Garb: Some thoughts on a troublesome word.

There is a word at the top of this page that carries a lot of baggage in our community. I'm speaking of "Garb". It seems odd to me to spend a lot of time discussing a simple noun that has been around since at least 1580, which was used by Shakespeare in Hamlet and Coriolanus to describe the fashion of a country (sometimes in reference to language, sometimes attire). But discuss it I do. 

In fact, in costuming forums and in real life, I am constantly called upon to defend my use of the word by those who hate it with a passion that I find surprising. And of all the linguistic eccentricities for which I might be called to the carpet, why choose garb?

"Because it's a word that describes quite accurately what I'm doing here" doesn't seem enough for most of my challengers.

garb (plural garbs)
1. A type of dress or clothing.
2. fashion, style of dressing oneself up
3. (figuratively) a guise, external appearance

Seems simple enough. We need a word to describe the fashions and styles of another time, to differentiate from the fashion and styles of our time. So we reach for a suitable word and run with it.


And trip over all the people trying to stop us.

Last week, I sat back and watched a group that I used to belong to turn itself inside out in an argument about the use of the term 'garb' on this blog and others. Mostly -- though I went unnamed -- it was clear that the instigator was upset by my use of the term in another forum. The teeth-gnashing, and eye-poking that ensued among partisans on both sides was truly something to see.

It's just a word, people... or is it? In search of historical context, I went looking for the source.

I reached out to Jon DeCles, who was there when both the Society of Creative Anachronism was born and when Phyllis Patterson was struggling to bring the Renaissance Pleasure Faire to life and asked him what he remembered of the use of the term "garb" -- this is what he said:

I can recall the use of 'garb' in the format of 'medieval garb' being used in the earliest days of the Society for Creative Anachronism, i.e., the late 1960s. The point was to make a distinction between 'clothing' and 'costume.' The distinction was an important one because costumes didn't have to have pockets or fasten with period fasteners, they just had to look good from a distance. It was an important point because the SCA got many people from Science Fiction Fandom who were used throwing together splendid costumes for one use at a masquerade ball at a convention, often made from old stuff they got at a thrift store but often bearing little resemblance to anything 'period.'

I still remember Phyllis Patterson struggling with getting people to understand, at her Renaissance Pleasure Faires in those days, that hot pink satin hennons were not characteristic of the Elizabethan Age.

(Thanks, Jon for taking some time out of your day to answer an out-of-the-blue question for me.)


Jon's note confirms what I have always assumed: that the application of the term "Garb" or "Renaissance/Medieval Garb" has always been used to differentiate between clothing and the one-use costumery of the masquerade ball or the October traipse through a corn maze. It's a bit of jargon we've adopted to set our costuming apart from other sorts of costuming.

One of my missions with this blog and as a costumer in general is to make this pastime accessible to all.  And to do that I have to get newcomers past the ingrained cultural baggage that 'costume' has in the United States at the dawn of the 21st century. Because we are combating an implicit association between the word "costume" with the word "Halloween".

If your goal is to become a costume historian, I pray you, don't use the term. The academes get quite sniffy about nomenclature. If you are talking to new recruits to this pastime and want to sidestep the first thought that pops into their head when you say 'costume' (no matter how anthropologically correct it might be) then pick a different word. Any word. Honestly, we've so debased the coin of 'costume' that anything else is better. I don't really care which one you use as long as you don't stomp on someone else's choice.

From where I sit, it's a lot like freaking out when someone uses the word 'dude' in modern life instead of 'fellow' or 'guy'. Oh, it happens -- I hear people get mad about it all the time, but I don't understand it. It's hard not to think that some folks just enjoy being annoyed by things they cannot control. Garb has become ingrained in our subculture, it is part of how we differentiate between the clothing we wear in the 21st century and the clothing we wear when we step into the past.

Here's the thing... There has always been a bit of a noticeable rift between reenactors and historians, which has led to a desire in many to strive to 'be taken seriously by the establishment'.  And on a fundamental level, I think that this desire to abandon anything that is specific to reenactor culture arises from that. When the academes sniff at our efforts, it hurts a little. I work at a college, I've seen the looks directed my way when I talk about how I spend my free time.

If you're a reenactor and a certified costume historian (or any kind of historian) you are standing astride two worlds, increasing the friction felt from things that are specific to the culture of one and disdained by the other.  Though that is changing. I believe that the rise of 'Experimental Archaeology' like the folks in From a Green Valley can be tracked back to the assimilation of reenactors into the historical fold. The idea that historical lives can be understood without directly experiencing them has been eroded. By us.

So if you're walking the academic road, I salute you. Within your world, I certainly understand that those looks are troublesome. I feel for you. I honestly do. But anytime that leads you come after me, to make it my problem, you've crossed a line.

Why anyone cares what I call my stuff is anyone's guess. I use garb, attire, clothing, and other words 
interchangeably, because as an advanced user of the English language, I know that's how it's supposed to work. Telling me that one of those words is 'bad' comes across as rank hipsterism.

Whether you intended it that way or not, that's how you are coming across: "Garb is so yesterday; we say 'attire' now, loser."

Having long ago set aside use of the term "garb nazi" to describe the holier-than-thou costumer and for a long time I've been using 'garb snark'. Maybe it is time to set aside that term now and start using 'Costume Hipster'.


I implore all of you: Go forth from this place and be nice to one another. Use all of your words. Use the correct words. Hell, make up some words if you want to. Don't just use the ones that the cool kids tell you are cool today. 

Anyway, that's my two cents. Don't spend it all in one place.

- Scott

My Time Machine

As a reenactor and as a writer, I spend a lot of time delving into the past and exploring what life was like at various points in history. I've lived in the renaissance and written about WWII, Prohibition, the Great Library of Alexandria, and Shakespeare. And a question I often hear is "Do you feel like you were born at the wrong point in history?"

I believe that children are our future: So 

feed them well and use them to fuel our 

time machines...

(Frankly, I'm a little disappointed that since I wrote Howard Carter no one has asked whether I was born on the wrong planet.)

It annoys me at times, but I suppose it's a fair question.

Let's face it, I have a lot of skills that aren't of much use in the 21st century. And by the metric of the rest of the country, my childhood was more on like my dad's than it was like the rest of my peers. We didn't have a video game system or computer. Dad didn't believe in them. I learned to type on a typewriter (as is right and proper.)

I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' farm where I made a lot of my own toys. I built rafts. I sank them. I swam to shore and built new ones. I played with GI Joe while we listened to Fibber McGee & Molly on the radio. I watched Star Wars like every other kid of my age, but read voraciously from a library that was stocked mostly with books written over a half century before I was born.

My friends refer to this as a 'sheltered upbringing' but I'm not sure I'd agree.

My childhood was a Mark Twain novel ghostwritten by Ray Bradbury, filtered through an Archie comic.
The world that was shown to me on MTV seemed distant and somewhat surreal, simultaneously more modern and less than the world around me.

I still prefer hand tools to electric, my typewriter to my laptop. It probably also explains why I have no real attachment to those wonders of modern technology that the people around me can't live without. It's not inarguable that I really am a man out of my era and I wouldn't blame you if you thought that if given a time machine and license to use it that I'd be off like a shot.

I certainly used to think so.  Why, I may have been misplaced several centuries! I even said as much to my dad once. Dad looked at me and kind of snorted and said "Take off your glasses."

Touché, Dad. 


I have allergies and poor eyesight and I have an asthma inhaler in my pocket as I type this. Even when I join in a historical reenactment and try to sink into a past age, never far from my mind is the fact that I never would have survived childhood in these past worlds.

Books are my time machine. Then and now, they are my preferred method of time travel. If someone offered me a trip through time I might not take them up on it if I cannot close the cover and return to the modern era any time I wish.

And it's not at all about the asthma inhaler. The women around me are valued as highly as the men. My wife is an engineer. My boss is a woman.  I can see someone passing me on the street and talk to them without see more about them than just the color of their skin. I can say whatever I want here and as long as I don't libel anyone, no one can stop me.

Because honestly... the 'good old days' weren't that good.

So until the man in the Blue Box comes to escort me to the opening night of Hamlet and then safely home again... I like this time period just fine, thanks.

The Ghost of Projects Past, Present & Future

Time to recap (since I've been only fitfully keeping this updated this past year). The prototype suit of clothes I have dubbed the "Moroni Suit Mark I" is complete and has withstood rigorous field trials at the various Renaissance faires and miscellaneous events throughout the summer. I must say I've been quite pleased with the entire outfit... as a middle class costume.

Perhaps I've lived with it too long and familiarity has bred contempt or something. Whatever the psychology of the thing, I've become so comfortable in the outfit that I can't conceive of turning it into something anymore starched and velvety than it already is. There's a certain simple elegance to the lines of this outfit that drew me in the first place, and they seem to beg for the treatment I've already applied. Since I never intended to make the paned sleeve, there is little else I can do to this suit of clothes, save wear them until they fall apart. I love the outfit... but I fear the prototype has performed so admirably that I simply have no desire to take it into the realm of silk and velvet and starched ruffs.

There are other considerations as well...

1. I want to create a 'Sampler' doublet of sorts, to try out period stitches, embroidery and various styles and techniques that I've hitherto ignored (such as peascods) or allowed the machine to do for me (such as pad stitching).
   
2. I've always wanted a white-on-white embroidered doublet.
3. My requirements have altered slightly to require a slightly more Italian silhouette.
4. There are pages and pages of sketches in my sketchpads that are begging to be tried, which puts me off the idea of repeating something I've already mastered.
5. I'm still determined to master that grown-in collar!
   

So it is that I find myself sitting with Janet Arnold open before me, stacks of art books displaying various museum collections of period portraits, and did I mention all the sketching?


In the middle of all this planning, I happened to pay a visit to Bella's beautiful website and noticed her new online "museum" of extent garments and textiles. It was there that I discovered that the museum housing the grave goods of Don Garzia deMedici (featured prominently in Janet Arnold's POF) had reconstructed the doublet and trunkhose! I had found my next project!

All that remains is to select fabrics and get to work!

Updates soon!!

Hold the Mustard!

Changing course now, just a little bit. My apologies for the lengthy delay in getting back on course. I you are still with me after all this time, I give you thanks. If you are new, having found me by way of my presence on Tribe.net or elsewhere, then welcome and well met! You come at the turning of the tide.

Note the divot I carved into the tip of my wooden thimble in the picture above.
It's especially useful when sewing through canvas or leather. Since I
made that adjustment, I've reduced considerably the number of
slipped-needle injuries I sustain in a project like this.

Since we began this journey, the book Tudor Tailor was released. For those who have not yet read it, the book goes a long way toward pulling back the curtain on certain salient aspects of all we strive for, sort of a user's guide to Patterns of Fashion in a very real way. But I came here not to sell you books, I came hence to tell you that the book changed my mind in a couple of ways on the final outcome I hope to achieve with this garment and certain long-held beliefs on the construction of period-seeming garments for the reenactment set.


And so I resolve to complete the journey, a journey now refined by the passage of time and the introspection brought on by long hours wreathed in plaster dust as we continue to remodel our home, by the rumination over illness and injury, and by the letter R.

I have long thought that handsewing was just a pain in the @$ and little more good could be said of it. I was wrong. My wife tried to tell me that it had its place, and I thought she meant in areas were a machine could not go. What she really meant was that there were marked differences in the results achieved by the slow & steady approach versus sticking layers of fabric under the frantic needle of the Hotrod. I stand corrected.

As such have just completed the garment I began here this long while ago. When last we met, I was using plum-coloured canvas to draft a new pattern for a mustard-colored middle class doublet. A close-fitting affair with set-in sleeves and a grown-in collar.

Changes:

1. I set aside the grown-in collar after the difficulties I experienced with the rust-colored jerkin. I never completely resolved the pucker at the back and muslin after muslin repeated the problem, so for now I have set aside the notion entirely.
2. I came into a stash of 100% linen in natural and a pale green. I have traded in the mustard-coloured brushed cotton for the natural linen as an outer material and the pale green as lining.
3. I have - for this project as an experiment - set aside my usual Pellon fusible interfacing that I have hitherto used in lieu of canvas interlining and subsituted it with canvas 'Duck' since I couldn't find anyone selling proper fustian (a heavy cotton/linen blend).
4. I will be making cloth buttons out of scrap linen instead of using the wooden bead buttons I used on the rust-colored jerkin and was intending to use again on the doublet.

The pattern piecing was very similar to what I have shown before. Using a combination of the machine and hand-stitching, I laid out the pattern I drafted and cut interlining, lining and outer fabric. Making a sandwich of the three, I sewed and turned them so that the interlining is caught between, providing structure to the doublet.

(Note: I will be making a new jerkin of green wool soon using this same method and will go in-depth on that, perhaps sometime this fall)

The more seams you have, the small pieces you piece from,
the more points of adjustment you have to work with, and the
better fit you can manage in your clothing.

The piecing of doublets is a subject I have been thinking on a great deal this past year. I have studied every painting from the period I could get my hands on, perused a borrowed copy of Alcega, read Tudor Tailor and internally worked the seams in my head during the quiet moments of the morning when the novel wasn't singing to me and sleep was elusive.

Doublets of our period seem to have been made from many small pieces, some smaller than others. Leather doublets seemed to be even more prone to this almost quilt-like piecing strategy. It's all about making as many clothes from one ell of cloth as possible, you see, The smaller the pieces, the more you can fit them on the cloth ere you cut, like the pieces of a puzzle. The period tailor books were full of illustrations of how best to eke the most out of a single length of fabric. And so shall it be with me...

Note the unaligned seams where the sleeve meets the doublet body.
These became rarer as more and more machines replaced tailors.

During the industrial revolution, patterning of clothing changed to accomodate the machines being used to manufacture them. Seams such as these would slow production, so they were aligned so as to be sewn in a single pass, or as few passes as possible. So it is that machine sewing of Renaissance clothing seems so awkward, the machines constrained.

When easing curved seams I use as few pins as possible, giving me
as much play as I can to stretch and turn the fabric as I sew. This
allows better alignment of layers, I think, and a nicer finished look
to the final garment.

I am not so reduced that I will set aside my hotrod entirely, but it will definitely be utilized in the main for sewing long straight seams, or pieces that will be turned and the machine sewing hidden. As I went along in this project, I was surprised to find that I did more and more by hand as I developed a feel for it, and acquired a rhythm for the movement of the needle, thread, and beeswax.

I must cogitate some more, and I've buttons to make and buttonholes to sew as well. I'll be back soon with more pictures and more in-depth maundering of the like you're used to on the myriad subjects that spring to mind as I stitch...

Next: Making Buttons!!

A teeny tiny snippet of art history

It occurs to me that I've neglected to fully explain where this design came from other than to mention that I 'noodled with it', that the subject wasn't really Venetian and that someone named Moroni painted it. If you're familiar with the painting, feel free to skip this post. If not, well, the noodling was all me, but the painting itself was executed by the mannerist painter Giovanni Batista Moroni around 1560. Allegedly the subject is the Duke of Albuqurque (as I said, not a Venetian) but Moroni, was Venetian.

I've always liked this painting, if for no other reason than the man looks so earnest and postively normal rather than like some religious icon in a dogma where nobility is worshipped as was so often the case in renaissane portraiture. If you click on the duke's name, it will take you to the "Art Unframed" site, where you can view hundreds of famous historical paintings and even have a copy made of the one that you fancy. I've never used their services beyond browsing, but the idea intrigues me as I've never developed the brushwork discipline necessary to paint in the mannerist style in order to copy the painting myself.