About the Dept. of Cut Of Style

Here you will find hand made clothing, tools, equipment, and other items of the past. Ask For IT represents the artistry that is currently presented. Each item is made by hand from patterns that have been devised by them and assembled by the artist.

If you see something you like please contact us for availability information at either 216-298-1549 or if brave and think we have e-mail then try here or sending to the account contact listed.

If only one of an item exits and has already found a home… we may able to recreate that item or make one similar to it. The costs of the material, time involved, as well as the complexity of the design are all factors that affect the price. Please enjoy the photos here. We hope that you will find something to enjoy.

Artists can make just about anything, please challenge their talents with what you want created. If you don’t see it pictured here, we will find the right artist to bring your idea to life. Availability of materials, artist’s talent and your budget are the only limits.

Cut of Style Past Creations Group- These are examples of what has been represented. Artists are either current, moved on to other things or no longer physically with us. If commissioned we will find the right artist to bring your idea to life. So, look around and see if you can be inspired to put us to work.

Things here are of an artists/crafters own interpretations and design. These are not imported items. We try not to mass produce or cookie-cut items. Hand crafted artistry is our goal, we hope that we meet with your standards for craftsmanship. Past or present these items have passed through fairs, shows and events.

Artisan Groups

Kilts 'n More 0 Faire Ladies Faire Lords Historical Clothing 0 Sarasvati Call 0 Flying Canoe Traders 0 Brute Force Studios and Fallen Angel Fashions 0 The Basket Man 0Ana's Accouterments 

Armor Division - The Armor Dept.

Artists and Things - The Database.

Beyond Special - Film and Stage Props.

Castle Life -Items and Decor for Home and Tent, Music, BDFSM Equipment and more.

Cut of Style - Clothing and Costuming. <--**YOU are HERE**

Hall of Steel - Weapons of all kinds. Film, Stage, combat etc.

Leather and Link - Leather, Maille, and Chain.

Trinkets and Beads -The Jewelry Dept.

Purpose of Clothing

A feature of all modern human societies is the wearing of clothing, a category encompassing a wide variety of materials that cover the body. The primary purpose of clothing is functional, as a protection from the elements. Clothes also enhance safety during hazardous activities such as hiking and cooking, by providing a barrier between the skin and the environment. Further, clothes provide a hygienic barrier, keeping toxins away from the body and limiting the transmission of germs.

Clothing performs important social and cultural functions. A uniform, for example, may identify civil authority figures, such as police and military personnel, or it may identify team, group or political affiliations. In many societies, norms about clothing reflect standards of modesty, religion, gender, and social status. Clothing may also function as a form of adornment and an expression of personal taste or style.

One of the primary purposes of clothing is to keep the wearer comfortable. In hot climates, clothing provides protection from sunburn or wind damage, while in cold climates its thermal insulation properties are generally more important. Shelter usually reduces the functional need for clothing. For example, coats, hats, gloves, shoes, socks, and other superficial layers are normally removed when entering a warm home, particularly if one is residing or sleeping there. Similarly, clothing has seasonal and regional aspects, so that thinner materials and fewer layers of clothing are generally worn in warmer seasons and regions than in colder ones.

Clothing protects people against many things that might injure the uncovered human body. Clothes act as protection from the elements, including rain, snow and wind and other weather conditions, as well as from the sun. Clothes also reduce the level of risk during activity, such as work or sport. Clothing at times is worn as protection from specific environmental hazards, such as insects, noxious chemicals, weapons, and contact with abrasive substances. Conversely, clothing may protect the environment from the clothing wearer, as with doctors wearing medical scrubs.

People may wear ethnic or national dress on special occasions or in certain roles or occupations. For example, most Korean men and women have adopted Western-style dress for daily wear, but still wear traditional hanboks on special occasions, like weddings and cultural holidays. Items of Western dress may also appear worn or accessorized in distinctive, non-Western ways. A Tongan man may combine a used T-shirt with a Tongan wrapped skirt, or tupenu.

Some human cultures, such as the various people of the Arctic Circle, make their clothing entirely of prepared and decorated furs and skins. Other cultures have supplemented or replaced leather and skins with cloth: woven, knitted, or twined from various animal and vegetable fibers.

Although modern consumers may take the production of clothing for granted, making fabric by hand is a tedious and labor intensive process. That the textile industry was the first to be mechanized — with the powered loom — during the Industrial Revolution attests to this fact.

History of Clothing

Throughout history, many materials have been used for clothes. Materials have ranged from leather and furs, to weaved and woven materials, to elaborate and exotic natural and synthetic fabrics. Recent scientific research estimates that humans have been wearing clothing for as long as 650,000 years. Others claim that clothing probably did not originate until the Neolithic Age (the "New Stone Age").

According to archaeologists and anthropologists, the earliest clothing likely consisted of fur, leather, leaves, or grass that were draped, wrapped, or tied around the body. Knowledge of such clothing remains inferential, since clothing materials deteriorate quickly compared to stone, bone, shell and metal artifacts. Archeologists have identified very early sewing needles of bone and ivory from about 30,000 BC, found near Kostenki, Russia in 1988. Dyed flax fibers that could have been used in clothing have been found in a prehistoric cave in the Republic of Georgia that date back to 36,000 BP.

Scientists are still debating when people started wearing clothes. Ralf Kittler, Manfred Kayser and Mark Stoneking, anthropologists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, have conducted a genetic analysis of human body lice that suggests clothing originated quite recently, around 107,000 years ago. Body lice is an indicator of clothes-wearing, since most humans have sparse body hair, and lice thus require human clothing to survive. Their research suggests the invention of clothing may have coincided with the northward migration of modern Homo sapiens away from the warm climate of Africa, thought to have begun between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago. However, a second group of researchers using similar genetic methods estimate that clothing originated around 540,000 years ago (Reed et al. 2004. PLoS Biology 2: e340). For now, the date of the origin of clothing remains unresolved

Humans have shown extreme inventiveness in devising clothing solutions to environmental hazards. Some examples include: space suits, air conditioned clothing, armor, diving suits, swimsuits, bee-keeper gear, motorcycle leathers, high-visibility clothing, and other pieces of protective clothing. Meanwhile, the distinction between clothing and protective equipment is not always clear-cut, since clothes designed to be fashionable often have protective value and clothes designed for functional often consider fashion in their design.

Culture and Fashion

Different cultures have evolved various ways of creating clothes out of cloth. One approach simply involves draping the cloth. Many people wore, and still wear, garments consisting of rectangles of cloth wrapped to fit — for example, the dhoti for men and the sari for women in the Indian subcontinent, the Scottish kilt or the Javanese sarong. The clothes may simply be tied up, as is the case of the first two garments; or pins or belts hold the garments in place, as in the case of the latter two. The precious cloth remains uncut, and people of various sizes or the same person at different sizes can wear the garment.

Another approach involves cutting and sewing the cloth, but using every bit of the cloth rectangle in constructing the clothing. The tailor may cut triangular pieces from one corner of the cloth, and then add them elsewhere as gussets. Traditional European patterns for men's shirts and women's chemises take this approach.

Modern European fashion treats cloth much less conservatively, typically cutting in such a way as to leave various odd-shaped cloth remnants. Industrial sewing operations sell these as waste; home sewers may turn them into quilts.

In the thousands of years that humans have spent constructing clothing, they have created an astonishing array of styles, many of which have been reconstructed from surviving garments, photos, paintings, mosaics, etc., as well as from written descriptions. Costume history serves as a source of inspiration to current fashion designers, as well as a topic of professional interest to costumers constructing for plays, films, television, and historical reenactment.

Occupations requiring sewing skills

* Bookbinder
* Cordwainer
* Corsetier
* Draper
* Dressmaker
* Embroiderer
* Glover
* Hatter
* Leatherworker
* Milliner
* Parachute rigger
* Quilter
* Sailmaker
* Seamstress
* Shoemaker
* Tailor
* Taxidermist
* Tentmaker
* Upholsterer