Preparing for a Renaissance feast or the motherlode of thrift store ugliness

Yesterday was our history co-op's end-of-year Renaissance feast. (It was supposed to be last spring, but various family-things came up for several of us and we had to postpone it.) Our feasts always involve costumes, so last week I hit the thrift store looking for things that could be turned into Renaissance dress. And that's when I found it. Possibly one of the ugliest designs of clothing there could be: the velour jumpsuit. It's only saving grace was the color:

My first thought was to turn it into short Renaissance style pants for B. to wear. It was perfect in that there was already an elastic waist band and the pants were wide enough to look authentic. But, I'm pretty sure you won't be surprised when I tell you my 14 year old son balked at wearing big, silly, velour pants. Another option for this astounding piece of clothing was to just leave it as is and put it up with the play costumes on the third floor. It did have a lot of play value, as A. demonstrates:

But, I opted to cut-up the legs and make two baby dresses instead. Here is the whole gang, dressed for the feast:

B. ended up being a Moroccan ambassador and you'll notice that J. was game to wear big, funny pants. I'm afraid that I didn't catch K.'s sandals before the picture. While red leather sandals are fine on a day to day basis, they aren't exactly period to the Renaissance. And finally, a close up of the 'infant princesses' in their new dresses, complete with gold circlets to indicate their social status (L. on left, G. on right):

Comments

Anonymous said…
Someone probably went out on the town thinking they looked GOOD wearing that horrible thing!
Anonymous said…
Why is J in his every-day clothes? Didn't he have a costume?

--Tad
Anonymous said…
Holy cow you are one talented momma! I love those awesome velour pansuit turned dresses!

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