A Carthaginian Philosopher

There are very few acceptable excuses the Mercenary can plead for recent tardiness of updating (including attending Maelstrom, tidying the resultant mess and being distracted by a book of late seventeeth century costume engravings, but more that a different day), so I will attempt to not dwell upon it.

Some time ago, the Mercenary and the Designer were batting around ideas for Carthaginian costumes for the Profound Decisions' Odyssey LRP and it occurred to us that we probably had the makings of full outfit if we gathered together the various bits of troll kit, leather armour and Middle Eastern robes we had.

The robes are most immediately inspired by the Sibylla's various costumes in the film Kingdom of Heaven. The Designer and myself were admiring them when toying around with ideas for complicated layered outfits when we came up with the various layers only slightly visible in the photos. The Carthaginian philosopher pictured is wearing of the original robes: a sheer white cotton voile dress with huge sleeves; beige linen trousers, tied with leather thonging around the calf; a dark blue linen A-line drawstring skirt; a light blue open robe with short sleeves made in crushed velvet; a dark purple faux silk sash and a lilac scarf.

The faux fur jerkin was from a charity shop, as is the belt that is slung across the chest as armour. The actual leather armour is from a seller on ebay, bought some years ago and was advertised as being modelled after Guinevere's Battle Costume in the film King Arthur. The most obvious difference between the two is, of course, that the film's version is made from braided leather and the one pictured is made from thonging threaded through strips of leather in a criss-cross pattern.

Most of the clutter of jewellery is bought from charity shops (I seem to remember the silver belt to be originally from Accessorize) and made by the Mercenary herself. Various charity shop belts were modified and have bones (the remains of many excellent dinners) and beads tied to them.

The blue glass fishing float was bought as a phys-rep some time ago and is used again here along with a wooden cup in the traditional hang-as-many-cool-things-off-yourself-as-possible school of costuming. It does strike us in retrospect as overkill. The Designer said whilst looking at the photos that: "The problem is that it's [the fishing float] too awesome, it's more awesome than your face."

The photos in question are taken at the Durham University Botanic Gardens. We were really just happy for anything that didn't immediately look like the English countryside. Words such as it's the wrong continent, but it's foreign, so it'll do were uttered more than once.

More photos under the cut.