There are other derisive terms for the authenticity snobs, but stitch counter will do well enough for me.

I didn’t mean to turn out this way, but I did. It might have something to do with being interested in historical costume for as long as I can remember, or spending summer afternoons at the Chicago Historical Society, or a grandmother who could turn fabric and thread into anything. But inauthentic clothing and gear grates on me, and that’s one reason I’m incredibly unlikely to trail along with the “colonial” women behind a militia unit in a local parade. I just can’t trot along next to a woman wearing Hush Puppies and a short gown made of fabric last seen on Bob Ross’s couch.

This is not to say that I’m perfectly authentic—I have problems with gear and clothing, mostly revolving around fit and using a sewing machine on some long seams, or seams that get stressed, and let’s not get into what I carry in my sewing basket. But I keep trying to learn more, and trying to figure out what would fit my persona of the past. Here’s what I do know:

Like my grandmother, I’m picky. I would never have given up stays unless my child would starve if I didn’t sell them.

And like Elsa, I care about my appearance—I’m just less successful in presentation. So how my clothes went together would have mattered to me.

Shoes. Guaranteed, we would have managed shoes, since my great-great grandmother made her own.

As much as I try to get into a real lower-sorts place, I can’t. Tidy, orderly, as clean as possible. That’s just part of who I am.

So what about those women in their upholstery-like prints, plastic glasses and little cotton caps plopped atop modern haircuts? What to do about them–and their men? One man asked us yesterday where we’d gotten Dave’s uniform–where’d we find the hunting frock and overalls?

I made them, I said. By hand.

Boys at Battle Road.

Standards, people. The list serves erupt at least quarterly on the subject of authenticity in reenacting. We must have standards.

Yes, we must. We must do the best we can to recreate the past, and to share the best history we possibly can. But that does not give us a license to hurt others with words.

The Captain told me Saturday that “It used to be so bad in the Brigade, and in the Continental Line, too, that women would come up to a newcomer like you,”—here he fingered my cloak, all hand-sewn, of Wm Booth 100% wool broadcloth in a color documented to a RI runaway, and patterned after a period cloak in a RI museum—“and say, ‘Is that machine stitched?’ and proceed to criticize what the woman was wearing. The woman would never come back.  She’d take her husband with her, and we’d lose a soldier forever.”

I had to tell him they still do that, just now they do it behind people’s backs, on list serves and on blogs. “I know,” I said, “because they’ve written about me.”  After that, I hunted up the documentation for the specific little fabric trick I’d done, and date it to 1785. Oops, OK, not appropriate to a Brigade event, being two years after the end of the war.

And then again, I’ve seen similar handling of fabric in a ca. 1760 child’s frock coat from RI…. But the stinger was in, and the gown, my favorite of but two gowns, is relegated to non-Brigade events.

So where does this leave us? I can be as bad a stitch counter as the next person, able to discern a machine-stitched pocket welt at 20 paces. Sometimes I can tell a seam is machine-stitched, too. And yet…

I will confess: Machine-stitched breeches were worn by my men at Battle Road. It was that or not go at all. The buttonholes are all hand-finished, as are the eyelets. Thank goodness Dana helped me with Thomas’s breeches, or I would not have slept at all that Friday night. Two pairs of breeches had to be made, a dozen eyelets and 30 buttonholes in total. The buttons were cheaters, too, fabric-covered, but for most I used the metal blanks fitted with metal backs. For some I used rings and gathered fabric around the ring to form the shank.

Those are the least of the problems with the breeches. Despite muslin fittings on squirming boys, the legs are too long and should be shortened. Dave’s are too loose at the knee, and his waistcoat is also too loose, now. Thomas ought to wear leather-soled shoes, and the gaiters he had were too small. His breeches, too, are too long, the knee band too tight.

I know all these things. Will I fix them? Not necessarily. Their overalls are in greater need of replacement, battles loom, and time is limited. Perhaps next winter I will be able to re-fit their breeches. Until then, we’ll muddle through with what we have, upgrading the necessary, and avoiding the egregious.

For the rest of the state where we live, I hope to emulate The Hive and create workshops to help educate museum staff members in the fine art of not dressing like a tavern wench. Educating is surely better than criticizing without offering alternatives.