Way Back When: Getting your interpreters on board with more accurate historical dress.

Getting your older, full time interpretive staff to wear new, and possibly more accurate historical costume while at work is the bane of every historical costumer. We all come up against those who are perfectly happy, and *comfortable*, wearing the stuff they have worn since they started in their interpreter's position. It often doesn't matter to them that these clothing items might be wrong, it's what they've always worn.
The problem is, that since I've graduated alone, the progress made in the research of historic dress has made epic leaps and bounds. What is being shared today, was simply a pipe dream of those of us who started our careers back in the late 80s. The internet has helped, because we have access to information that would have required extensive research road trips even ten years ago. And this is a good thing. Social medial has also become a valuable tool for helping us all better our impressions. Sites are sharing how they are tackling the situation of 'Best Practices' standards, photographs of other living historians are being shared so that we can prove that improvement is a good thing, and can be done, no matter what the excuse might be.

So why do we still have hold outs?

We have hold-outs because we allow them to come out. Sites are sometimes relaxed because they don't realize that things can be done better. They aren't seeing that better impression. Other living historians are just too nice, in allowing the inaccuracies to pop up at events, too nice to police their fellow interpreter. And as site costumers, we allow folks to hold on to those old, badly constructed clothing items instead of issuing new kit.

How can we fight this?

Well, it's the end of the season. The winter season often means having make and make-do weekends, where new kit can be made. If we started off the winter season by fixing the old kit, then many of us would start next season off on the right foot with very little cash layout. Start by removing buttons and replacing with proper ones. Altering gear to better fit on the body...most folks are wearing clothing that is miles too large. If gear is too small, pass those items down to young people who might be smaller than you. We all have gear we no longer wear. Fix it and pass it on.
Historic site wardrobes often have a month or so of returns of kit where we launder and return to stores for the winter. This is a perfect time to get rid of the stuff that is just too bad to be repaired or altered. If the kit isn't there, then it can't be issued out in the spring again. Take the stuff apart, use the fabrics for other things. Make it so those old items just aren't around anymore. Back when I was working as a head of wardrobe, my own infectious passion for wearing proper clothing rubbed off on the interpreters. I started off with the young people, who might have been starting out as a summer hire. I taught them how to properly dress and wear their clothes. And I spoke to them about their 'clothes', never referring to the items as costumes, so that they would never compare them to stuff worn for fun at Halloween. Once the young people were dressed properly, the older staff wanted to look just as good, so it was an easier way to coerce them over to my way of thinking. Making the older staff new clothes, that suited their bodies and work lives helped them to better do the jobs they had done for so long. Reminding them that they looked good while properly dressed helped too. It's nice to go and visit site websites and see things that I made still being worn, and properly worn, 20 and 30 years later. These items are cared for, because I took the time to care about the interpreters wearing them. That care and passion is then passed down to the next generation.

Everyone should be using the winter months as opportunity to read those best practices standards and getting on board with the way things are being done at sites across North America. If you need help, ask. There are tonnes of people in just about every community ready to help out their fellow interpreter to get a leg up.

If there is one thing I can take away from the Saratoga project, it is that it doesn't have to cost the interpreter or site an arm and a leg to get geared up. I managed to outfit two people for next to nothing in a very short time frame. Working together really helps. It also builds camaraderie between living historians. That passion can be infectious, spread that stuff everywhere!

That, and those 'best practices' guidelines can also save you money, if you read them and follow along. They help to guide you towards better kit right from the get go, so you don't make costly mistakes, buying the wrong things.

ok, back to the studio I go. Have a great winter season everyone!

The Saratoga Project

First one up, as always, Saratoga Historic Park, 2018. Photo by Jennifer Bolton.

Back in the Spring, an announcement was made about an event that would happen at Saratoga Historic Park in the Fall. This event, while a new concept for the park, was not new to the progressive living history community, it would be a vetted event. This meant that guidelines were posted, and folks wanting to attend would send in photos of themselves in kit to a committee that would then provide feedback to participants for improving their kit before attending the event. In recent years, the best practices standards have been making the rounds of the community, and most events adhere to these concepts. This event would seek to push that envelop even further by also including a ‘not acceptable’ category. There would be no ‘making do’, all in attendance would be striving for accuracy in everything they did throughout the weekend.

This was a justifiable response to events where participants sneak in modernity everywhere they can, and make quite ridiculous excuses for why they cannot improve. My response has long been, just don’t bring it! Just don’t buy it in the first place. Save yourself some money, and everyone else the headache of trying to police your gear all weekend.

Following these guidelines was fairly straight forward. I have always been trying to improve my own kit, and looked at this as an opportunity for constructive critique from knowledgeable living historians. I’ve been seeking out these opportunities to keep my thoughts on track, much the way a regular academic would seek out the critique and guidance of their professors. My dissertation committee is great for the theory behind what I am doing, but as far as my art practice is concerned, we need this valuable resource to supplement what the committee can help me with. I sent photos of Pierre and I in, and received thumbs up. We were good to go. But I wanted to bring a couple of new people to the event, this would be their very first event. I was told that they would be provisionally accepted, because I would be building their kit and clothing. I was excited at the challenge.

Building new kit and clothing, starting a couple off on the right track from the get go was a fun challenge for me. The project allowed me to think through the theory I have been reading all Spring, why material culture research is important. It also helped me to outline sections of the future dissertation through my instructing of the creation of smaller items by themselves. Because these two new folks were also academics, one of them in a very similar field, they were able to provide me with valuable feedback in how I was teaching them about their new hobby. It was a fantastic mental exercise as well as an art practice.

The second challenge I set for us, was to dress these two people entirely from stash fabrics and left over cabbage so that it wouldn’t cost anyone any money. I was lucky to have friends who donated fabrics, and my mum also left me with a few fabrics that I will never use for myself. I pulled out things from my own closet that I don’t wear anymore and altered then to better fit Alison, she could also wear an older pair of my shoes. Zac could wear some of Pierre’s things, but would only need to buy shoes…a taller man often has longer feet. Mid-way through August, things were shaping up nicely, and I was posting photos for finished garments so that event organizers could see my progress. I finished Zac’s clothes just days past the deadline, and Alison was very close to being finished, and the organizers were happy.

The week before the event things began to fall apart for us. Not because of the stringent kit requirements, but because of modern lives, and the weather. Our friends from Nova Scotia couldn’t make the trip with us because they would be looking at a Fall project of ripping up their front lawn to replace sewer and water lines to the street. We were disappointed to not have a visit from friends, but completely understood. There would be other events!

Then, a giant hurricane formed off the coast of Africa.

Being Maritimers, we started watching the weather. The week prior to, I said I would call it Thursday morning whether we could go or not. Pierre told me to not be disappointed, but hypothermia is not something I ever want to deal with again…and tropical weather is the main reason I have come down with it twice in the past. I called it Sunday night. It was looking like the hurricane was going to nail Hatteras late week, and the weekend in Saratoga would be a washout.

I kept sewing. Alison’s gown was almost finished, and I had some little things cut out that I wanted to finish. Alison and Zac changed their travel plans for their honeymoon, which they’d be leaving for in the days following Saratoga. I tried really hard to not be disappointed.

Then the hurricane veered to the south. And. Slowed. Right. Down. To. A. Standstill.

Friends from Virginia decided to come up for the event after all. I texted Pierre, “blue linen suit ok?” He responded with a thumbs up. We would day trip the event, and it would be just Pierre and I.

We packed the back of the truck with a mattress and bedding so we would have somewhere to sleep, and packed a basket with a couple of food items, the can of coffee, and the coffee pot. I pulled together our clothing, and made sure everything was presentable and wearable. Our last trip home from an event was a bit of a mess, and things were not put away properly. We had just lost our dog to heart disease.

Saturday morning, before Dawn, coffee in hand, we were at the border, heading to an event. We arrived on site after the event started, and not really fully prepared, but we were there, and would make do with what we had.

The event!

We arrived, got the car unpacked, and got dressed. It would be a mile walk through the woods to get to the encampment site, but we had expected that. Anything big that we had could have been dropped off at the site before we parked, but there wasn’t anything really that we could pack in. We would be more like refugees than we had ever been at an event before. We had a snap sack, a blanket, a linen sail for shelter if we needed it, a basket with our food, cups, a spoon, a knife, and our coffee pot. Because priorities, man. Coffee.

Remember when I said we weren’t completely prepared? Well, I had the directions printed for the American camp, not the British camp. We got turned around in the woods, took the wrong path and wound up back out on the road. Oh well, it’s only a couple of miles, we can do this…

It was hot. Like beyond hot. Heat that usually make Kellys turn into three year olds. I sucked it up and kept walking. We managed to get to the site without snapping at each other. Pierre immediately got me a big glass of water with some switchel in it (I had made the syrup earlier in the summer and remembered to bring it with me) and I plunked down in the shade. Then he made coffee. It was still morning.

Boots on the ground was sparse compared to what the event organizers had originally planned, what with the hurricane, and then on the Thursday night before the event, parts of outlying Boston being blown up by over pressurized gas lines. Events have to have starting points though, and those who could make it to the event all brought their A-game. Once I acclimated to the heat, I enjoyed myself. I talked to the visitors about how what was going on today in places like Syria, and even upstate New York into Quebec was starkly similar to what happened to people in the Revolutionary period. That Loyalists were not often really the enemy that is made out to be in American history programs. They were regular people, forced to make tough decisions, often life-saving, certainly life-changing, with no time to fully think things through. It was perfectly wonderful that we all brought various weird and uncommon items with us from our homes for the event. Pierre and I had coffee and a pot, but not much else, other people had camp kettles and could cook food. We all shared, and got through. Some of us were a little hungry, but that was ok. It was only for two days.

I did not eat enough, and so covertly taking photos was just not happening. My hands shook so badly, the one photo I did manage to take looks like a bad impressionist painting left out in the rain. Those who know Pierre can see that it’s a quintessential shot of a south facing, north bound Pierre. But it’s not postable.

At the end of the day, Pierre asked organizers if he could bring the car up closer, to visitor parking so I wouldn’t have to walk so far. I was pretty spent, but still wanting to stay and be sociable. Given permission, he brought the car closer, and we stayed overnight. If not, we would have likely started for home again at the end of the day, stopping to sleep somewhere in the mountains. As it was, I didn’t sleep that night until Pierre got up the next morning. He got up whispering, “I’m off to make friends”, before daybreak, and I rolled over and got a couple of hours sleep. The truck is comfortable. But not enough food, no Cpap, and having no idea where I packed my meds were the triple threat to me sleeping. I was just grateful it wasn’t out on the ground, under the stars, as I would have also shivered all night, even with the heat. My body sucks like that. Instant, unpleasant three year old.

When I did get up, it was still long before the park opened at I was able to ease into my day slowly. Pierre brought me down a cup of coffee as I got dressed. We walked back up to camp together and prepared for the day.

Sunday proved to be a bit quieter, visitor wise, which was nice, since everyone was spent from the heat the day before. Slowly, throughout the day, folks made quiet goodbyes and walked away, starting their trip homeward. It was just as if they were starting their personal treks northward to safety, some ready to leave before others. It was excellent interpretation, even if very few people noticed. We left about noon. Wanting to get home in time to finish up weekend chores before Pierre headed back to work that next morning…and I really needed sleep. From what I can glean from friend’s Facebook posts, the end of day brought an almost empty camp, and event organizers could go home themselves at a decent hour. Everyone has been talking about what a wonderful experience it was.

And it was. It was quiet and low key. A far more sociable experience for me than any other event I have ever attended, as I am usually run off my feet talking to visitors. Events like this are the wave of the future though, Quality over Quantity. They have to start someplace, and small is sometimes good for a brand new experience. While it would have been lovely to see a sea of canvas tents, like Burgoyne’s camp would have been, there just isn’t the numbers yet to be able to put on a progressive event of that size. More people have to get on board with best practice standards, the days of carting all the material culture you’ve ever bought or made to an event is over. The visitor is looking for better from us. The historians and Parks staff are looking for better from us. It behooves us to try and get things right, we do a disservice to our forefathers not to. And yes, the visitor really does know better…even those who frustrate us with their history’splaining and attitude.

This whole project may seem like it failed, because Zac and Alison didn’t get to take part, because I wasn’t fully prepared, but you can learn from things that don’t go according to plan far better than things you try that work out perfectly. I know now that there are things that my body can do, and things that I really should ask it to even try. I have to figure out how to better feed myself at events where there is no place, and nothing or no time to cook with. We have to figure out a better solution to sleeping arrangements. It worked ok this time for everyone involved, but there’s room for improvement to the truck scenario, and I also thought about what-if it had started to rain in the middle of the night…what those who slept rough would have done. The rain venue for sleeping was miles away, with cars miles away in the other direction.

I have a better understanding of why smallpox ripped through the Loyalist population in the later years of the war, decimating whole communities. If one weekend was this hard on my body, I can only imagine what weeks or months of living this way would have done to it. I can do just about anything for a day or two. But it’s going to take most of the week for me to recover.

And then I will get back to the studio…I have suits to make, and new clothes to finish for other living history people. Because there will be other events.

Critical Making: Using Material Culture to Create a Visual Narrative

In her opening chapter, Joanne Entwistle informs us that “human bodies are dressed bodies, no culture leaves the body unadorned,” she reminds us that the “very personal act of getting dressed is an act of preparing the body for the social world, and that dress is both an intimate experience of the body and a public presentation of it” (Entwistle 6-7).

OK, so what’s the point?

Recently there was a meme going around the progressive living history community with before and after images. Your first event, and your most recent, with the title, ‘we all start somewhere!’ They were images of folks in cobbled together loaner gear, mis-mashed with modern clothing items, and big grins on their faces because they were finally at a living history event, dressed. It didn’t matter really, what they looked like, it was their first event, and they were having fun. The thought was, getting out is a major hurdle, but what you do with your experiences afterwards is up to you, how far you want to push the accuracy envelope.

Next weekend will see three living history events, if the weather holds. Two major mainstream events in the south east, and a progressive event in New York. The progressive event aims to push the envelope of accuracy in kit, impression, and interpretation. We had strict guidelines to follow, and anyone who wished to participate had to undergo a vetting process. We would send in photos of our gear, and receive back critique from the committee. It was a good challenge for us old-timers who may have let some of our standards slip, to fine tune our game play.

I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to bring a couple of brand new people to the event.

We had guidelines to follow, and a few months to prepare. I could work on interpretation development, and hone teaching points as I guided my small group through the process of garment construction. It would be fun for everyone involved. My original plan was to put Zac in ‘hand-me-downs from Pierre, and focus mostly on Alison, as she would require items that she couldn’t simply borrow from me…mainly stays and a gown that fit her properly. I also chose to try and build as many items from stash fabrics as possible, so that it wouldn’t cost anyone anything. I found a piece of natural toned striped fabric for her gown, and her stays literally came into being from the cabbage bucket. I cut them so closely, I was worried I’d have to piece the fashion layer. Alison did the bulk of the gown construction on her own, through a two day intensive workshop where I fine-tuned my construction notes. I pulled two old petticoats from my wardrobe that I no longer wore, and be-built the waistbands to fit her better…she is a bit smaller than I am.

We finished everyone’s clothes last week. Zac also got new clothing items from stash fabrics, breeches in green linen and a drab coloured workman’s coatee from cabbage from our other friend Trudyann’s stash.  Clothing items that suit his personality and age. I then set to organizing accessories.

This is where my brain started going into high gear. It’s all well and good for people to turn out to their first event in mis-mashed, borrowed gear. But Zac and Alison would be in their own clothes, save for a shirt and shift…and shoes for Zac. Their accessories needed to reflect their own selves. Another of my main objectives was to make them both feel comfortable in their clothes, so they would fit in as much as possible. Zac was easier, a new neckcloth, another borrowed item - a hat, but one that would be re-blocked to his head and have a new liner in it.

Alison was a bit more complex. I pulled a fluffy linen cap, and a pink floral neckerchief. Then, I cut some white linen mitts, and lined them with a cotton print that I will eventually use to make myself a gown. I used pink silk floss to do all the fancy work in sewing them together. Alison’s accessories were decidedly pink. This would go nicely with the natural tones in her gown and petticoats. Alison is younger than I am, and very blonde. She is also very feminine. Her visual narrative was coming together. The last item she would need is a hat.

Remember, she is younger than I am, and blonde. Borrowing one of my hats would have been ok, but not quite right, as I am much darker in complexion, and can pull off different colours than she can. She would need a new hat. I don’t have a straw that I could press into service, and so thought about making a new sun bonnet for her. Back to Trudyann’s stash of leftover bit of fabric gifted to me, and I pulled out some pink silk taffeta.

Bonnet colours in the period have a pronounced leaning towards black. If you look though, there are a few instances where lighter colours turn up. After an afternoon of looking at art, I decided to make the anomaly, a pink bonnet.

There are still a few items that we need to make, like cooler weather gear, shirts, shifts, stockings, and such. But we now have two new living history people, excited to turn out to their first event. Completely in their own clothes. And no farby-ness in sight. We all start somewhere, and I am happy to have been able to help get them started on the right foot.

Bibliography

Entwistle, Joanne. The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress, and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge UK and Maiden MA, USA: Polity Press, 2000.