When you come to put an early Anglo-Saxon outfit together you need to consider many factors such as the region of England you wish to portray, the wealth and status you wish to show and the approximate date you wish to represent.   

A good way to start this is to find the report for an excavated Anglo-Saxon cemetery in the Area you are interested in.   Looking through this will give you a good idea of the range and styles of items in that area.   Most of these cemeteries were in use for many decades, and go through several phases.   Some items will only occur in certain phases of the cemetery, others will go through several, or even all of the phases.   Studying these can help you narrow down the range of items in use at the time you are seeking to recreate.

At this stage it is probably worth picking just one grave and using this as the basis of your reconstruction.   This does not mean you should seek to create exact replicas of every item in the grave (although you can do this if you wish), but rather use them as a guide – for example you might find the grave contains saucer brooches, but use a different style of saucer brooch to those found, etc.   Some graves may seem to have items missing, so looking at other similar graves may give you ides for a few additional items you may wish to include in your outfit.

Once you have decided which items you need based on the grave finds, you need to start thinking about the soft items such as clothing and shoes that you will need.   Although the actual items of clothing vary little with status and region, the quality of the clothing and the accessories will generate the overall impression of rank/wealth/status.   It is very important that you design your outfit as a whole, and think how each part of it affects the overall costume.   You should strive to maintain a consistency within your outfit, for example if you wish to have a girdle-hanger, gilded brooches and masses of beads, or a sword, shield and spear, an undyed gown or tunic without decoration might be less appropriate than one decorated with braid and dyed a nice colour in a fine weave.   Likewise, a really flash great square-headed brooch fastening a cloak over a gown with very plain brooches and just a couple of beads is unlikely.

When deciding on colours and decoration for your garment, remember that modern ideas of what colours go together need not be applied to your outfit.   Go back and look at some of the colour combinations in the bead necklaces, and you’ll realise that the modern idea of ‘tasteful’ colour combinations need not apply to the Anglo-Saxon ideal.

You should also consider what tasks you are likely to be doing when wearing the outfit, and make sure your clothes are appropriate to the activities.   After all a sword-bearing warrior is unlikely to be found mucking out the pigs in an expensively dyed and decorated tunic, etc.

Another factor to consider along with wealth/status and region is the age of the person the outfit is being made for, particularly with women’s clothing.   Within each ‘wealth-bracket’ it is noticeable that the number of items, particularly jewellery and beads, increases with the age of the individual, suggesting outfits were built up over a period of many years.   If you don’t have the time/money to make your perfect outfit right away, you might like to use this same idea in building your own outfit up.   Start by looking at which items are most important to the outfit, and start with those.  Then as time goes by you can add other items, decoration, additional garments etc. as your circumstances allow.

Once you have your basic outfit you might like to embellish it by getting items that allow you to portray different regions or times, or a different social status.   Whatever you choose, don’t try to do too much to soon as this often leads to the outfit looking rushed or inconsistent.

The last thing to consider when putting on your outfit is avoiding modern styles creeping in.   After all, that Mohican hair-cut and heavy black eyeliner might be cool in the clubs, but might not be appropriate for an Anglo-Saxon.   This type of thing can easily be dealt with by avoiding make-up, and covering inappropriate hairstyles with headwear, a hood, etc
 

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