Empire: Facing the Monsters of Varushka

I had thought at first that we hadn't any costumes that would work with Varushka, but after some rummaging, it turns out that the elven embroidered coat works a lot better for Varushka than it does Urizen or even Navarr. The silver embroidery on dark forest green of the wool works remarkably well given the Varushkan love for complex embroidery and stark contrasts. The addition of the white fur mantle and red sash decidedly makes it Varushkan.

The stripy hero trousers belong to the Slander Rat and the cream tunic to the Designer. The firebird cloak seems now almost made for Varushka with its strong reds, ornate trim, stark contrast and a fairytale allusion.

As always, the various cloth components can be commissioned from the Mercenary. The round boar shield (£110), the sword (£50) and the embroidered coat (£110) are all available from Character Kit.

More photos of the Varushkan costumes under the cut.

Prototype: Purple Embroidered Tailcoat

It has been some time since I've given news about the Embroidered Tailcoats. Prototypes of them exist in a variety of colours and should hopefully be on the website (both here and Character Kit) in the coming week costing £100-110 each.

This one is in a purple wool with silver embroidery and a silver lining.

More photos of the Purple Embroidered Tailcoat under the cut.

Empire: For the Glory of Dawn

These photos were taken at the St Giles' Medieval Fair. They were celebrating their nine hundred year anniversary. The backdrop of historically accurate tents and tat was borrowed from the awesome Dunholm Living History, who had pitched up (we've also caught them in the back of some of these shots; simply imagine them to be yeomen).

We wondered why a knighting would be happening in front of these tents, but our theory is that it's an emergency dubbing. Perhaps due to some glorious deed recently performed by The Shoddy Knight. It doesn't quite have the dignity of Leighton's The Accolade. 

The linen underdress worn by the Valkyrie with the angel blue brocade gown was hand-dyed (in my kitchen out of tupperware) some years ago to be worn (along with the incredibly ornate cloak) as part of a costume for a character based on the Lady of the Lake. There are some lovely concept sketches for that outfit in its more Lady of the Lake incarnation which I will scan when they are unearthed.

The particoloured surcoat worn by The Shoddy Knight was also made for the same event (Durham University Treasure Trap's Midsummer). It was designed for the leader of the Knights of the Swan after the swan on the original tabard was declared too ducklike.

The shield is sold as the Footman's Shield on Character Kit and the sword is named the Excalibur (two lenghts, 31" and 38"). The tooled sword frog is the work of our inimitable leatherworker. The chainmail is borrowed and knitted by a friend of ours over thousands upon thousands of hours of daytime television during his first year at university. It is somewhat legendary as he had apparently slept in it (not comfortably).

The two dresses have appeared on the blog before with their own writeups. The red velvet one can be found under Deep Red Elven Gown and the blue brocade one (worn with a different underdress) can be found under Angel Blue Gown.

Other gowns on the blog that could pass for Dawn include: The Ten-Gore Cotehardie (concept sketches of which is here), Winged Doublet (though leaning to League) and Kirtle (though not linen for Dawn since the rumpled look is more Marches).

To commission blue ensemble in similar materials from the Mercenary would cost in the region of £160. A red velvet dress would cost in the region of £150 in stretch velvet and £180 in silk velvet. A surcoat would cost £40 plain and £60 for an embroidered version, though it can vary wildly depending on the complexity of the design. The tooled sword frog as ornate as the one worn by The Shoddy Knight would cost in the region of £30-40.

More photos of Dawn's Glory under the cut.

Preview: Embroidered Elven Robes

Due to the nature of the embroiderers and them reluctant to take on any orders that don't involve fewer than a dozen garments, we have been experimenting with designs and have come up with this elven ensemble, drawing quite strongly on elven aesthetic of the Lord of the Rings films. Though as said before, there's something very oriental about the garments and it came easily to people who were accustomed to making tangzhuang.

The whole outfit doesn't really fit me. It's a couple of inches too wide in the shoulders and hangs more than a little oddly. The wide sash (maroon faux silk with a silver white embroidered design) makes the whole thing neater than it really should. The sash is just pinned to me in the photos (being on the large side) but there are snap buttons.

The elven coat is a dark green wool (very much the same lovely medium weight wool as that of the tail coats), though we've also done a couple in a much lighter fabric, a faux silk. It's fully lined in green faux silk and the buttons are small, round and in gunmetal grey, fitting into tiny little satin loops. The stretch velvet robe is unlined (and really quite rough). We've more made it to show the effect of a complete outfit than selling large numbers of them.

And yes, these are indeed more blurry photos. I'm having some problems with the camera battery and long story short, it might be a little while before we're seeing really good photos on the blog again. But hopefully we'll sort this out.

Also, if you have any commissions, I do recommend sending them in the next week or so. The official deadline is the February the 3rd, after that it's very unlikely we'll be able to do any custom work.

If you're interested in our Elven designs, do have a look on the items we have in stock on the Character Kit website. These embroidered coats (sash included) are likely to cost something in the region of £95-115, depending on how the maths works out at the moment. Unfortunately due to how the extra surcharge on single item orders with the embroiderers, custom versions would likely cost about £15 more than the standard.

More photos of the embroidered elven robes under the cut.

Further Adventures with the Embroiderers

The first of the batch of embroidered tailcoats have returned and I'm not quite sure what to do with how yellow the gold is. I'm not entirely happy, but they are otherwise rather spectacular. The cuffs are deep and the back now bears a small embroidered pattern just above the slit (as opposed to being blank).

The coat is made of sturdy wool, fastens in front with hooks and eyes and has a double row of ornamental buttons. There are

I'm developing a deeply love-hate relationship with the Embroiderers, to put it simply. Among other things, they do appear completely unable to understand the difference between gold and yellow (the current solution is to work around them and buy our own embroidery thread, but it's rather annoying that it has come to this), but their work is otherwise very good. 

The new back flower seems more unbalanced in the photos than they do in reality, but I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out. It is, the tragedy of only being able to afford to run so many prototypes. But we shall see. The effect of any given garment isn't really obvious until it becomes part of an outfit and is on someone. It's why fashion photography can get so abstract.

Some hopefully these coats will all be on the website in a month or so. There will only be one of each colour combination in each size, but there will be a plethora of colours (including purple; the one of the shown is technically maroon).

So watch this space.

Also, a more detailed photo of the "wreathe" on the back under the cut.

Shanghai's Museum of Textiles and Looms

I was in Shanghai recently and had a chance to pop into its Textile Museum. I had the misfortune to forget the decent camera and the one on my phone (along with my phone) gave out after the second floor, so there aren't exactly a plethora of good photos (excellent writeup with photos of the later floors on the blog, We Drive East).

The lady to the right is Huang Daopo 黄道婆 who seemed to have been one of the founding lights of the textile industry in thirteenth century China. It's actually almost refreshing to see a figure celebrated like that, but then, I've probably read far too many pseudohistorical and fantasy books where and interest in embroidery or textiles is portrayed as a useless "feminine" frippery.

The exhibition gets a lot better as one progresses to the later floors. Perhaps unsurprisingly, little survives from dynasties before the Qing and what there is doesn't end up in this particular museum. But still, there is something very odd about having a glass display case solemnly filled with photographs of costumes instead of, well, costumes.

To the right is a Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) rank badge, though only a replica of one. It is of brocade rather than embroidery, which is interesting. I suppose this is where I link to the rank badge I embroidered for the steampunk magistrate outfit last year.

Also interesting is this timeline of textile technology that I came across when looking up links for this blogpost. It's a nice overview, though obviously I'd advise going to look up something more authoritative if you're using it for anything.

Under the cut are a few more photos from the museum and a few ramblings.

Return of the Mercenary, Sheer Opulence from the Embroiderers and Some Books

I've again found myself neglecting the blog (and emails! Sorry!) but I am back again, with news and photos and costumes.

The rather magnificent green and silver frock coat to the right is one of the new prototypes we've been working on. The Embroiderers seem to have outdone themselves (though in a tragic twist of fate, they have gone out of business, but their machines - along with all the backups - have been bought up by a new company of embroiderers, so we're still in the game). We're still debating whether or not ornamental buttons should be added to the garment (it closes with hooks and eyes). There are vague plans for the embroidery to appear on other garments and new iterations of the embroidered tailcoat from last year are in the pipeline.

There's another dubiously amusing story of mistakes in colours of thread used, but I'll save that for another day. Suffice to say, if you're in the market for a cut price embroidered doublet, it may soon be your day.

Profound Decisions's Empire is glinting at us on the horizon, and at some point, when more information is available, I intend to do sketches for it (like I did Odyssey). But despite all the speculation, there's really a distinct lack of concrete detail to build costumes from. I've heard things like BBC's Merlin and Camelot being cited as potential sources of inspiration, and the word "coolthentic" has been making its rounds, but it's not quite enough to start me drawing. I want the garments to feel like they are grounded in the culture they are supposedly from (even if I'm building an outfit from tat I already own) and I'm not sure I can quite envision it yet.

I've also managed to raid Hilde Bede College's library back when they were renovating earlier this year, so I am sitting on a small mountain of costume books (though many of them are admittedly ancient and in some ways quite outdated in their research). Flicking through them has been very exciting and maybe eventually some of the new sketches inspired from them will make it onto the blog.

I've been indulging in the simple joy of flicking through all the pretty pictures on the various tumblrs on historical clothing, including Dames a la Mode (fashion plates), OMG that Dress, Impersonating History, Costume Reference (does what it says on the tin), The Ornamented Being (pretty things, mostly Victorian) and My Lovely Petticoat. Especially with the tumblrs with an interest in extant clothing, it gets all terribly modern at times (my interest begins to wane once we hit the 1900s), but it's been an interesting pictorial journey.

In other, other news, I've been playing about with Doll Divine's Tudor Scene Maker. It has an utterly mind-boggling number of options and layers to fiddle about with.

Prototype: Embroidered Tailcoat Preview

Just got the embroidered pieces from the embroiderers and I'm really very chuffed. It's not yet a wool frock coat with embroidered front, cuffs, collar and so forth, but the pieces that will become it look amazing. We tried to pin the pieces to a mannequin, but it's not particularly informative or impressive, so I'll leave it for the moment.

This is one of the more ambitious prototypes we've been playing around with (between and around other less blogable items). The story is that though a convoluted series of contacts, we've managed to get in touch with some embroiders who are willing to work with us, stepping well outside their comfort zone of monogrammed dress shirts, posh bathrobes and company aprons.

Truth be told, it's isn't quite perfect. Or rather, there is the rather fundamental error made by the lovely people at the embroiderers (it was supposed to be silver?!) but I'm still very much in love with it. There's something rather compelling about blackwork.

Hopefully there'll be photos of the completed tail coat in a week or so.

Also on the embroidery front and under the cut (if somewhat less impressive): a golden swan to go on a knight's particoloured surcoat.