Costuming Challenge...

[ursangnome]

In a week and a half, I'm in a running of "The King's Musketeers" live action game. By incident or accident, I ended up in a plum role - Porthos.

Life being what it is right now, I had jumped on a bandwagon organized by someone in the game - rental of costumes. The quality was good, and the price couldn't be beat. Unfortunately, that bandwagon broke an axle - the deal has fallen through (for pretty much everyone involved). It looks like they'd been aiming for a discount for us as a theatrical production, but apparently that means we needed non-profit or charity status, or somesuch. Whatever it is, the rental is not to happen.

So, now I'm challenged to come up with costuming as a Musketeer in a week and a half. For SCA garb, I'm basically a t-tunic kind of guy. 1600s France is way out of my period and style. And I'm a big fellow - the number of folks who do late Renaissance garb that I could borrow... well, I don't know who I could ask. And the Musketeer tabard is a pretty specific item.

To the collected wisdom of my fannish friends and acquaintances... help? Anyone have good resources or websites that don't charge exorbitant fees?

Comments

[jdulac.livejournal.com]

I recommend ebay, the yard sale of the world. I'm sure that you can find something cheap there. You could get a whole costume or just pieces to supplement what you put together yourself. You might already have a foofy shirt. Wear unobtrusive dark pants. If you don't have tall boots then you can sew (or buy) boot covers that are like big spats that have the shape of a boot shaft and wear them over matching shoes. (These often come with pre-packaged costumes). Foofy hat with a feather, ebay has cheap ones for as little as $8.25 with "buy it now" (so you don't have to sit out an auction). The tabard isn't all that big a deal. If you want to make one that is passable (you don't need the zillion buttons and all) then you make a standard sca type tabard (rectangular front and back, neck opening in the middle) and attach long rectangular pieces to each shoulder, so you have basically a cross shape. That's it. All straight lines, except whatever you do for the neckline. Get some iron-on patch material and make a cross on it, no sewing. Tabard should be blue. If your shirt isn't foofy enough, you can whip up a separate lace collar. Also, consider a visit to The Garment District. This is their time of year.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

eBay is definitely someplace to look, and I feel kind of silly for it not leaping to my mind first off.