Celise will always have a special place in my heart. She was my first medieval themed live action roleplay character, and I'll forever have fond memories of how she helped me discovered a love of sword fighting and adventure. I love the clothing I made for Celise because it really explores a woman growing up - she started in rags, began dressing like her role-model, experimented with a bit of a "sexy" phase, and eventually found her place in grey toned medieval fantasy clothing when she married her husband, Caon.
The design inspiration for Celise came from a few different places. She is deeply rooted in fantasy, and was dressed without regard for any particular historical period. Celise was often found wearing swashbuckling jackets, silk shirts, plentiful jewels and a steel boned corset (she was a low combat character). She definitely had a little bit of a steam punk vibe, which at the time was not as common and easy to create as it is now.
Similar to the first characters of many, she was very much the product of many hours op-shopping, altering, and throwing together whatever I could find. Regardless, Celise went from peasant, to pirate, to relatively respectable noble.
(As this costume is many years old, I don't have any construction or progress pictures.)
The earliest photo of peasant Celise.
Celise started as a NPC character, wearing ad-hoc rags and a skirt I found in the crew room at Teonn, our old fantasy campagin in New Zealand. Her original concept was "peasant girl being sold to pirates", so I set off with another NPC playing my father and went to negotiate with The Crew of the Lady, a group of seafarers.
The pirates indeed bought Celise's freedom and made her a member of their crew, enlisting her as an accountant. At this point I wrote Celise as an actual character for the next game, and entered Teonn as a player.
Next came what is probably the most well known rendition of Celise Greeves. At this point she was wearing the mandatory yellow silk sash which signified her as a member of the Crew of the Lady. A striped brown corset, silk shirt, plentiful garnet necklaces and swashbuckling jacket create a fantasy pirate aesthetic .
At some point, Celise began to rebel a little bit and had a 'sexy' phase. I continued with the ruffled shirt, corset and garnets, but put the sash around my belt instead. This costume was both uncomfortable and IMO not quite up to my standards.
The next game, Celise began to settle in with her "noble" aesthetic, as she met her future husband, Caeon. I can be seen wearing a patterned skirt, black steel boned corset and silk shirt which would become the base of my regular costume for the rest of the campaign.
Teonn concluded in 2012, and this costume has since been recycled into new costumes or put into storage.
Celise in the final Teonn game (2012), following her Orc friend V'Ruga.