Rose Tailour

Roleplay Character Name:    Rohese Tailour, Female
Character's Age:   58

Character Description (Background story & special attributes):
Rose (as people generally call her) moved to Lightbridge about eight years ago, when her husband died in Calais.  The two of them had had a very successful tailor and seamstress shop, where her husband worked with the male customers, and she worked with the female ones.  In Calais, they housed four apprentices and stayed busy all of the time.  They belonged to top guilds for many of their crafts, and her membership in one or two of them has been continued since the death of her husband.

She could no longer afford to live in Calais after the death of her husband, as women were not considered the best at making men's clothing, even though they did most of the sewing for the guilded tailor shops.   She had to let the apprentices go, and she sold their home, giving her enough money to come to Lightbridge and settle more soundly.

The Tailours (her husband's birth name was Ballard and her own was Stafford, but after about 10 years in the business together, they adopted the name the city residents had given them -- this was standard practice apparently in this time) have no children, and they ran their shop for more than 40 years, becoming increasingly wealthy until his death almost ten years ago.

Everyone in Lightbridge knows Rose, even though most of the commoners cannot afford her services, and most of the nobles here seem to prefer to have their clothes done by their family tailors and seamstresses in Calais or Dover, or in stylish nearby French shops.  Rose has many customers who continue to frequent her business, however, some travelling a whole day, since she built strong business connections that extend across generations.

Rose had one older apprentice before Emma came, an unmarried NPC woman who has returned home to take care of her parents and her ailing sister.

Rose has only recently herself returned to Lightbridge, having been called away to her own ailing unmarried sister, who has now died.  She returns with a heavy heart, but also with her sister's share of their parents' inheritance.

Character Strengths:
devoted to those she cares for
still semi-wealthy (but tight with money)
good sense of humor

Character Weaknesses:
clean fetish.  Her husband died of plague.
independent; hides her weaknesses
radically Protestant, but no one knows

Appropriate women's headgear of SL 1530 England: OOC

After doing a good bit of research towards outfitting my seamstress characters for Cristalle Karami's Lightbridge roleplay area (now closed, unfortunately) in SecondLife, I went onto Marketplace to begin my search for historically accurate clothing and headgear for the English woman of 1530.

I found a lot, but it's been a long road.  I would like to eventually review these pieces, but now that I am no longer in seamstress roleplay, this will go onto the back-burner.  Links at the bottom to Marketplace items may no longer work.

If you found this post, you may be looking for help finding historically accurate hats in Second Life, so I will tell you what I do know.

First, you might see my previous post, Hoods, Snoods, Coifs, oh my, but here's a list of questions for you to consider.

• What is the approximate time period of the item, or is it strictly fantasy?
• Which social class would wear the item?
• How historically accurate is the item?  A few assumptions on my part, that I'll happily redress if I find compelling research to the contrary, are:

1. Headwear at this time in England completely covered the hair as well as gave a decorative appearance; lice were rampant, and many people still believed that bathing was causing problems rather than solving them.  This would change, as Catherine came from a Spanish Moors culture that loved its sauna rooms and its scented baths, but in 1530, most folk still believed that bathing brought out the wrong humours in the body and should be avoided.  Some only bathed once or twice a year.
2. Cotton was basically outlawed in England and its ports.  Wool was a huge export for England; it was illegal to even work cotton in most trades, so it was not, as a rule, available.  Of course, nobles often do as they wish, and the world of imports allowed those who could afford them increasingly more opportunities to own the riches of other cultures. 
3. A color code was emerging which would become the Sumptuary Laws of Queen Elizabeth's time; this would supposedly dictate the colors allowed for the different classes to wear, but research suggests that this was not well understood, much less enforced, even in 1560, and Lightbridge Roleplay takes place in the 1530s.  Still, purples, deep blues, crimsons, golds, and silvers were not commonly worn by commoners.  Exotic animal furs and even gold thread stitching were not considered appropriate to those beneath a Lady's rank.

• Is there an extra-cultural flavor to the item?  It was a multicultural world, and tastes reflected the country of one's heritage.  Spanish, French, Italian, Islamic, and Germanic as well as English influences can be seen in headwear as well as clothing.
• How much modification can be done to the item in order to bring it into line with your needs?   There are many possible ways to modify items in SecondLife: items that are copy/mod can be copied and recolored for different outfits; pearl prims can be deleted or recolored; two modify pieces can be connected together and retextured.  But mesh doesn't allow for much modification except coloring and often some resizing, sometimes needfully done with the body sliders rather than directly on the piece itself.  Beyond the Yes/No modification question, I'll review how difficult it is to modify the piece, since very often, mesh items are linked together, which can effectively make parts of the piece impossible to modify, even though the whole piece together is listed in Marketplace as Modify (I know, right?)

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Finally, a list of links that might still work.


Fashion History Wiki.  http://fashionhistory.wikia.com/wiki/Atifet


links to hats on marketplace, some of which i've ordered.

mesh full perm toboggen hat https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/hat-40/912917
oblivion big hair with cover https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Oblivion-Middle-age-025-DEMO-Medieval-Hairstyle/6610629
oblivion hair with cover, good one i think https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Oblivion-Middle-age-017-DEMO-Medieval-Hairstyle/5695420
indian headscarf i have now https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Indian-Headscarf-Rigged-Mesh-boxed/6142572
atifet gold and black https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/DbD-Black-Gold-Tudor-Accessories/1689139
gorean snood and veil https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/DbD-Carmela-Snood/1684034
ddd tudor atifet https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/DbD-Tudor-Atifet/1682138
gorean outfit with headcover https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Gorean-free-woman-blue-caste-c04-GoreanGor-Free-woman-GownLady-tagMedieval-tagFan/422577
linen coif for men https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/RA-Linen-coif/6776073
baker's hat in blond https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/knickknack-The-Bakers-Hat-BLONDEs/1557697
men's leather shroud and veil https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Adira-Leather-Veil-Head-Scarf/2876179
gorean veil and headcovering https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/LUAS-LADY-BASIC-SET-WHITE-Free-Woman-Veils-Scarf/4594336
sculpted hood for clothing designers full perm https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Sculpted-hood-HO1-full-perm-for-cloth-designers/3184936
towel set strange but full perm https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Mesh-mysterious-short-dress-with-hoods/4303773
full perm sculpted hood like for a jacket https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Kawa-prod-FULLPERM-Sculpted-Hood-WITH-UV-MAPS/1682621

Hoods: Illusions - Anna French Hood & Katarin French Hood

The Anna French Hood by Illusions.  Illusions Masks and Unique Accessories by Siyu Suen.  $195L.  From the description,

The Anna french hood is inspired by the popular Tudor headdress that Anne Boleyn made so fashionable when she married Henry VIII. It features delicate pearls and a rich velvet, with optional ruffles.

It is scripted to change texture to six different metal textures and twelve different velvet textures. The metal colors include black, gray, silver, copper, gold, and bronze, while the velvet offers you a choice between black, white, gray, red, orange, brown, champagne yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple and a soft rosy pink.

Illusions also has a version with jewels, the Katarin, for those who have the right to wear it.