A ren faire is about fun, not full-on immersion. I'd be totally on board with people putting on separate events where period dress is required, and leaving ren faires as they are.
My husband and I went two years ago dressed as characters from Discworld, if anyone is familiar with Terry Pratchett. He dressed as the wizard, Rincewind, and fit right in. I dressed as the Discworld tourist, Twoflowers, and was wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt, khaki cargo shorts and a khaki bucket hat with a camera around my neck. SO MANY gave me a weird look, but also, SO MANY got it and enjoyed it.
And if anyone is not familiar with Terry Pratchett, by God go look him up, and check out his books! (Some good entry points to Discworld are Guards! Guards!, Mort, and Wyrd Sisters. It's actually a bunch of series set in the same world.)
If you had an old bellows style camera and put a toy demon on top of it, I'm sure more people would have picked up the reference more quickly. Having Rincewind with you helped, I'm sure.
We did! We were being asked to take pics with people before we even got out of the parking lot lol. Oh! And we also had a wagon to carry our 2 kids in and we stayed up until 2 am the night before to make it look like The Luggage.
They do have the historically accurate ones. I drove past one once. Off the highway in the woods there was something that looked like Ren Faire... camping?
It took quite a bit of googling to find the specific event, and from what I could find it was really hardcore. Everything had to be absolutely historically accurate, and you couldn't just come check it out casually. If you wanted to come, you had to be all in and dressed correctly. I think the tents had to accurate too. I think you might have even needed to apply to participate.
Just by it's very nature that type of event is going to be rare and niche because that's a whole lifestyle.
If it's an SCA event like Pennsic, yeah, you have to sign up and make an effort to participate at a reasonable level. You can't just walk in off the street because it's meant to be a shared immersive event. OTOH, SCA people hold lots of public demos and small events where anybody can wander in and ask questions, and these casual visitors sometime become members and get more involved, learning various skills, like dyeing and fighting (please note spelling and order!).
"Dressed correctly" can be quite simple, really. Some people really do spend a lot of time and money weaving and/or sewing and/or building garb that at least looks authentic/period, but a lot of people start by borrowing clothes from members, or get some cheap cotton from their local fabric store and make a simple t-tunic, and that's fine with everyone. https://www.reddit.com/r/sca/comments/1cehfx2/noob_t_tunic_question/
The SCA's level of chill really depends on the local group. In my experience, they can range from "newcomers are welcome to come as they are" to "we'd really appreciate it if you'd at least made some kind of effort next time" to "we have loaners for exactly this reason. Please change".
My local ren faire has events in the leadup to the main faire that are immersive. The hardcore people camp out on the grounds the entire week leading up to it and they have events and feasts and all sorts of things, period accurate to the point where many of their costumes costs thousands and thousands of dollars.
I used to work for a cobbler who makes leather shoes and boots that are very popular with the period accurate renn faire crowd. They are expensive af. Their 10 button boots are like $2k, and that's before you add in the customized features. Then it gets closer $5k.
I ended up getting to make my own pair and they were so freaking comfortable once they broke in. It took like 10 minutes to put them on though!
Yeah, a guy was once showing me the handwoven cotton smock he had - not just period materials but woven using period accurate methods as well. I can't remember the cost but I certainly couldn't have afforded it! And it was just a plain smock, not even any embroidery.
A ren faire is about the people working there being in era semi-accurate garbage, not the people enjoying it. It's just more fun if patrons put on costumes to do it. I personally love some cross genre cosplay if someone can find a lore loophole to include it.
Where I'm from full on Immersion even if not directly inspired are usually called reenactments where fairs are that fsirs first and foremost Renaissance period second. Reenactments being reenactments first and foremost.
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u/rjwut 7d ago
A ren faire is about fun, not full-on immersion. I'd be totally on board with people putting on separate events where period dress is required, and leaving ren faires as they are.