You know the typical pirate costume — big hat or bandana, long jacket, a big belt buckle, shirts with strings around the collar instead of buttons, and maybe some pants torn at the knees to show you've really been through some rough-and-tough pirate business. This, as it turns out, is, mostly bogus. Pirates didn't universally talk the same, and they sure didn't dress the same either.
According to the book Pirate: the Golden Age by Angus Konstam and David Rickman, we don't actually have much evidence for how the typical pirate dressed. They reference the book A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson (who could captain a ship but apparently not spell) when explaining that eyewitness accounts and first-hand descriptions of pirates were exceptionally rare. After all, most people who saw them up close didn't survive the meeting. Thus, stories of what pirates, and even their captains, looked like and how they dressed vary from person to person. You may have enjoyed playing Telephone as a kid, but people writing about pirates perfected it.
So we're left with common sense. And common sense tells us that there's no reason to assume various groups of people from all corners of the world magically all dressed the same. More likely, they dressed like typical maritime sailors, a style that likely varied from place to place. Witness accounts at the trial of notorious female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read said they dressed in men's jackets with baggy trousers — exactly how every other sailor at the time dressed.
So if you want an accurate pirate costume, research what legitimate sailors of the 1700s wore, and copy that. Then prepare for everyone at the costume party to get confused when you show up and say you're a pirate. Alas.
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