[Quinn W.]

You mentioned you are concerned about fit. Obviously if you want the best of the best you can fly out to an armorer and get a fitting or mail plaster molds of various body parts. This will get you the best possible fit. However, as long as you find someone you can send measurements to that should do the trick well enough to get a very usable kit. My main point is that if you buy from a place that only offers a standard S/M/L/XL you might run into trouble since metal is much less forgiving than fabric when it comes to fit. You might fit neatly into one of those size categories but you're running a bigger risk.
If you're not working with a true custom maker, you can always ask if they'll take enough measurements to tweak their standard designs. That's what I did with Allan back when the Mercenary's Tailor was still fully operational and it worked out very well for me.

[Jonathan Fletcher]

Brendan.

Good luck with finding your kit.

If money allows, I would recommend getting custom fitted armour. If it doesn't, save up.

I took a few wrong turns along the way getting the armour right: Been through several of everything through the years. My advice, as before, is to literally start at the bottom first though with the underwear and work up from there, most importantly getting the arming coat and any maille right first before buying any armour, off the shelf or custom.

Depending on the period you settle on, I can recommend two vendors for off the shelf clothing and arming clothes - Historic Enterprises and Revival clothing. For the best kit you really need someone to tailor for you, but they have to know what they are making and prices climb steeply. Both these two make quality off the peg soft kit, especially Historic Enterprises. Jeff's armour isn't bad either but $22000 is more than most want to pay for a plaything (at least one without wheels).

Once you have the arming clothes for your period, get measured and get armoured!

Here are a few photo's from this morning of the layers of clothing worn under an early 15th century armour to show you what I mean...

Starting with braies (underpants), hose (leggings), shirt, purpoint (sort of arming waist coat that attaches the legs), arming jacket, maille top and skirt, and then the armour. It also highlights another important fact: Putting armour on needs an assistant and as mine was awol the seemingly complete harness in the last photo is actually missing the besagews (roundels to protect the shoulders/armpits) and a maille standard (neck defence), whilst the skirt has slipped down a bit and the spaulders (shoulder plates) are mounted a bit low and on backwards - couldn't fasten these up otherwise. And I couldn't get the jupon (overcoat with Arms displayed) on either. And exhausting doing it solo, took hours to put on (with photo and tea breaks) and about 15 minutes to get it off again.