we’ve gone from the yee haw agenda to the ye olde thot programme
Ah yes, those slutty slutty Landsknecht shorts:
The bare-legged / hot-pants look was fairly common, since the whole point about being a Landsknecht (or Reislaufer, their Swiss equivalent) was to look outrageous.
Most period illustrations of Landsknechts are black-and-white woodcuts…
…though in 1905 a book called „Geschichte des Kostüms“ - History of Costume - assembled a bunch of black-and-whites and added colour.
If they look excessively gaudy, they’re not, because these next prints were coloured in-period by an artist called Erhard Schön, and it’s fair to assume he was representing what he saw.
In short - or in shorts - those reenactor costumes are spot on. :->
Something mentioned nowhere in this post that I have just learned from googling: these guys were not Ye Olde Medieval Dandies. They were 15th-16th century mercenaries. Pretty hardcore, too. They were exempt from sumptuary laws (ie the rules that said you couldn’t wear certain colours or cloth or styles) and apparently their response to that was technicolour thotpants.
I was complaining earlier about costuming in both “historical” settings and in fantasy/scifi. This is exactly what I mean when I say a knowledge of actual history would enrich the conceptual creative palette for things like “hardcore mercenary outfits.”
I dedicate this reblog to all the nerdbros who conflate “historical accuracy” with “no women, queerness and people of color” and “white men with swords looking boring and serious”. Reality is so much more colorful and interesting than that!
BTW, one of the ways you can tell this is Renaissance-era fashion are the prominent codpieces. Once again, sexy male warriors with bared skin and dick bulges are literally more accurate than sexy female warriors with boob armor.
~Ozzie
note: OP blog of this post features NSFW content. Viewer discretion is advised.





















