Earasaid

[Sir Robert]

My daughter wants to go to the Texas Renfair and I thought I would make some garb up. No problem, so I start researching Women's Highland wear, and about 16 hours later you know there is just about no hard information at all, same as with Men's Highland wear. Well having an X-Marks level education (thanks guys) on the kilt, I can guess what they are talking about.

My best guess on period Women's Highland wear is a chemise as underwear, then a kertle (under dress) with lacing which functions as a bra+corset+slip and then an outer dress, last comes an earasaid with a belt. The last being remarkably like a great kilt with the exception of being mostly white in color.

Okay scholars, is this about right?

[jeremy j starche]

Depends upon the time period you are shooting for.

While kilts are accepted at most (all?) Renn Faires, if you want to be more true-to-history, the "leine and brat" was the common Highland/Irish wear.

http://www.scottishtartans.org/leine.html

[Sir Robert]

Well Renfairs are kind of generic Renaissance not one specific moment so I don't have to get it perfect. But if you think about it a Leine & brat would be like boxer shorts being the only thing worn under a raincoat. There must be some additional garments.


Furthermore I challenge anyone to figure out how the heck to wear a brat without a belt.

[BEEDEE]

Does this help?

Brian

[Sir Robert]

Actually that is exactly what I had in mind. Keep in mind I have to do the sewing so simpler is better.

[Jack Daw]

My daughter wants to go to the Texas Renfair and I thought I would make some garb up. No problem, so I start researching Women's Highland wear, and about 16 hours later you know there is just about no hard information at all, same as with Men's Highland wear. Well having an X-Marks level education (thanks guys) on the kilt, I can guess what they are talking about.

My best guess on period Women's Highland wear is a chemise as underwear, then a kertle (under dress) with lacing which functions as a bra+corset+slip and then an outer dress, last comes an earasaid with a belt. The last being remarkably like a great kilt with the exception of being mostly white in color.

Okay scholars, is this about right?

Sounds good. Ren fests are not exactly perod accurate, but arisaids will work well for a generalized historic depiction. Tartan appeared toward the end of the Renaissance period, so it will still fit in.

[Sir Robert]

I have to say something, there is a pecking order of accuracy:

1. Museum, hard to argue with the original object, you can mis-understand though.
2. Book, researchers do on occasion visit museums but don't have a clue what they see.
3. Re-enactors, who read books.
4. The SCA, read the books but are not so interested in accuracy.
5. Hollywood, don't read the books.

and at the very bottom,

6. Renfairs who get what they know from Hollywood, completely inaccurate is better than most fair goers dress.

As far as "plaid-like patterns" go the origins are lost in the sands of time. They may predate the weaving of cloth as the weaving of grasses into baskets is a precursor technology to weaving cloth. Dating plaid-like cloth to the Renaissance is off by five thousand years maybe even ten thousand, we don't know. What little we do know is that the Celts had striped clothing in 500BC and if you have the tech to do stripes, you can do checks at will. We haven't any hard data on what the Picts wore and the Scoti were (likely) dressed like the rest of the Irish in stripes. What is funny is the word "varicoloured" used to describe Scot's dress, what the hell does that mean, tie-dyed?

I realize I am preaching to the choir here but, I have a reason here, every well thought out Internet Site that I go to proclaims loudly that the Re-enactor should avoid clan tartans as being "out of period" but we do not know that. What we know is that none of the new Clan Tartans are period, but the old ones might or might not be. The fact is we suspect the whole Clan Tartan thing is pure BS but we do not know. We just don't have any data one way or the other, just romantic rumors.

So for the most part the claim that Clan Tartans are not period is just as baseless as the claim that they are period. We don't know.