Pillar Guide · Costume
Steampunk Clothing: The Pieces of an Outfit, at Three Budgets
Steampunk clothing piece by piece: hat, shirt, vest, coat, corset, boots. A thrift route costs a few dollars a piece; an outfitter's pieces run $55-370.
An outfit is easier to assemble than it looks, because the genre has no uniform. The costumer who writes Historical Sewing observes that, the period never having existed, there is no correct steampunk costume; what one has instead is a method. Choose a character, put one signature piece upon it, and keep everything else plausible for about 1900 and free of plastic. This page lists the pieces, what each costs…
Every costume guide we read begins with a persona, and the persona decides the coat, the hat and the accessories. Historical Emporium's guide for gentlemen names the common ones, and the pieces that go with them: