Submissions

Interested in writing for Foundations Revealed?

Foundations Revealed is an online community and educational resource covering historical costuming, vintage couture and corsetry.

Our membership consists of both professionals and hobbyists within the costuming/historical dress community. Our article archives are legendary, dating back 15 years.

We give our Members the resources to push out of their creative comfort zones and explore new ground. We encourage our Writers to produce original and interesting work that both helps the whole community grow, and helps make the Writer an authority in their field.

Want to be a Writer for us? Let us show you how!

For professional dress historians and costume lecturers, Foundations Revealed can be a great place to get your research published and read!

But for others in the community, we know writing an article can seem very intimidating. We all worry that we aren’t expert enough to tell other people how to do something… or we can sew just fine, but we don’t know how best to write it all down.

Don’t panic! You don’t have to be “The Best in the World of All Time”, at both sewing and writing articles in order to have something interesting and useful to teach others. So if you’d like to share research that has interested you, or if there is an amazing project journey you’ve been on, we're here to help and guide you through the process; just drop us an email with your idea!

Once your article is commissioned, you will receive a useful template and style sheet that will give you a really solid idea of how to put your article together.

The articles we publish are at least 3000-4000 words with 30-40 photos, videos and diagrams, and you can see how to submit an idea below.

Remember, we pay for all articles (hurrah)! Our rates are excellent: currently $300 per article (longer articles are also paid for each part), and you also get complimentary access to all areas of the site for a limited period of time, to say nothing of participating in one of the loveliest, most creative and supportive communities out there today!

So what are you waiting for?

What To Write

We're looking for articles that will inspire people to start sewing today, help them with any problems and give them lots of lovely ideas.

We're looking for either:

Complete projects step-by-step: In which the reader is encouraged to get involved in making something from start to finish, with all the information they need to totally complete a fabulous thing. It could be a recreation of a museum corset from a patent, or the construction of a specific piece of historical costume, like a well researched specific bustle skirt. It might be a modern wedding corset of your own design! These articles can be quite big, so they will often be divided into several sections and released in logical parts (you get paid for each part.)
Research and technical articles These might be how-to articles which might concentrate on one technique – for example constructing a specific historic button or how to take a pattern from an existing bra, showing how you brought a fabulous cosplay outfit together, or even troubleshooting difficult fabrics. Historic research could come in here as well, although it should always help to improve members understanding of an aspect of sewing or patternmaking.

VIDEO ARTICLE IDEAS WRITING TIPS IMAGES

VIDEO

Video can be a great way to demonstrate a technique, so you can use moving images as well as static ones in your article.

For the more involved, step-by-step how-to projects, it will be good to have close up videos of any tricky bits.
If you fancy doing a full video tutorial for each stage, that would be fantastic!

ARTICLE IDEAS

As editor, I am looking primarily for step-by-step historical or vintage costuming or couture, contemporary corsetry projects that include research, patterning, and construction.

Other useful articles might focus on demonstrating an unusual technique or a little-known garment or decoration.

It is worth scanning the archives to see what subjects have been covered in detail already, but I can always advise if a similar article is already in the archive.

I am also currently commissioning a series on diverse culture dress traditions and therefore welcome article proposals, particularly those that combine research and practise, in those areas.

We are committed to giving a variety of cultures a platform to talk about how to approach cultural dress from a respectful place, while also learning, sharing and enjoying traditional techniques and garments.

Just to give you some ideas, these are a few articles I'd love to commission:

1950s Dior gown/suit
1950s full-skirted fitted tailored coat
1940s women's tailored jacket/coat
1930s Vionnet bias-cut dresses
1920s women's dresses, jackets, trousers
Victorian and Edwardian ladies' tailoring
Edwardian lingerie skirt
19^th century dolman
Regency stays (full and half stays)
18^th century (we have some, but I’d like more!)
Traditional dress of cultures other than Britain and the USA
Cravats and ties – construction and historical methods of tying
Banyans

Any other ideas? These are just my wish list – I’m open to whatever project is obsessing you right now, and I’m always all ears for your ideas!

WRITING TIPS

The tone of writing should be friendly but professional, with clear, concise language that is technically precise but not overly academic (a proportion of readers, although fluent, do not have English as their first language).

As an article to entertain and inform, it can be fun and conversational but should remain relevant and on-topic rather than personal blog-form.

The focus of our articles is on explaining how the reader can use the information to improve their own costuming work (teaching how to DO something), rather than an account of the writer's personal journey (how I DID it).

- Your article should be new, unpublished, and written in English.
- Almost a fifth of our Members speak English as a second or third language, so use simple, clear sentences that aren’t too long.
- Good grammar and spelling are a must.
- Be friendly, yet professional. Picture the reader as a friend who is looking for better quality help than she can usually find in a Google search!

IMAGES

Great, clear, instructional photographs are at the core of our articles – readers want to be able to see every step, every detail, in sharp focus and good colour. By learning how to take a really great photograph that shows your work well and is also a beautiful picture in both extreme close up and distance, you are adding another valuable skill to your repertoire too!

There are lots of ways to set up a camera or smart phone for clear, bright photographs, and a whole wealth of photoshop-style free software packages to tweak them afterwards, too. You do need to take great pictures and edit your photos, though, as they are part of the article.

Any pictures used in articles MUST be:

Yours; OR
Have the appropriate Creative Commons licence, with a credit of where they came from; OR
Pictures that you have full permission to share, from the photographer, model and any other artist involved, also with credits.

Good public domain sources for photos are books published pre-1923 from Google Books, Archive.org, some images on Wikimedia Commons (check the license), National Gallery of Art Open Access Images, and the Rijksmuseum Museum website (most are public domain, check the license), Library of Congress’s Photo website, Flickr Commons and some images at the Metropolitan Museum, New York. There are other image sources available.

How Writing For Us Works - a Timetable

The submissions process starts when you email the Editor at [email protected].

Your article idea should be submitted in a few brief sentences, with a suggested deadline (a date between 6 and 9 months in advance is usual – depending on article complexity and writer’s availability) and a link to previous work or writing if applicable.

We will respond to suggest any extra information that could be covered, then create an article specification document and a deadline for you, and send you the full photography guidelines as well as a sample article to aid with style and layout. Once you have signed and returned the contract, you can get started and your payment will be made upon article publication.

So here's your checklist:

Your name and contact details
Your business name (if appropriate)
Links to your website, blog, YouTube channel, social media pages or community where your work is displayed (or attach photos of relevant items you’ve made).
Type of article – “how-to step-by-step article” or “research article” or “set of five mini how-to videos”, etc
Subject of the article (a bit more detail about what exactly you are proposing)
The article’s approximate length (at least 3000-4000 words for a one-part article and 6000-8000+ for a longer, multiple-part piece)

We're really looking forward to hearing from you!

[email protected]