Awesome Kit I Have Actually Seen Part 2 (Rosemary and Helly)

Yet more awesomeness of people i actually have the pleasure of playing games with.

Rosemary makes all sorts of awesome things, but those particularly featured belong to PD's Odyssey classical era game. This is particularly awesome, and is a great interpretation of the briefing image that can be found here (allowing of course for the fact that real women, unlike gods, do have to wear kit that obeys the laws of gravity).

This is another less gravity defying piece but just as interesting i think. It's not easy to do "interpretations of how female fighters would have looked in a well established historical culture where women weren't allowed to fight much" but this manages it, looking both practical and period.

(photos both taken by Tom Garnett)


Next up, bits of kit by Helly. The first two both come again from maelstrom, the main thing i think it cool about these is they are both of the same character, actually a warrior princess in a good way. Photos of the dress particularly don't ever seem to do the colour justice, it was relly vivid, and made a fantastic russling noise. The armour is just practical, sensible and protective, whilst still looking like it allows freedom of movement, something too rarely seen on pictures of armoured female "warriors".

Last but definitely not least, this is one of Helly's (many) Empire outfits, her Dawnish changeling general. I absolutely adore the red dress, the cut is just lovely and the colour is properly properly blood red. Also check out the sleeves on the underdress! Just amazing!

(photos by Julia Steinberg or again Tom Garnett).

Awesome Kit I Have Actually Seen Part 1 (Esther and Nikki)

So, time to start some actual cool kit from the games i play and the friends i play them with.

First up is various bits by Esther Reeves.

This is for the LARP system Outcast, and the character (I think) is from some sort of fishing-y watery society. I love the multiple layers here giving a really interesting series of shapes, and it looks both practical, potentially slightly armoured, and very pretty.

This is one of several awesome bits of kit for PD's recently-ended Maelstrom game. Maelstrom's historical influences period wobbled about a fair bit between about 1600 and 1900 depending on what you were playing and i think this dress sits very neatly in it. It's actually a skirt and corset combination rather than a dress, and that gives it nice, even lines. Also this photo looks like she's up to something. This character was almost always up to something.

Esther makes various kit and costume pieces for women, men and kids of all sizes and shaped commercially through Mandala Studios or she can be contacted individually over her facebook page.

Another Maelstrom picture, this one an example of kit for (and by) a very expensive noblewoman, created and worn by the lovely Nikki.

Taken in the only dry, hot bit of the summer of 2012 this looks elegant and comfortable (though considering it includes a wig i'm not sure it was!)

And a modern bit of kit:

Really fun, really cool, looks like a woman on a mission. Which she probably was.

Orphan photos, great kit

Some photos are stubbornly locked down or impossible to link to an original link and i'm loathe just to cut and paste them, but i'll keep a list of additional nice stuff here. This will involve a bit of effort as some of them will have to be clicked on to be seen (gasp!) but still very nice things.

Awesome bit of Viking kit

Another nice fitted cotehardie

A little bit of fantasy inspiration

Sometimes good inspiration doesn't have to be particularly realistic, or even possible. Here are a few bits of art/heavily stylised things that make me feel a bit like the shape i am isn't anathema to wanting to look cool.

This is a black, plus sized medieval fantasy paladin. What's not to like? She's from a blog by this talented fantasy artist.

This lady is from World and Warcraft, and is a dwarf queen. However, as I'm pretty sure i'm really meant to be a dwarf, i approve of her outfit. She's from a deviantart feed originally credited to just_orangee

An extremely pretty and non-plus sized lady, but wearing what looks like practical fighting kit that would work on most shapes of humans. Just a fighter going about her life, not letting the fact she's a girl bother her. This is an orphan tumblr photo, but apparently by: "M&K Krystkowiak".

This is actually a card from the Cardhunter trading card game, but a slight suspicion of what i mostly end up looking like, brandishing bits of paper at people. I am hoping to get braids right one day...

Some trans-atlantic awesome

Time Travelling with Needles is a fab blog from an American reenactor and SCA sort.


Though not especially plus-size, she definitely fits into the normal human not model category, and her fitted dresses especially are a revealation that such things aren't confined to teeny tiny people.


I think this picture is my favourite.

She also makes things for various of her friends and customers that she re-enacts with, as well as shoes and hats and all that sort of thing, so she's an inspiration for all sorts of medieval/renaissance goodness.

This is another awesome lady of the SCA, again making period fitted garments in a plus size sort of shape.

This is a picture of her standard cotehardie which i particularly like.

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).