Prepping for the Ren Faire Part 2: Costuming Decisions & How I Stayed "On Brand"
Staying “on brand” was not at all something I considered the first time I vended at the Lavonia Renaissance Faire in 2019. It was my first time, I knew it, and I went into it expecting to learn a lot about what I needed to do better for the next time. Here are some of my biggest takeaways.
The biggest takeaway that legitimately did not cross my mind was clothes for my mannequins. I didn’t figure this would be a big deal because all of my mannequins were matching second-hand pieces that I was lucky enough to procure from a local department store, and frankly, they were all in pretty good shape. Plus I didn’t want anything to take away from the products I was displaying on them. I’d also seen plenty of people’s displays online where they didn’t put tops or dresses on their mannequins, so I didn’t bother with it.
Then I happened to overhear a handful of teen (possibly pre-teen) girls as they walked by my booth gossiping and laughing about how “disturbed” they were by my mannequins and their boobs right as the show was opening. How do I know they were talking about me? There were no other booths within 50 feet and no other booths at the whole entire show that had mannequins. So yeah, noted, shirts next time. But manners too maybe?
The second biggest takeaway was “costuming” for myself and my booth. I had mismatched curtains, mismatched table cloths, and a small leather rug that didn’t even act like it was trying to match anything. Looking back, my displays were, quite frankly, shit. I say that because they were cobbled together at the last minute by my wonderful boyfriend who didn’t have much to go on except a vague description and a couple grainy, low-quality pins of shelves I’d found that I thought would work well. Worst of all, my costume didn’t make any sense at all with what I sold or how my booth looked
Third biggest was NO SHIT CANOPIES. In all actuality, this takeaway wasn’t strictly from the Lavonia faire. It was something I figured out previously at a local harvest festival. I ordered a very low-cost aka low quality canopy off of Walmart.com and got exactly what I ordered, which is to say a frame that I had to piece together from pipe and plastic PVC connectors and a “canvas” canopy that was so bad I have met dollar store garbage bags that would’ve held up better… So in between that festival and Lavonia, I upgraded and just the fact that I could ignore my canopy when the wind blew instead of leaping up to hold it down was a WORLD of difference. Now I just needed to make it look better.
I took those lessons and determined that I would do better next time.
THE BOOTH
The first thing I did in considering how to set up my booth and keep it all on brand was decide on a color scheme. I had already bought green table cloths and a green dress form for sewing, plus green is my favorite color and I gravitate towards it naturally, so I decided that would be my primary color. From there, I chose accent colors of black and white for sheer ease, a beautiful black cherry wood stain that’s more of a blood red than anything, and some light tans thrown in since those were my mannequin colors.
Once I had that nailed down, I could move on to costume elements for my mannequins.
The most important thing that I wanted to do was come up with a cohesive look for my headless, armless male mannequin, Stanley. While he may be missing those two things, he does have everything else including feet, so I started with a pair of plain black pants, a white shirt, and a black and white knight-style tunic that would bring it all together. That was what I dressed him in for the first faire and, frankly, didn’t love it.
For the second faire, I had created a matched set of pouches and a sword baldric in an ivory/bone colored croc-embossed cowhide mixed with medium brown oil tan, so I ditched the tunic and ordered these brown pants to match the set so that he would look a lot more cohesive. And damn did it work! That baldric was one of the first pieces that sold, along with Stanley’s belt.
While I do have a small army of mannequins (I was NOT about to turn down free ones, okay?), I decided that for the 2020 faire, I only wanted to bring Stanley, my sewing dress form, and only one of my table top mannequins. Once Stanley was taken care of, that only left 2 more mannequins to dress. My table top mannequin was easy: I went against brand because I wasn’t really thinking and bought a turquoise chemise style top off Amazon (below but pictured in black because the turquoise apparently isn’t available anymore?), wrapped a belt around it, and used it to display my mug frogs and skirt hikes. This one was a HELLA success. Not only did I sell both belts I had displayed on the mannequin along with pretty much every mug frog and skirt hike I put up there, but I even sold the shirt off my mannequin! I wasn’t planning to do it, but folks kept asking so I figured why not?
Last up to dress was my dress form. For her, I decided to go green. What a shock, I know. You see, my boyfriend’s mom decided to dress up and she bought a dress off Amazon that just so happened to come with a cheap fake corset/waist cincher looking thing in green. She hated the way it looked on and how it crumpled up any time she moved or bent over so she bought an actual corset to wear instead and I took the cheap waist cincher for my mannequin. I paired it with a light green skirt, white chemise, and white underskirt for a complete look. On top of that, I added a belt, skirt hikes, and a mug frog all in a matching medium brown oil tan, all of which I promptly sold right off of said mannequin.
When it came to table design, I opted for the oh so original milk crates idea, but hell, it worked. Like, really well. I stained the crates the dark, blood-red black cherry color I mentioned earlier and stacked them all in a way that really helped emphasize my products. I was able to prop up my pouches in the crates and against them, plus the slats in the sides helped me display my tooled dragon kidney belt as the actual high-dollar item it was. Best of all, it sold for full price!
Before I move on, it’s important to note that at the first Lavonia faire, I had 3 folding 6-foot tables and a single folding round table with not nearly enough product to fill them all. For the second faire, I slimmed down to 2 folding 6-foot tables and nothing else. One table was just crates and product while the other was more aesthetic.
On the first table with the milk crates, I just had a single green table cloth. On the second table with my mannequin and baskets of product, I also used a full black oil tan hide that I hadn’t cut into yet. I unrolled it and it almost completely covered the top of the table with some of it hanging off of the long sides, as well. This worked especially well because it created a more neutral background for the giant puff ball of fake vines that I wrapped around the base of my table top mannequin. I added some light tan woven baskets from Walmart that I divided product into, and that was it! Tables were done.
To really bring everything together, I then bought some small wood signs, stained them the same blood red color, and painted prices for everything in the baskets, such as “Mug Frogs $15” or “Skirt Hikes $10”. I also created a much larger sign that I hung at my booth’s entrance that said “Leather Shoppe” and glued some vines or bits of vine to my signs, too.
Last but not least was sides for my canopy. I purchased these canopy sides in green, and honestly, these are the one thing I shouldn’t have bought in green.
One word, faire friends: GREENHOUSE.
Yeah, we were all dying.
MY COSTUME
For my costume at the first faire, I went with this cheap, fake leather warrior tunic looking thing in brown and black and wore it over a black tank top, black leggings, and one of my pairs of black Ariat tall boots for riding plus another cheap green velvet cloak. I’d worn bracers and my dragon kidney belt and got a lot of comments on the kidney belt but no sales, so I decided for the next year I would stick with elements that were made specifically for my costume and weren’t for sale.
As I was browsing Pinterest, I discovered more traditional Viking-style apron dresses and decided that was the route I wanted to take because I loved the simplicity of the dresses compared to the potential for awesome jewelry. And those brooches! Just loved them. I knew I wanted some elements to be green (of course), but didn’t want that to be the focal color, so instead I decided to get a green dress for the base and chose this one on Amazon. It had the historical look I wanted and I liked the cut and color. Then I bought some thin unbleached muslin material from Joann’s to make my apron out of. For reference, I still struggle with sewing straight lines and getting the tension right when filling a bobbin, so just this project was a massive learning experience, but it turned out pretty good.
For the jewelry, I still had a ton of beads, mostly stone, wood, or other similarly natural-looking options, so that wasn’t a problem in making the strands for the apron dress. What was a (small) issue was the turtle brooches. They were traditionally worn vertically and connected the straps of the apron dress to the top of it, which meant that the pins on the back also had to be vertical. Unfortunately, the only pins I could find that were in my price range at the time had short pins set horizontally instead of long pins set vertically, so being able to attach the straps to the front that way was out of the question. I was still able to create a cohesive look but it took some work. I’m hoping to be able to get some proper turtle brooches at some point, though, because I honestly love the look of these dresses.
Even though the dress was long sleeved and dark green and it was May in Georgia and I was sweating bullets all day, I still think it was a great costume choice. Plus now I think I understand a little more about how women in the past may have been able to suffer through hot as hell summers in the southern USA despite wearing floor length skirts, multiple layers, etc. Even though I was sweating like crazy, I still didn’t feel “too hot” in the dress and the sleeves prevented me from getting sunburned, which is a miracle for me because I can burn in just about any weather.
I finished off my costume with a leather belt plus a small and large leather pouch that I made to match. That way, I was able to keep my Square card reader and my phone on hand along with the key to my cash box.
All in all, I think this year at the faire went so well that I’m not planning on changing anything for next year except for maybe the green walls. I do want to add some decoration to the outside of my canopy and walls, but I’m not sure what yet. I did see a pin of another vendor who had edged their canopy in fringe and I thought that looked cool. I’m also considering some fabric paint but I’m not sure what kind of design I would do. Another thing I might add or change is my shop sign. My logo is a Viking style shield, and while at Spirit Halloween, my sister and her friend found a little plastic Viking style shield that looked almost identical to my logo, so they bought it for me. I was originally planning on making one out of wood with the same black cherry stain using a pre-made round table top from Home Depot, but this is cheaper and quicker and it’ll be lighter and easier to hang, too.
The next Lavonia renaissance faire will I think be in 2022 some time, though I don’t know if they’ll go back to having it in October or if they’ll stick with May. I’m hoping for October for no other reason than lower temps. Whenever that happens, I’ll be back with more blog posts, probably about how I’ll be planning for it now that I have two faires under my belt, but we’ll see. ‘Til next time, faire friends!