Kit for Actual Human Beings

This shouldn't be a blog with a particularly tricky concept.

Most kit for LARP/Re-enactment is historically "inspired" at least, and where it does fall into the realm of pure fantasy (very few genuine historical sources of what a well-dressed minotaur should be wearing, for instance) it still tends to take its themes and ideas from real-world cultures, or established fantasy ideas with a shedload of source material available. Given this rather solid foundation in reality, it could safely be assumed it isn't hard to kit up for these activities whatever your shape/size/disability.

This is sadly where it often isn't the case. Hit mood boards, costume inspiration sites, kit suppliers, even the setting and background material for a lot of games, and what you will find in the female costume sections is mostly tall, slim conventionally-attractive-as-to-a-21st-century-standard models and actresses. And sometimes they've even been airbrushed, edited or put it high tech 21st century supportwear to give the illusion of effortless grace. Predictably, kit too closely based on these ideals looks rather different when put on normal sized human women.

So, here, I'm going to blog nice bits of kit from LARP (and probably a few re-enactment or SCA bits too) that look good on the real, actual human shaped women wearing them. It's likely to lean towards the plus size sort of stuff, since that's what i am, but the plan is to show women that *don't* look like models nevertheless rocking awesome kit and enjoying themselves at their favourite LARPS and re-enactments. Both to act as inspiration of what can and does look good for myself and hopefully others when it comes round to kit making time, but also to give all of us shaped like your average, real, normal human women a boost and a bit of confidence to get stuck into our games without worrying about what we look like.

(A sidenote - I know this is not a problem limited to women, i am sure the pressure to look like Legolas in kit weighs as heavily on some men as the pressure to look like Arwen does on us sometimes. And i have at least one post planned on non-conventional looking guys also rocking awesome kit. But as a dressmaking inspiration for me (primarily why I’ve collected all this) men's kit is less useful, and also i haven't got a sense of the same self-loathing from most of my male larp friends as I’ve seen from a lot of female ones when the dreaded post-event-facebook-photo-frenzy hits, so am hoping for their sake that means they are less affected generally by this than my female friends).