Sooooo… when I first started in the SCA, way back in the day when I was but a mildly broke college student I was introduced to Viking and was hooked. That became my persona for many years after, and what I picked up again once I rejoined the SCA after a long hiatus.
Well all that changed once I joined a predominantly late Italian household. Now it’s not like anyone was like omg we need to show this poor barbarian the beauty of Italian dress construction, nor was I laced kicking and screaming into a giornea. Italian garb is lovely, and if anything I viewed it as an opportunity to improve my patterning and construction skills. Long story short, I made a lovely blue giornea which felt incredibly weird versus my good ol’ comfy Viking when worn. Now I had something to wear around my household without feeling like a complete hobo as I did with my aprons (again, there’s nothing wrong with aprons, please don’t take this post too seriously).
Since that time, I had been pondering other late period garb in an attempt to find something a bit more fancy than what I was accustomed to. I don’t really recall for sure, but I didn’t remember Viking being as wildly popular back when I started versus how it is today, mostly thanks to a vaguely historic show on what was the actual History channel, not Ancient Aliens and Pawn Stars as it is now. I must also mention, that during this period I was tooling around on Pinterest a lot for inspiration, as well as having conversations with my friends about what to wear. My criteria for garb isn’t all that stringent, it’s more of A) comfortable and B) I kinda dig on stuff you don’t see a lot of. That being said, my friend made a comment that has really stuck with me, that Viking has kind of become the jeans & t-shirt of the SCA. Is that a bad thing? No, absolutely not. I love my Viking and I’m glad others like it as well. The caveat is that a lot of the construction ends up being conjecture so it’s not as authentic as I would like. I don’t need everything absolutely period, but I do prefer being able to reference patterns discovered through recorded methods, or having mediums like paintings and extents to kind of work off of. I struggle with some aspects of patterning on my own, but if I have a some sort of foundation to reference I can manage a bit better. Now my same friend had been exploring some garb based on her heritage, which I thought was a really cool idea. As far as I remembered, my family had German and possibly some Dutch in my ancestry so I figured I’d take that and run with it. Of course my first thought was those beautiful dresses found in paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder. That being said, most people who do German tend to go for the Cranach gowns or Landsknecht which are both pretty awesome imo. They also seem incredibly complicated as well.
So from there, after a little more poking around I came across a pic of a woman wearing a beautiful spotted gown WITH 3/4 SLEEVES!!!!
Actual pic of that moment seen below:
I followed back to the site https://garbrelatedchaos.wordpress.com/ and took a look through her work. Not only was it lovely, it was a later period gown from southern Germany (or Swabia). It also didn’t appear ‘stuffy’ to me as later period garb sometimes does with the lacings and the veils that your face barely shows through, nor did it seem to require the extensive underpinnings as some other styles and periods do. So far it was looking to be a win-win.
I have since completed my first Swabian gown, and am in the process of putting together false braids and accessories to cover my hair. I have a lot of catching up to do blogwise so stay tuned for more!