"Fireside Family" Early Middle Ages clothing collection

Idea

The idea of this collection was to create a very basic early medieval wardrobe that covers all the needs of LARPers, SCAdians, medievalists of all sorts; with simple and modest, authentically-looking accents and organic fabric. ArmStreet usually creates bright and recognizable characters, and this time we wanted to leave enough room for your creativity, just adding a gentle touch of our quality and attention to details.

Time period

The collection is very generic, it will come in handy for the wide range of characters, historically inspired and fantasy. At its core, we tried to use patterns and decorations that are typical for the X-XII century, from simple silhouettes, common for the post-Roman Europe designs to tablet-weaving trims that were popular for a long period.

Materials and features

We worked hard starting from the beginning to deliver something new and authentically looking. So, several new colours of our amazing natural linen are introduced as well as new wool and softened natural flax linen for chemises. On the other hand, we wanted to offer some practical things, so you'll also find nylon LARP cloaks that could be a great solution to look at least "decorum" when the weather tries to ruin your plans. We went the extra mile and designed a lot of stuff for kids, including footwear, that might be not very smart business-wise, but we couldn't leave our little customers barefoot.

"Fireside Family" includes clothing and accessories for your whole friends and family tribe, from male and female classic outfits to kids clothing, accessories and footwear. We were also focusing on items compatibility, so it is easy to create a stunning and versatile wardrobe combining differently just a couple of clothing pieces and accessories. We also thought about our own experience and challenges at medieval events, so we designed some stuff that is hard to find - from kids footwear to textile belts to reasonably-looking waterproof rain-cloaks.

People

One more interesting thing, and different to our approach, at least for the last years, is how we styled it for the photo session. For many years, especially in the beginning, we had ourselves, friends and family as models for our costumes and gear. Later we switched to having more professional models and actors as our models with some exceptions for the people who became a recognizable part of ArmStreet visual, employees who are always here and clearly enjoy the role, and also have experience with medieval costume, gear and armour.

Yasia is one of the first ArmStreet models, she was fifteen when she was modelling for us for the first time, in the backyard of the local university, today she is thirty-two, a beautiful mom of two beautiful daughters, a sociologist and an activist.

Zhenya is a software developer, a father and husband, a hard-rock musician and a biker. He is the one in his family who knows how to braid hair. He was our Viking model seven years ago, and he became a more mature version of himself and a charismatic Viking.

Ludmila is a boy Misha's mom, a Montessori pedagogue and a beautiful lady.

We wanted to loan her son as a model in the first place, but saw his mom and decided she will be a great part of the "Fireside Family".

At last but not at least

This is definitely an experiment for us, a shift from our regular "high design" approach and a step towards our customers and our casual approach to our own casual medieval life. We'll see where it goes, but we love the calm spirit of the collection and we hope you gonna love it too.