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The Historical Musketeer Uniform

Per a question on the Musketeer uniform, I turned to our expert in the historical, "Four of Swords" and "Flashing Blades" alum and Rapier of "Rose and Rapier", swordsman and filmmaker extrordinaire, Brain Thomas. With all of our thanks to him for taking time from his busy days as a Fox Studios Researcher, please read his missive below...

Fast answer to your friend is that the Tabbard which we know and love is likely more a 19th century interpretation of Musketeer Uniform, with the likely actual version being of course the cassock.

A Maurice Leloir, foremost illustrator of Dumas' work (By all means, go out of your way to find editions of 3 musketeers with his engravings) in the 19th century, was also an avid costume historian was a fiend for archival research, who sought as much accuracy as he could put into his images.

But even he was influenced by the theatre, and the arguement has been made that his musketeer tabbards were interpreted from those normally associated with court pages of the 16th century!

Fairbanks and the other early (indeed almost all) Musketeer films draw heavily from the influences laid down by Leloire, by the way...

Color wise, the ones in the '74 Three Musketeers movie can be supposed to have a high degree of accurate pigment due to the material research that accounted for natural wash/wear/fade, as opposed to say, the bright primary hues of say, the Gene Kelly Version or the ultra darks of the 1998 version of "Man in the Iron Mask".

All of that said, however dreadful much of that recent film is, it likely their costume design gives a decent depiction of Musketeer apparel from two distinct time periods -- The longer cassock-influenced tabbards of the elder Musketeers (minus the button closures that should be on the sleeves).

You should also know you aren't the only one to tackle this dilemma... here's a website from my 17th Century oriented bookmarks:

http://www.madamebonancieux.com/looks.html

So basically, as this deals with the movies... all of it should be taken with a grain of salt, musketeer garb is like the X-files in the aspect, one should "Trust no one" (with the exception of those close friends you've sworn "all for one, etc" with).