# How to dress up as English landed gentry for little money



## Michelle79 (Oct 2, 2011)

Hello everybody! :smile:

My friends and me prepared a little theatre play.
Main persons a three men in their 30s, who are members of the landed gentry. One (I call him A here, we are not sure about the name yet) is from a very rich family (so rich he does not need to work). His family however is not highly respected, because they are sort of odd. His father was an adventurer, died during one of his adventures and he is an adventurer too. Also he is very educated, speaks several languages and lives in a house full of books.

The two other main characters are his cousins from his maternal side. Both come from a very rich family and both do not have to work for a living. Their family is very respected.
The older one (B) is quite down to earth and reponsible. He is the most mainstream one of the characters and does what other people expect him to do,
The younger one (C) is rather spoiled. He likes to flirt and to dress up to impress women. He also is irresponsible in the beginning of the play.

The play starts somewhere in rural England (it is not really mentioned where) in A's home. Also the excact time, when it is set, is not really mentioned (and does not play a role, because they end up in a fantasy world anyway), but we thought of some time in the 19th century. They do have no gadgets like cars, electric lights and so on, but horses, candles...

We are looking for ideas how to dress (for little money, because we do not want to spend an arm and a leg on it). It also would be great if you came up with ideas how to make A's home look as English and landed gentry as possible, while people can still notice he is an outsider in his class.
We thought one could decorate it with many books and objects he aquired on his travels and so an.


Your help would be greatly apreciated. Thank you


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## jasonbourne (Dec 10, 2007)

*My thoughts*

I think you will have some difficulty to have the play set in the 19th century for a couple of reasons. 1) I think it would be a bit anachronistic to have them be a family of adventurers during this time period, that would be a little more early 20th. 2) finding a wardrobe from the 19th century would be prohibitively expensive. I think you could do just as well by setting the play in the early 20th century, 1920s-1940s, and I would say and it would make some more sense for such oddballs to exists. I would recommend watching the tv show Jeeves and Wooster. It's a comedy, but will give you a feel for a well done period piece from the era about such odd ball aristocrats. It would also be fairly easy to buy similar attire from the following sources: https://www.vintagewhistles.co.uk/ and https://stores.ebay.co.uk/BOOKSTER1UK . I assume you are Americans, so i would also recommend including a valet (butler to Americans) character as these characters are always in such period pieces.


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## DougNZ (Aug 31, 2005)

My thoughts as well. Plenty of tweedy stuff with touches of the Raj and/or Africa.


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## Jovan (Mar 7, 2006)

Unless you have the monetary resources or extensive archives of 19th century clothing (like UF's theatre department) I would set it in the 20th century instead.


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## Michelle79 (Oct 2, 2011)

Thanks for your answers. No, we are not American, we are German, but it's great you thought I was a native speaker. That would be a great compliment for my English-teacher :smile:. By the way feel free to correct my English.

Let me explain a little bit more about the play. We do this just for fun. We do not expect to earn any money with this. In fact admission is free and the audience will consist of friends and family members. Unfortunatly we do not have access to a big theatre fundus. We just have access to a small one, because a friend of my mother teaches at a school, which has a theatre group.

I think it is essential to the story that it is set in a pre modern time (without electric lights, without cars, without TV and so on). People receive letters, not phone calls. This is vey essential to the story, because one letter arrives to late, which will play a major role.,.. and of course this could not have happened if the person could just have phoned, texted or written an e-mail.
I think early 20th century would be okay too. We do not plan on stating "it is the year of .... A.D." anyway. So the exact year could be left unclear.

Yes, we planed on having a manservant in the piece, but he does not play a major role. So I did not mention it, because he does not play one of the major roles and I did not want to bore you by writing several pages about the piece. This is going to be a hard to solve question however. How will the audience know that this person is the manservant? Well we are planing to have him address both his boss and his cousins as "Mr. firstname" and Sir. But how would he dress?

Other non major roles in the play (in the part of the play which takes part in our real world):

*an inn-keeper
*the cook
*an eccentric rich uncle
*villagers, who celebrate (they should be dressed up a little)
*a farmer

Thank you so much:smile:

Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention: I can sew. So some patterns would be also very much appreciated


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## Jovan (Mar 7, 2006)

The manservant would dress pretty much like you'd expect a stereotypical butler. Usually in formal morning or evening attire or some weird combination thereof, adapted slightly to look like a uniform. I think might be late 19th or early 20th century.


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