Beginners’ Guide to English Folk Costume
Introduction by Chloe Metcalfe
This resource is a guide to some of the many varied and wonderful costumes which are worn for an array of English folk customs including plays, dances and community festivals. This resource is a celebration of the ingenuity and skill of costume makers past and present.
English Folk
The costumes examined here are part of England’s rich folklore inheritance. This inheritance includes dances, plays and customs performed by normal people. Many of these traditions had declined by the early part of the 20th century for a number of reasons. These include the arrival of more varied entertainments e.g. television, the First and Second World Wars and wider social welfare changes. Many of these customs were later revived and are performed at modern events such as folk festivals. There are now hundreds of folk festivals where you can see people in folk costumes, look up your local one by following the link below!
No Costumes – Just Clothing
Some types of English customs such as morris dancing are ceremonial they are meant to be watched whilst others are social and are about participation. Historically these social customs were performed in people’s everyday or Sunday best clothing. Some of these are explored in the Other Dance part of this resource. These dances and customs were considered to be a normal part of people’s lives. People were not going to a folk dance they were going to a dance, a social activity where they would have had a chance to eye up and have a dance with, other people from their community. Today some social dances and customs are still performed in this way. Special costumes were not, and are not, a necessity. If you want to do an English folk activity don’t feel as though you have to wear a special costume, it can be done in any clothing!
Costumes
A costume differs from everyday clothing in that the act of putting on a costume signifies performance. Clothing becomes costume within the mind of the wearer. Costumes can be highly decorative, full of beautiful detail or they could be a simple token of performance, such as a ribbon, which shows to the audience and performer that something special and different is taking place. There has been much written about the transformative power of costume, that is costume giving you the power (or letting you get away with) activities that would normally be unacceptable. Halloween costumes today give children the transformative power or excuse to knock on strangers’ doors begging for sweets. Likewise costumes of the past would have given participants an excuse to do activities, often very similar to begging, which they would otherwise not have been allowed to do. This resource should offer you lots of ideas about special clothing which people did and do wear in order to perform a wide range of English traditions.
Key words
ceremonial, customs, folk festivals, ingenuity,inheritance, participation, revived, ribbon, signifies, social, Sunday best, transformative, welfare.
Links
Under every topic area are links to websites which are a good starting point for further research.
