At some point last year a Facebook ad appeared in my feed for Renaissance-festival style shirts. I saw them, thought, “Wow, I’d like one of those!”, and I bought one.
Cool shirt! Note the steampunk watch around my neck.
And then I waited…and waited…and waited. Took forever, to the point where I figured I’d been scammed. But no: it just took, well, forever! The shirt came, and I loved it.
Flash forward to this year, when I decided to buy another one, when I saw a different ad. However, this time instead of just pulling the trigger on the spot, I actually threw the question out into FB and the Twitterverse, because I actually know some people who know stuff about Renfest clothing and whatnot. The verdict was pretty unanimous: do not buy the stuff from some random FB ad. There are plenty of reputable dealers of Renfest-style clothing online. After fielding some references, I ordered a shirt from Renstore.com.
In typical fashion, my thinking was to get a white shirt to go with my black (well, charcoal gray) one. In also typical fashion, I ended up ignoring my initial wish for a white shirt and bought a blue one instead. This I ended up wearing on our yearly Ithaca jaunt, and I like the way that shirt looks so much that a couple weeks ago I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the white one.
Is this a bit on the eclectic side? You bet it is…but hey. I think I’m just about at the point in life where the outside world gets zero vote here. If I want to look like a strange blend of cottagecore-meets-Julien-the-local-barrelmaker, well, that’s just what I’m going to do.
This might well be my favorite look now.
By the way: that pair of overalls? That’s the pair I’ve owned the longest. I bought those in 1994 or 1995, not long after I got the job at Pizza Hut that…well, no, it wasn’t a great job and I should have done something else with my time, but I also don’t regret the lessons I learned while working that job. But anyway, even though I have since loaded my collection with a lot of pairs of vintage overalls (some of which are soon to be featured in this space!), there’s something to be said for buying an article of clothing brand new and living with it until it’s vintage. This makes me happy.
Excelsior!
