Gesture drawing is something artists do to warm up, or to capture the essential movement of a person when they only have a few seconds to get everything down.
I love ornate costumes, but there are times when you find yourself needing to do the costume equivalent of gesture drawings. Maybe you’re spending the weekend playing approximately 10 different characters and monsters. Maybe you’re preparing for a convention and you know you might pick up an extra game. Maybe both.
In my experience, there are a few things to keep in mind:
1) Improvise. The “loincloth” in the above costume was actually one of the generic tabards our game uses to indicate monsters. I grabbed it to play a siren.
2) Go for the shape, if not the detail. Doc Martens are only 50 years old, and shoes with laces in front only go back to the early 1700s in Europe. However, they are boot-shaped, and in combat, people tend to look at the center of the body or the hands, not the feet. (Especially in larps with no foot strikes.) If you’re going to fudge, fudge here.
3) Safety first. This was a particularly humid weekend on parts of the gulf coast, and heat exhaustion caused a few near misses. Both the top and bottom were made of breathable material. The boots protected me from the taller grass in the area, but they would have been way too warm if the rest of my body hadn’t been in loose/no clothing. I probably could have used a hat, but we had enough cloud cover that sun wasn’t the issue, just 90F and 80% humidity. (I still had sunblock on just in case.) If you prefer not to have bare skin, loose clothing is key. You don’t want anything trapping heat as it leaves your body. (If at all possible, have a bright game designer who makes the siren mostly cause paralysis and sleep, keeping battles from being too hot to begin with. Thanks, Dwayne!)
In short, did any real life depictions of sirens show anything like this? No. But they were associated with the sea, and hot weather, so dressing in a way that evokes the sea and keeps you safe in hot weather is close enough to get the fundamental aspect of a siren- the gesture drawing of her, at least.
If you are packing for a larp but you don’t have a specific character to play, bring pieces like this tabard/loincloth. Scarves/bandannas/bandages are handy for dandies/hippies/soldiers. Generic dark colored pants without visible pockets or seams might not be period appropriate for everything, but they also won’t jolt people out of scene since they are so inconspicuous. If you can get a pair of non-lacing leather boots, whole swaths of history will be open to you, but if not, follow your pants into inconspicuousity.
Oh, and by the way, bras are now totally ok for medieval settings.
A correction to this post:
1) Loincloths are worn by primitive cultures. Like.. when man was in the hunter gather stage, they wore loincloths. So at a medieval Larp, this would not make sense other then to gain the looks of a few nerds.
2) “Go for the shape, if not the detail.” New larpers should not follow this advice. There is higher quality in larping out there, and “fudging” the details is a bad move. The purpose of larping in a setting different from our own is to feel as if we’re in a different time period. A step in the wrong direction is messing up your costume. It is so easy to be 100% in medieval decorum and your costume is the easiest way to feel medieval. For woman: Wearing leather half boots, linen stockings, chemises, a dress kyrtle, and a veil is the only way to look medieval. For Men: under krytle, over krytle, half boots, leg wraps, and pants is a great costume to look medieval. How can we feel as if we are in a medieval world, when someone is wearing doc martins, jeans, and a cut up tshirt? Quality is key.
3) Nerds will always find something to complain about. “It’s too hot”, “It’s too cold”, “I’m allergic to that”, “oh no my glasses!” Take care of yourself, don’t speak for other people. Most people larping are adults and adults can handle their own medical issues.
To correct the bra comment: From the 500s - 1400s nothing similar to a bra existed. The first style of a bra was created from a corset and was called a bodice. Classy ladies wore them under their dresses, and whores wore them on the outside.Though there are very few references to a waist clenches being used by the Minoans, they were not in fashion in the medieval period.
The 15th century, is the 1600s and is known as the Renaissance. In a “Medieval Larp” a bra would not be considered in decorum, a player should know that being conservative and hiding the female form was a priority in woman’s fashion in the medieval period do to religious standings on woman. A woman wouldn’t want to inspire men to carnally know her before marriage, so it was in her best efforts to hide her gender behind uniformly shaped dressed.
My final thoughts, larpers who larp for escapism will never have as much fun as the larpers playing the game as a sport or art. We as a hobby gain disrespect from the rest of the world, when larpers say that they larp because “their larp character is cooler then themselves in real life”. I would ask, instead of dressing in a bra and booty shorts while swinging overly large boffer weapons, invest in realistic medieval gear. IF you’re going to do something do it right. Following the advice of this post will make any potential larper look absurd and continue to make larping in America look silly. Follow the footsteps of the nordic larps in Europe, not the lower quality American Larps.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages
Yeah, no.
I’ve been following you for a while because you have really interesting opinions about larping and about American vs. European larps.
However, I keep seeing you post negative things about American larps or about people who larp for escapism. You put down other people who are doing the same hobby as you. We may do that hobby differently, but it is still larping. Larping gets enough negative media from the outside world, we really don’t need that negativity among ourselves.
So a few things:
-New larpers will not have high quality clothing. When you are starting out with larp (or any sport actually) you don’t get the best equipment at first because you want to try it out before you really invest in it. So this original post is actually pretty good for beginner larpers.
-Fudging it. Nowhere did this post say to wear jeans. It just said that IF you were going to fudge it, the boots aren’t the worst place to do so. If your boots have laces it’s okay.
-You clearly take the attire very seriously, which is awesome. Your costumes are great, everything is medieval and accurate to the time period. However, not everyone takes the costuming as seriously. You know why? Because the purpose of larping is to have fun. And if you’re not having fun because you are worried about your costume or because you are taking it too seriously, then you are doing it wrong. If taking larping seriously and getting the perfect costuming is fun for you then that’s awesome.
-All of this discussion depends on what larp you are going to. This is a “when in Rome…” thing. If you are going to a larp that stresses medieval accuracy then make damn sure to be accurate in your clothing. Because that is the immersion that larp is going for. However if you are going to a larp that’s a high fantasy and wants good costuming, but not necessarily medieval and accurate, then the above costume would be just fine.
-American larps do not make people think larp is silly. ALL larps make people think larp is silly. Just because you are wearing correct medieval garb will not stop people from making fun of larp. In its essence larp is dressing up and pretending to be someone else. That will be made fun of no matter how you do it. In fact, the American larps which take it less seriously are more accessible to the non-larping bystander.
-Escapism is a perfectly good reason to larp and yes we can have as much fun as those who take costuming more seriously. That’s not really up to you to decide. You might say you’re doing it as an art and a sport (btw larp, no matter how you play it, is an art, a hobby, a sport, a game, all of the above) but there is a level of escapism in what you are doing as well. Escapism can be found in football, in theater, in drawing, in writing, in anything. It should not have a negative connotation.
You are obviously allowed to have your own opinion, but I’m tired of larpers putting down other larpers. We as a hobby gain disrespect from the rest of the world, when we won’t even respect each other.