gurdymonkey | Dealing with a modern "eyesore" in an SCA context.

I freely admit that it will be anachronistic enough for a Japanese to be fighting with a European style rapier - however, I have to get proficient at the form before I can even think about pursuing the use of a rapier katana. (Besides, the merchant who carries them is currently having trouble getting appropriate blades, so there's no rush on that.)

I can hide most of my protective gear under existing (or new) garb. What I cannot hide is the fencing mask. SCA rapier rules require: "The front and top of the head must be covered by rigid material to below the jaw line and behind the ears. Standard 12 kg fencing masks are known to meet this standard......The rest of the head and neck must be covered by at least puncture resistant
material."

While I was at West An Tir, I saw some masks that had been painted, some to interesting effect. However, it's still a fencing mask. It's an anachronism, and most of the paint jobs simply draw attention to the mask.

The past several weeks of wearing loaner gear decided me in favor of the drape-off-the-mask vs. a separate hood to go over or under the mask: everything goes on or comes off in one step. I toyed with a couple of ideas for making it look vaguely period and Japanese....

1. A wig which will trap heat and become a tangled mess
2. Sohei cowl (an option we're looking at for James), which makes no sense as I am not portraying a Buddhist monk
3. Zukin likewise makes no sense unless one is dressing as a Buddhist nun.
4. Kendo bogu is distinctly post-period - and the real thing doesn't actually cover the back of the head because that's not a legal target area. Technically nobody ought to hit me in the back of the head anyway, but it probably happened to someone once so it got put in the rapier rules.

So, knowing it was going to be a complete anachronism anyway, I came up with the following compromise.

001

I covered the glaring white bib with a scrap of shibori fabric someone had wrapped a Twelfth Night gift in. The brown spots are actually pretty close to the color of the gloves I have.

I made the outer layer of the hood out of 3.5 oz/yard handkerchief linen. The mask frame is steel mesh over the top of the head from ear to ear and I wanted to keep what ventilation I had as the mask's foam stuffed, synthetic liner is likely to be hot. (If you look at the topmost photograph, you can see that the padding completely covers the forehead at the front of the mask.)
The portion covering the open back of the mask and the side flaps has two layers of the 7.1 oz unbleached linen sewn into it. The side flaps are sewn to the top of the bib.

My device and motto ("Honor, harmony, knowledge.") are displayed on the back.