Where to Buy Custom Leather Renaissance Festival (RenFest) Garb

Hear ye! Hear ye! the Renaissance Festival season has begun!

I have been attending Renfests for as long as I can remember. These are places which are transformed into Medieval villages once a year for a few weeks. They have all kinds of Medieval shows such as jousting, falconers, comedy skits, magic, singing... there is just too many things to list here. You can partake of fine Honey Meads whilst munching a big ol' turkey leg accompanied by a nice Peasant bread; or spend your gold at one of the many merchants. In short, you can spend an entire weekends walking around gawking at everything. One thing veteran RenFest goers know is that it is way more fun if you go dressed in period garb. This is where Rick Hogue (Moccasinman) comes in. This guy is a leather smyth to beat all leather smyths.

When my daughter got married a few years ago, I made most of the cloth items for her medieval wedding at Scarborough Faire outside Dallas, but I could not do the leather items myself. I contracted Rick Hogue to do the boots, tunics, and bodices. Not only did he give me a fair price on everything, he had it all done well before deadline and everything fit perfectly. Pretty amazing, that.

He has a website where you can see some of the items he made for that wedding, along with other things. I will tell you now that the website is not corporate looking in any way. In fact, at the risk of ticking him off I'll say it is kinda unprofessional looking. Do not, I say DO NOT let that scare you off. The man is talented. His thing is the leather, he is not a webmaster, nor does he waste money on hiring someone to do it up fancy for him. He just wants to create gorgeous leather clothing and websites be damned. This is a good thing, for you and me.

If you have attended a RenFest, you know what the prices are like. Oh my giddy aunt are they outrageously high most of the time. but everything is so damned cool. You just want it all, right? Take pictures of it instead of buying it. You can send them to Rick and he'll be happy to track down a pattern or simply wing it for you... and for much less money. Let him get creative with the design and he will amaze you. I mean, man, how cool is it to get a one-of-a-kind pair of leather boots for half the price of the RenFest copies? That's what I'm talkin' about.

Rick can do anything from a simple moccasin to complicated boots, and they will be the most comfortable thing your feet have ever slid into, on top of looking cool as hell. His bodices are just to die for, and the tunics will have the damsels swooning at your feet. so go ahead and check out the website, then shoot him an email. He's a hella nice guy to deal with. Tell him Doc sent ya... (maybe he'll give me a discount on my new boots he's working on right now... HA!) Seriously though, you can scour eBay to your heart's content, but you'll be wearing the same thing everyone else at the faire is wearing. Let Rick make you stand out.