harmanhay

Thank you Lady! Furthermore, anyone who's already written on this thread is welcome to email me at <info at harmanhay dot com> for a free month's membership. Then you can give me an objective opinion on whether you think it's worth $190 for a years' membership of both sites, and give any other constructive criticism that comes to mind. Best wishes, CH

Hello Lady Constance, I've been to Costume College just the once, and found it to be an incredible event peopled exclusively by wonderful, helpful people. Some I know, some I don't, but regarding Rhumba's comment about costume nazis, you may be interested to hear the other side of that debate. There's a particular group of friends who go to Costume College who are well known for their fabulous blogs - everyone knows who they are, so I suppose they're generally considered to be the "cool kids". One of them wrote an exasperated blog post after 2009's event about the bad press she was getting elsewhere online because, in the cacophany and excitement of the weekend, she supposedly "blanked" someone she didn't even know. Because everyone knows who they are, she sometimes feels that that's quite a burden - they have to be pleasant and buddy-buddy to every single person they see in and around the hotel, 18 hours a day for four days - the price of celebrity, I suppose. And that makes them appear aloof sometimes. Just an alternative viewpoint. No, they don't offer the courses online, but as a matter of fact, Your Wardrobe Unlock'd was designed to do exactly that. Your Wardrobe Unlock'd is - disclaimer alert - my site. Yes, there is a charge. There is a charge because there is no advertising whatsoever; the content on the site is paid for directly by the members. Writers are paid a nominal amount, not for glorified blog posts with a couple of helpful pictures, but for full-on, in-depth projects and tutorials tackling the subjects that bloggers don't have the time or inclination to cover. Articles have a *lower* limit of 2000 words and 25 images - usually step-by-step photos - which is usually far exceeded. Sunny Buchler, to name but one writer, regularly turns in pages and pages and pages, and literally *hundreds* of photos for each article. Many how-tos stretch to multiple monthly instalments. Some are very friendly and practical, others are full-strength academic papers. Where books give you patterns, we give you the how-to, in full (our published writers are set free to write as much as they need to - we don't edit them down to the bare bones as their print publishers do.) On Foundations Revealed, the sister site, there are studies of historical corsets wherein the writers have taken multiple detail shots - many more than in any book - and given patterns; Jill Salen has expanded on the information in her "Corsets" book with a tutorial on how to take your own patterns from antique pieces such as those in the Symington collection. We have flossing tutorials - the members asked for it, because you can't find them in books. Because the members are paying, we produce specifically what they ask for. In practice, this means lots of surveys and a lot on drafting. People are sick of trying to shoe-horn themselves into commercial patterns - we show you how to make your own to your own measurements and how to re-size historical patterns like those in Janet Arnold's books (Yes, books are invaluable. Use them in conjunction with the site), and corset drafting - complete corset drafting for curvy Victorian corsets, not just a standard quick, free tutorial that someone wrote in their bedroom after college one night. :) Lastly, we happen to have the research queen on our staff. Want to find online free instructions for knitting a pair of 1870s stockings? Antique tailoring and dressmaking instructions for a specific fashion? Really cool fashion plates for a specific year? We can show you where. OK, ok, I'll stop. Long story short, I've worked my @ss off on these sites, so has my Editor and writers, I believe in these websites and they cost money for a reason. They're there to build a community around the best and most qualified costuming resource on the Internet. With hundreds of members, no dip in popularity during the recession, and as winners of a Nottingham Creative Business Award in 2009, looks like I'm not the only one who thinks so. As before, just wanted to give you the other side of the story. Best wishes! CH