Practical Pants and Sundry Accessories

Of Breeches and Pants

For this impromptu costume, you do not have to make anything special for the pants. I found that drawstring pants are perfect costume breeches. Just be sure to get a pair in a solid color, or wide vertical stripes (try to avoid the flourescent colors, an it please you. Sir Walter Raliegh never wore hot pink, I daresay.;-D) Or you can go to the fabric store and buy a pattern for drawstring pants and widen out the legs to make them really baggy. For, breeches, pull up the pant legs to your knees, and put on a pair of white, over-the-calf socks, without the sports stripes. Slip your feet into a pair of simple, leather or suede shoes (not cross trainers,) and you are done. If you are going as a peasant or other laborer, leave the pants long, wrap a piece of cloth, leather, or fur around your lower leg and tie it in place with a leather thong and you have leggings. You can even make them long enough to cover your shoes if they are not exactly period.

If you have an old pair of cotton pants, again, not blue jeans, then you have another option. Leaving your shirt untucked covers up the zipper and pockets, for the most part. If you are going as a peasant, then you can bind on some leggings (pieces of cloth, leather, or rawhide that cover the legs from the knees down to the top of your shoes) and you have finished your costume without having to do any altering.

Or, again, for breeches, cut the legs off at mid-calf, then fold over the edge for a drawstring casing. Pull the legs up to your knees and accessorise the same way you would with the drawstring pants. I take another option. I wear knee-high boots, actually a pair of apache boots, without the frills, with soles attached.

You do have another choice -- tights. You can wear them with leggings or boots or shoes. They are very versatile, though not quite period. True hose of the time were tubes of woven cloth sewn on the bias and slipped on each leg, then a garter belt would hold them up Of course, this left men exposed, and so the codpiece was developed to cover the manly parts. By Elizabeth's time, men's clothing had changed, becoming bulkier, with better coverage. The codpiece lost its function, but not its fashion.

Accessories

Whether man or woman, everyone carried on their belts a bag or purse, and sometimes more than one, for money and other things. A well-made drinking vessel (I carry a leather-wrapped tankard,) perhaps a wooden spoon, maybe a pair of gauntlets,  and a knife or dagger (mine is a home-made, antler-handle hunting knife) were also essential. Sometimes, people would hang a silver potpourri ball around their necks or from their belts, which they would hold 'neath their noses when encountering the unwashed masses. Or they would carry a clay flask full of perfumed oil, which would permeate the clay and scent the air. On the other side of that coin, many would hold a two-pronged fork, with a lemon wedge and a clove or two impaled thereon in front of their mouths to sweeten their own breath when in close conversation.

A person's occupation would also add to the accessories. Above you see a blacksmith with his small bellows, and a butcher in his apron. That butcher might also have a whetstone hanging from his belt. A merchant would add the keys to his shop on a chain around his neck and a small ledger book at his waist, and his wife might include a fine fan, or a perfume flask. A musician would carry his instrument, assuming it was portable, and maybe a small book of poetry. Many ordinary people would have a little tin-whistle or flute to play a springtime tune. The pious might carry a prayer book or hymnal, a student would bear his latin lessons. And of course, a mercenary would bear his sword when on duty only, a flask of oil for the blade, a whetstone, or a flask of "tonic" for his health. (For anyone else less than nobility, swords were forbidden.)

Above all these things, you must be clever in decorating your costume with ribbons, garlands, rosettes, and other festive niceties to fit the occasion of Pleasure Faire. Remember, they reflect how clever and witty you are., especially considering the limitations on what materials were legal and available.

Let's top off your costume on the Hats page.