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Majestic and comic jousts feature folks with incredibly heavy armor, great
talent, and gorgeous horses who go at each other with poles among much
cheering and cat-calling from the audience. Faire staff in all roles are trained
in the proper etiquette, costume, diction, and accent typical of the Faire.
These may be inauthentic, but they are consistent and coded.
Other performances pop up occasionally; we have seen for a few years
a “Barbarian” and his young son dressed in furs and leather. For many
years, there was a fantastic Ogre at the Norcal Faire, complete with tusks.
The 20th-Century Faire
Far from the purity envisioned by some of the early founders, the Renaissance Faire
is full of anachronisms. I was once approached by a fi nely tuned Tudor lady who
disapproved of my corset because it was clearly Victorian, lacing in the back. Under
Elizabethan sumptuary laws, “common” women would not wear velvet or purple,
but we see a lot of that among Faire goers. Medieval silhouettes are fairly common
as well. Costume guides exist exclusively for Faire goers; they rely as much on the
coded nature of Faire costuming as on the his-
tory of costume proper.
Rob and I wonder, what would a 20th-
century Faire look like? I think of this as a par-
ticular sort of design challenge if you add yet
another layer of fantasy; assume that you are
living in the 23rd century. Thinking back to re-
construct the 20th, what would your sources
be? What would you be likely to get wrong?
Rob envisions men in spats with straight neck-
ties and replicas of smartphones. I see a lot of
women with bright red hair because of the
few remaining images of Lucille Ball, but this is
treated as a sign of high social status. Maternity
clothing consists of large, boned balloons that
completely obscure the body's shape. Many
people wear only grayscale clothing. What
would you imagine? Is there a game in this?
