About the Costume Review site

There are a few common questions about this site, so I will attempt to answer them here:

Can I upload pictures?

At the moment, only I (the site admin) can upload pictures. I may gradually make this available to editors/contributors as well, once I am sure that I am happy about the upload process.

Why don't you have (some picture)?

There are a number of possible reasons:

The picture is not English
The picture is not from the period 1558-1603
I haven't been able to find a decent quality image
I've never heard of it before

If the picture is English, 1558-1603, and you have a good scan of it, please feel free to send it to me (with appropriate details of the artist, subject, date, etc) and I'll upload it. By "good scan" I mean at least 400 pixels in each dimension, and full colour (unless it's a woodcut or engraving, in which case black and white is obviously OK.)

Why only Elizabethan? Will you expand to include early Tudor, Jacobean, Flemish, Spanish, medieval, etc?

Well, firstly, my interest is in the Elizabethan period and that's where I choose to focus my efforts (and my bandwidth bills).

But more importantly, I find that the broader a subject shown, the less detail will be apparent. When you think "Elizabethan" in a general sense, you get a blurry image of big ruffs, pale faces, lots of embroidery, and so on. When you are *only* dealing with the Elizabethan period in its strict sense, you get to focus a little bit more, and you realise that the fashions in 1560 were different to those in 1580 which in turn were different from those in 1600. Clothing also varied by age, sex and rank. Take a look at the noblewomen on the 1560s page and see what they're wearing - see how they almost all have those black gowns over spanish farthingales? That's a distinctive 1560s look, which you might not have noticed if they were all mixed up with the other periods.

I'm tired of "Elizabethan" being a catch-all phrase for "anything late 16th or early 17th century, across most of Europe". It was a 45 year period, and there's quite enough diversity and interest in that time period without having to cheat.

Having said that, I know there are some excellent sites already covering many other periods and cultures, so you might like to check those out. I also have no objection to anyone else setting up an equivalent costume review site for any other period - it's not proprietary, so go ahead!