Silhuettes Clothing Co.
www.topnotchcostumes.com
Enter discount code bilge10 to save 10% on all purchases!
(offer good thru August 2006)

Reviewed products: Hair Beads

Buy all the clothing you want - buy the $500 jacket, the $200 hat, the $300 boots. Honestly, do it :)

BUT - major clothing items only get you so far. In the pirate world, as in our own, accessories make the outfit. Earrings, finger rings, necklaces - the devil is in the details, and it's these very details that turn a "person in a pirate costume" into a "PIRATE."

Enter Silhouttes' hair beads. Jack Sparrow certainly wasn't the first pirate to dangle beads from his dreads, but he's easily the most memorable. And with one or two Silhouttes' bead strands hanging from your head, you too can add some significant zest to your pirate ensamble.

I inspected and test-drove two of these offerings, and found them surprisingly comfortable, once I got the hang of it (the trick is to clip them to a significant chunk of hair, so as to better distribute the weight.) As I've come to expect from Silhouttes, the materials are all of the best quality - not a single plastic bead was to be seen. Instead, each strand was a mixture of glass, metal, rock, wood, and even one that appeared to be bone. The string itself is metal wire, and while the clip is hardly period, it's sturdy, effective, and shouldn't be seen anyways. At the end of each strand is a coin - one from Denmark, and the other appears to be pakistani. The truly picky reenactor will note they're a bit too well formed to be period (indeed, the Denmark coin clearly states it was minted in 1967.) But both appear quite old at a glance, and if you meet anyone critical enough to notice that they're not "period," you'd best throw the loper to the sharks before they cause any real trouble.

A wonderfully effective, and wonderfully affordable, way to add that extra "punch" to your outfit.