and bumrolls. Modern classmates tend to step on trailing skirts (especially going down stairs). Just forget about trying to negotiate a cafeteria line. In fact, just forget about eating at all - what if I spilled something on myself? (as I often do). Furthermore, how would I carry my books? Even if a backpack were period, I'd probably injure myself if I tried it. Corsets don't allow much back (or front) flexibility.

In spite of these limitations, I did actually wear my garb to school one day. It was almost the last day of high school, and I really didn't care about causing a stir. I usually tried to be as unnoticeable as possible, but that day everyone was talking about me. It was completely awesome! My locker was in the huge wide hall in the center of the school, and as I turned the corner and proceeded down the corridor everyone stopped talking and turned to stare. I felt like a queen receiving homage from her subjects.

The best thing was that nobody had any idea I could do something that spectacular. Everybody thought I bought it (not impossible for my middle- to upper-middle-class school), and I won't deny that the materials cost a few hundred dollars, but my mother and I made the whole thing ourselves. Even my friend Leanne, who had been hearing about this project all year, had been expecting something obviously homemade. The day when I proved them all wrong was the most triumphant moment of my life. [2]

[1] Spoonerism. Knee-nigh to a grasshopper.
[2] More than my high school graduation, even more than my college graduation will be, because they (and I) expected that.

This page created and maintained by Laurabelle (send WebMail).
Best viewed with Internet Explorer or Netscape 6.