21st birthday party
One of my friends had a medieval-themed party. Me and my then-girlfriend got a book from the library on medieval costumes, and made a Byzantine noblewoman's costume for her, entirely out of old clothes that she owned, which was ridiculously authentic-looking. I had an inaccurate but amusing Scottish highlander costume; her tartan skirt, an army blanket & one of her brooches as a cloak, blue paint on face - the amusingness of it mostly being my weedy physique.

Everyone else, including the birthday girl herself, interpreted 'medieval' as 'wear your best goth clothes'. Presumably the reasoning was, what...

a) Dracula is from the middle ages and goth clothes look kind of like that, that's right isn't it? No, it's fucking well not right, Dracula is represented as wearing the normal clothes of a rich man of the time in which the book is set ie the Victorian age.
or
b) I couldn't possibly wear anything except my goth clothes, will somebody please call the 'waaaaahmbulance' as I am a big fucking baby.

I'm leaning towards b.

I mean Jesus Christ, it's not difficult -

i) have you ever seen Robin Hood or any other show set in the middle ages on TV?
ii) were there goths in it?

No? well perhaps goth clothes don't look medieval.

And, now that I think about it, you know how there are like two different kinds of goth 'looks' - the more modern PVC/Marilyn Manson-ey one and the older shirt/long-dress pseudo Victorian-ey one? I've just remembered that everyone had carefully gone for the latter 'old school' look. Because obviously, if you're trying to evoke the 1500s, God forbid you should look like someone from the 1990s as opposed to someone from the 1980s vaguely evoking the 1890s. Then you'd be out of theme.

Note to people who want to both wear their goth clothes and have a themed fancy-dress party: make the theme the Victorian age, the 80s, horror films, bondage, come-as-your-favourite-colour, or 'unlikely subjects for a Ken Loach film'.

I think I have the wrong attitude towards fancy dress.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Wed 18 Jan 2006, 1:46, Reply)