Two weeks ago today I was driving off on an adventure all by myself, spending 12 hours in my car driving from my home in Upstate NY to Williamsburg, VA.
This started back in late November when I was catching up on the new posts by one of my favorite historical costumers, Samantha of Couture Courtesan. She announced on her blog that she was planning an early-17th-Century clothing conference at Jamestown Settlement where she works, and the keynote speakers and workshop leaders would be the authors of one of the best books on Renaissance costuming, The Tudor Tailor. I was ecstatic. Everything I do, everything I know is self-taught, so the idea of an entire weekend devoted to learning historical clothing recreation spearheaded by a costumer that I admired and women whose book I learned so much from was too good to pass up. I checked when the conference registration would go up and set my alarm for 5am that morning so that I could wake up extra early to register.
The 72 attendee slots sold out just 14 hours after I registered.
In the intervening months I dithered between excitement and doubt. Me being a self-taught seamstress relatively new to historical costuming with no training in anything like fashion history or sewing, I worried that I would be the noob in over my head. It didn’t help that the Facebook group created for everyone who had registered seemed to be full of people whose profile pictures showed them already wearing gorgeous Elizabethan outfits. A lot of them were part of SCA or seemed to work at museums or other historic sites.
We were told there would be an opportunity to dress up on the Saturday night of the conference, but I almost didn’t bring my Elizabethan gown because, it being polyester and made from an adapted Simplicity pattern, I thought I’d be too out of place compared to everyone else. My boyfriend finally told me (in so many words) that I was being dumb, that I spent a lot of time making the dress and I loved it and hardly ever got to wear it, and I would regret not bringing it (he’s so smart, that engineer).
So, setting my doubts aside, two weeks ago with a suitcase full of Virginia summer-friendly clothes plus some sewing supplies, my copy of The Tudor Tailor, and a duffle bag stuffed full of my Elizabethan gown, I drove the 12 hours to Williamsburg by myself (I won’t recap that; I’m still slightly traumatized).
The Victorian Archivist 