The Renaissance Project (Halloween 2014)

The Renaissance Project Master Post

a.k.a. Halloween 2014

Halloween has been a big deal in my family for as long as I can remember. My siblings and I spent the last half of the summer counting down the days until the Halloween display would be put out at Target. Our own decorations were put out on September 1 (the earliest date we could justify). Our costumes were worn all day - to school and dance class.

In the more recent years, however, our excitement has justifiably waned. We had grown older and we'd moved out of our childhood home into a new place that didn't have very many trick-or-treaters. It wasn't until 2011, when we spent the holiday in Disneyland, that my sister and I rekindled our interest in celebrating. We dressed up that year, but we really got the ball rolling from there.

In 2014, we decided to pull out all the stops.

My sister and I were in charge. We decorated our parents' house and arranged my whole family to be there for Halloween. Starting halfway through September, we stretched fifteen bags of fake spider webs up and around two stories on our house and throughout the front yard. We arranged more than 500 fake spiders throughout. Special lighting. A fog machine. Full-sized candy bars. Soon our spider den ready and waiting, it was time to decide on the theme for our costumes.

October 8 - still a long way to go!

We toyed with a couple ideas, but settled on the Italian Renaissance. It's one of my favorite time periods (fashion- and otherwise!) and I admit that I pushed for it pretty hard. In the beginning, it was just me and my sister who were dressing up, so it was pretty easy for us to agree on it. It also seemed like it would be a pretty easy task of making two quick dresses for us to use. But before I knew it, the project had more than doubled in size.

So, this lengthy back-story is to set up a Costume Diary for this huge project. In all, I made three dresses, three camicias, a doublet, a pair of hose, and a pocket. I tried to document my work along the way, so I've got a lot of information and pictures to share. I've split it all up into six parts that I'll be publishing over the next few weeks.

Part Zero: Master Post

Part One: Background and Research

Part Two: Caterina (my sister's outfit)

Part Three: Lucrezia (my outfit)

Part Four: Vannozza (my mom's outfit)

Part Five: Lorenzo (my brother's outfit)

Part Six: Wearing It All (Halloween 2014)

Happy (belated? early?) Halloween!