"This gave me a laugh" Topic

link

Why?

Maybe the spyware attached to the link?

Not saying there is, but why click on a link with no other info?

Seems clean, but I am with Dave, what's so funny?

Well, the uniforms shown, both line and Highlander, are shockingly bad. Hard to believe this is a serious business.

..oh I don't know.. they look about as convincing as the average re-enactor… I have yet to see one who looks like a soldier of any sort (apart from pathetically incompetent militia…)

Well, to be fair I dont think many AWI re-enactors today would be seen wearing hats from the 1750s- pre-1768 anyway, and such bad ones at that. Or wearing plumes from the 1790s stuck behind their cockades. In any case, 1775-1802 is in no way a legitimate period for a single set of uniform and accoutrements. The gaiters are post-AWI if anything and the brass buttons are – interesting. Buff facings for the Marines are- wrong. The waistcoat looks like it might even be civilian and a buff waistcoat is an even more bizarre choice for the 33rd regiment at any period.

I have, I am sorry to say, seen re-enactors of Highland regiments wearing blue bonnets as bad as the one shown. The white grenadier plume is- wrong, and I have no idea what the decorative item in the centre of the cockade/rosette might be.

The knapsack appears to be MOD surplus and as for the kilt….

This is fancy dress at best.

Glad I got that off my chest. (Grumpy to happy face)

Much must depend on price. This seems to be rental thing and, if folk want to dress up and look vaguely like the intended target, it must surely be affected by how much they wish to spend.

I agree much of this is fancy dress.

I am the first to criticise and am dismissed as a "button counter" (actually the original term was a "rivet counter")….but only because I think it is worth recording for posterity what we think (stress think on the evidence)) is right.

If someone shows wonderful artillery units, but with the gunners randomly distributed, I will comment.

I do agree here that the models do look very uncomfortable and almost embarrassed ….but the British ADC for example…not bad…..it "looks right".

Well worth posting. A good conversation topic, if off to a cryptic start!

Chokidar: Not a reenactor myself but, as much as I must admit to seeing some stinkers, I have also seen some that I thought were damn good. I remember seeing an event at Gettysburg in 1967, (reenacting must have been in its' infancy at that time), where some participants portraying Union troops were wearing dark glasses while at the same event was a CSA outfit whose appearance and drill evolutions impressed me very much. A Napoleonic reenactment I witnessed several years back featured the French 7th Hussars who I was very impressed with. Just an opinion. John Miller

It appears to be a company supplying costumes and expertise to the film and TV industry. As such, the stuff they have on the website is a lot more accurate than a lot of the rubbish that you often see actors wearing!

It is clearly not aimed at re-enactors. Judging by comments made on TMP that I've seen over the years it may be different in America, but nearly all the re-enactors I've seen here in Britain have been obsessed with getting their kit as accurate as possible. It does have to be said though, if you are going to get dodgy looking re-enactors they will probably be doing the 18th or 19th Centuries!

I am a re-enactor. This wouldn't fly at one of our events. No way, no how. Those outfits look ridiculous.

Here are some rather good units to compare to:

17thregiment.com

facebook.com/71stregiment

33rdfoot.org

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muskets-of-the-crown.org

You clearly are experts and well done for showing your talents. Re-enactors seem to get terrible grief here…

I must again say this is a commercial enterprise offering something that looks right…I now discover for a TV show, maybe a low budget film…not for a battlefield re-enactment.

Look through it in detail, the WWI outfits, the eras outside Napoleonic………

Let me ask again. How expensive are they? Stress I have no idea mind you!

Their costume rental outfits or re-enactor kits?

I heard that the uniforms created for Last of the Mohicans have been reused and re-cut multiple times.

Everyone to their own… but when I see over weight, ambling middle aged men pretending to be soldiers.. I am not convinced. With genuine kit they would still not look convincing…

This is what a historic regiment might have looked like..
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But that is just my opinion…

Without the gasmasks I guess.

But you are right…they do look like a 20thC elite unit. I would hope their early 19thC colleagues were as strapping, tall and well nourished.

It wasn't my intention to provoke a flamenkrieg against re-enactors, some of whom, as the links posted by history gamer show, present a fairly impressive, rigorously researched impression. Even the term 're-enactors' is not entirely appropriate anymore, although it may be more manageable than 'Living Historians' or what have you.

Standards do vary and a number of middle-aged, overweight individuals, with or without beards, who can't stand up straight, may always undercut the efforts of others. My general impresssion, though, is that standards are much higher than they used to be.

The group that operate as the 2nd Light Infantry, or at least one company thereof (40th Regt?) even manage to be of the right age and bodyweight and wear well fitting field uniforms that show the wear and tear of campaigning. They are pretty convincing and show something of the originals' esprit de corps,- if with better teeth

In the end, though, it is a civilian hobby.

As for the company to whose website I drew your attention, they evidently claim that the British uniforms and accoutrements illustrated (whatever the intended purpose- film & tv,'re-enacting'/living history…) are authentic- when they patently are not; preposterously so. No one with an ounce of interest in the subject in which they claim to be authorities could think otherwise.

If they believed the uniforms, etc., in question are sufficiently authentic, that would be bad enough; if they don't give a flying fig one way or the other, that is even worse.

And- breathe.

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"Gentlemen, I don't beat my drums here to insnare or inveigle any man; for you must know, gentlemen, that I am a man of honour: besides, I don't beat up for common soldiers; no, I list only grenadiers; grenadiers, gentlemen.

——Pray, gentlemen, observe this cap—this is the cap of honour; it dubs a man a gentleman, in the drawing of a trigger; and he, that has the good fortune to be born six foot high, was born to be a great man—

I have served twenty campaigns— and I must own that you are a man, every inch of you; a pretty, young, sprightly fellow! How firm and strong he treads! he steps like a castle!

Come, honest lad! will you take share of a pot?"