Five Tips for Building Your Ren Faire Costume Over Time

In today’s post, I’m going to cover five tips for building your Renaissance Festival costume/D&D character cosplay (more) affordably over time.

I also want to add a couple assumptions to the trajectory of this advice so we’re working from the same foundation:

1. I’m assuming that you’re building your costume over time because you don’t have (all) the money to spend on it up front.
2. You are going for as authentic a look as possible, including how the items were made and not just how they look. By this I mean that you’d like to source costume pieces that were made by hand, by artisans, and not something you can purchase cheaply off of Amazon.

My quick caveat to number two above is, of course, that there’s nothing wrong with buying costume pieces online. However, the advice below assumes that you want to purchase pieces that will look and feel authentic at the Faire.

And that goal really comes down to patience and planning as much as anything else. Will you need to be willing to splurge when you find something amazing? Yes! (You’re welcome! 😉) Will you need to splurge on everything before/during your very first faire? No. And that’s the really good news!

The Tips for Building Your Costume!

Yay! The exciting part!

The tips below will help you plan out and put together a Renaissance Faire costume that you will absolutely love! Our goal is to build a costume over time that you can be delighted with during your first faire and one that people will stop you and ask you about ten years from now.

In the tips that follow, I mention a few different characters and costumes that both Jonathan and I are building. From what I can tell, many people build out one look and then wear it to the faire. I totally get that, and I think that’s an amazing plan! We like to go multiple days in a row, and we like to have a different costume to wear each of those days. We’re also fans of being able to dress up as our characters for D&D sessions at home.

Finally, our home faire, the Carolina Renaissance Festival, varies dramatically in temperature, so we need to be able to dress for 30-40 degrees Fahrenheit or 70+ degrees. The faire this past weekend started in the 40s and hit the mid-80s!

Tip #1 – Embrace Building Your Costume Over Time

Yes, perhaps this tip is cheating a bit, but I think it’s really important! We’ve been going to our Ren Faire for three years now, and we’ve gotten comfortable enough to make friends with fellow attendees. The ones with drop-dead amazing costumes always tell us that they sourced their costume pieces over time.

As soon as we embraced that, the pressure for our costumes to immediately match the vision in our minds disappeared. Instead, we know we’re building toward something we’ll be delighted with five years from now. And that adds a really cool challenge to our costume building as well!

When you internalize that you can’t build your perfect costume right this very minute, you’ll be able to slow down and decide which pieces you want now and which ones are less immediately necessary. You’ll also determine which are the true showstopper pieces that you want to wait to be absolutely perfect and/or even get custom made.

Tip #2 – Shop Your Closet/Keep Your Costume in Mind

Our second tip is to shop your existing wardrobe and/or to keep your costume/cosplay in mind when purchasing clothes for your “real” life.

Shoes

As one example, Jonathan and I use our boots that we wear through the autumn and winter for our Ren Faire shoes. Would it be awesome to have a $300 pair of custom-made festival shoes? Of course! But until we’re ready to take that step (pun intended!), we’ll get multiple uses out of the shoes we already have.

To be clear, we keep our costumes in mind when we’re doing our shopping for clothes for everyday. For instance, when I purchased my black heeled Chelsea boots, I made sure I was getting a pair that would be comfortable for walking in all day and that had a minimal zipper so I could wear them with my faire costume. We really like Thursday Boots for their ruggedness and versatility.

Jewelry

This tip also works really well when it comes to jewelry. Maybe your character wears really chunky gemstone necklaces. But in real life, you prefer thin bangles and delicate necklaces. In that case, you would get more wear and versatility from buying jewelry that you already like and wear more regularly at the faire. You’ll carry a piece of Ren Faire with you wherever you go!

Jonathan tends to wear his Ren Faire necklaces for weeks after we go to a festival because it makes him feel more magical and connects him to the fun experience we had.

Tip #3 – Prioritize Key Costume Pieces

Decide in advance what your signature or most important pieces are going to be. Then be extra picky and choosy when it comes to purchasing those pieces.

I have a few examples to illustrate this piece of advice.

The Corset!

First, the corset! I debated for a year or more whether I wanted a black or brown corset. I had a really pretty brown one picked out from Etsy that would ship from Spain, and it was a bit more affordable than the ones I’d seen at our faires. However, when I saw people walking around in brown corsets or even brown leather armor, they almost always looked like rangers to me.

I tend to play druids, and when I see people at the Faire whose costumes signal “druid” to me, they’re in flowy clothes, capes, furs, and headdresses with bones. My ranger character is a vampire hunter, and she for sure wears black leather armor. My assassin character, same thing. I also have a druidy fortune teller character who would wear a black corset for safety as well as for style. But it really was the process of seeing a bunch of different costumes and realizing that what I’d picked out wouldn’t work the way I’d intended.

Finding the Perfect Piece

At the GA Ren Fest this past weekend, we stopped by the booth for one of our favorite leatherworkers who we had purchased our bracers from a couple years before. They had a gorgeous red corset and bra piece that I could not stop ogling. The first day, I talked to them about it and the process of buying a corset in general. (I had also debated buying a green corset and bra combo, but that wasn’t the direction I wanted to go in first.)

The second day, we returned and talked to them some more, and this was when I knew I wanted to go more with a black corset. I was wearing my bracers and asking them about some of the different pieces, and I asked if they happened to have a mid-waist black corset. The one they pulled out took my breath away. Nine panels, stitched together. It’s less elaborate than one that I would have requested they custom-make, and thank goodness for that! She’s so versatile, and I know that she’ll work for three of my four characters, which feels amazing!

I’m so glad that we waited until I was sure about the corset piece, which relates to our next piece of advice below. The corset I purchased was more expensive than the one on Etsy, but buying the right thing the first time is way more affordable in the long run than buying something you don’t love which means, eventually, that you’ll be getting something you like better anyway! (More on this in number five.)

Weapons

Part of the goal of prioritizing is deciding what you do want to pay a premium for, right now, and what you don’t. Every Ren Faire, we admire the handmade swords. They’re gorgeous and so impressive! They’re also incredibly expensive. (I imagine the characters in my fiction and our D&D games having the same struggle.)

So what we’ve decided is that legitimate/”real” weapons aren’t a priority for us right now. Our armor and costumes are, and I might add an interesting wig or some cosplay makeup to that list.

What would have made our costuming experience frustrating if not impossible would have been me deciding that I wanted both a $450 corset and a $400+ dagger. (She was gorgeous, I promise!) But instead, we went with a $40 dagger that looks so pretty with my costume and the beautiful corset. A few years from now, we’ll absolutely be looking at legit weapons. For right now, though, I will deal with my dagger having a plastic case.

Tip #4 – Wait for What You Want

As I mentioned in the corset section above, our fourth tip is to wait for what you want. It’s so easy to get sucked up into the fervor of the faire and to purchase something you’re not in love with or something that’s close (see tip 5 below). This is especially true if you, like us, have to drive to the faire and can’t just hop over quickly the next weekend after you’ve had time to decide.

The bonus pressure of waiting for what you want or being tempted to buy the wrong thing is that the pieces are hand-crafted, so they each vary and are all pretty much one-of-a-kind.

Being Wary of Pressure

This is part of why, at Ren Faire, I am extra appreciative of artisans who aren’t pushy. The leather-makers we adore, Ribbons & Rivets, were so careful and patient during our shopping. They wanted to make sure that I was happy with what I was getting, and they wanted to assure me that they could custom-design a corset to my size and measurements if I wanted. I went with the more instant gratification of buying the black corset they had, but I plan to have them make the chest piece custom when I’m ready. (The corset was really close to what they would have made for me custom also!)

Conversely, when we were shopping for a piece for Jonathan, we’d already had trouble talking privately about what we thought about the pieces because someone from the shop was hovering over us trying to fit it to him. I wasn’t thrilled with the fit of the garment—there were places where it was just too big, and I didn’t think it would layer well with a jacket, which I knew he would want.

The moment we started expressing hesitation, all four of the shopkeepers started pressuring us to go ahead and buy. Luckily I was prepared for this, so we were able to firmly stand our ground. They didn’t mean anything harmful by it, of course, and I totally understand wanting to make a sale! But for those who, like me, are sensitive to others’ feelings and struggle with putting others’ opinions and needs ahead of our own, be on the lookout for this. Remember that you can always circle back. Give yourself an hour, grab a snack, and see how you feel after a short break.

The Payoff and the Downside of Waiting

That brings me to both the payoff and the downside of waiting.

Payoff: I have a corset I’m absolutely delighted with that I plan to wear for years and years! If I could get it on myself, I’d be typing in it right now!

Downside: On the flip side, we’re still waiting for the perfect coat for Jonathan’s noble character, Lord Silas Graveston. We went through five different shops with Silas in mind and couldn’t quite find what we wanted. However, we are closer to knowing what we want for Silas! Jonathan tried on some vests, a doublet, and a long coat, and now we know that we want a long coat for Silas. Many of the long coats are pirate-leaning, and Jonathan is tall and broad-chested but not wide, so we’re having some trouble with the fit. But I’m confident that we can find the perfect thing!

Tip #5 – Go With an Aesthetic for Your Costume in Mind

As I think is inevitable with this sort of post, I need to mention buyer’s remorse. 🤦🏻‍♀️

We went to our first faire in 2019 and absolutely fell in love. Then, Covid happened, and our faire was cancelled for 2020. We were sooooo sad.

Then, in 2021, when we did go back to the faire, we had a few costume pieces we’d bought in advance. We also went with an idea of the sorts of things we’d want for our second trip that year and to future faires.

The Brown Peasant Skirt

This was where trouble struck. I went into a booth with the pretty layer skirts and the cute bodices. “I’m just looking,” I told myself. But the cuteness of the different pieces were + the kindness and thoughtfulness of the ladies working sucked me in.

And that was how I ended up with almost $200 of what I will call “costume regrets.” One is a cute little velvet crop top that looked adorable on the salesperson and good on me, but it’s tight and not my favorite aesthetic. And the brown layered peasant skirt is also absolutely lovely and impeccably crafted…but none of my characters would ever wear it.

My Preferred Look

Is the skirt more authentic to what women would have worn during the Renaissance? Sure. But I always go to the faire as a combination of a fantasy version of myself and my characters, always as an elf or half-elf. The skirt says “hobbit” to me, or Renaissance-woman. It doesn’t say “vampire hunter” or “magical fae assassin.”

I keep the skirt with our Ren Faire costumes as a reminder to myself to take my time. We save up in advance for Ren Faire so we don’t have to be as careful while we’re there. My “real-life” wardrobe is extremely minimal. I’ve purchased most of it second-hand. Part of my hope, in the long-term, is to be in a spot where I can dress like it’s Ren Faire every day! (Thank you for joining us on that journey, by the way!)

When I can find the right second home for the skirt, I will absolutely pass it along. I’m also really careful to not shame myself about being wrong about thinking something would work for me when it doesn’t. I didn’t know then, so there’s no point in making myself feel bad about it now!

Knowing Your Aesthetic

But what this final piece of advice boils down to is to have an idea of what you want and what you like as you go in.

Just like in your regular shopping, the shops know how to put together a really cute outfit. And as someone who worked in retail, part of the goal of the mannequins and sample outfits is for them to contain as many pieces as possible.

One booth really stood out to me at the GA Ren Fest. They had beautiful flowy pieces, which the shopkeepers looked beautiful in. They had accessorized them with fae costumes, which I love!

Spending time in that booth, I could see myself, so vividly, wearing a series of scarves and harem pants and making all my wildest fae dreams come true. I also know that I’m incredibly paranoid about getting sunburnt. (Being super pale + having skin cancer run in my family makes this an excessively legitimate concern to me.) The chances of me actually going to a faire with belly and/or back exposed, regardless of how hot it was, are almost zero. (Yes, Jonathan finds this very disappointing 😉)

I know that I prefer the fitted costumes like we would see in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or in Van Helsing. (Both of those are dream costumes to me!)

Closing Thoughts

I hope this has helped you figure out some of the steps and stages for your Ren Faire costume! We would love to hear about your dream costume in the comments below! And, of course, feel free to ask questions too!