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plymayer at 11:10PM, Aug. 24, 2023

Never been known for fashion. Often have a hard time dressing my characters (especially the ladies). Sometimes resort to women's magazines or department store advertisements. In any case, I've personally been wearing pretty much the same thing since the 70s.

Ozoneocean at 2:09AM, Aug. 23, 2023

@Bravo- I recall one story about mistaken impracticality: It was the idea the buttons were sewn on the big turn back cuffs of the 18th century coats in order to stop people wiping their noses on their cleaves. The reality was they were just part of a long history of fashion that continues unabated to this day and will still bee around after we're all dead XD. Buttons on cuffs started out as a semi-practical thing much earlier... in the 15th century it was popular to have jackets with holes in the shoulders to put your arms through and leave the rest of the sleeve hanging, but in the 16th century that evolved into sleeves with a cut along one edge that could be sealed with buttons. From there jackets would always have a thing about decorative ways of opening cuffs and turning them back... by the 17th late century that evolved into giant stylised turnback cuffs with huge buttons that were non-fuctional... From then on that all started to shrink. Today's suit cuff buttons come from there.

Ozoneocean at 12:31AM, Aug. 23, 2023

@Andreas- that's very unique! Did you know that the Fedora and the "Trilby" were both named after female characters that wore them? Both from plays. Weird coincidence. Also they were the same hat, just one was British and one was American. (people incorrectly think a narrow brim fedora is called a Trilby, this is WRONG, narrow brim hats came out in the late 50s whereas Trilbies and fedoras both came out in the early 20th Century, both the same hat style with brims of every size).

Ozoneocean at 12:22AM, Aug. 23, 2023

@Bravo, those would be observations, just like today. These are people are are relatively ignorant (about the clothes) speculating on the purposes of things. I've read them myself. As I said in the notes practicality (and impracticality) was rarely ever a factor the look of clothing. It always a huge factor in speculation about it though because we try and use it as a logical tool to understand it- which is a natural impulse but it's completely wrong.

bravo1102 at 12:04AM, Aug. 23, 2023

There are period sources stating that perspective from all sides; the rich, the poor as well as other commentators . So there are lots of perspectives that agree about the intended impracticality of the clothing of those of high status to emphasize their high status.

Andreas_Helixfinger at 8:59AM, Aug. 22, 2023

Well the most noteworthily gender-conscious part of Molly Lusc's outift is her hat. Instead of wearing the classic private eye hat that is the fedora, which probably even more in recent decade then in the 20th century has become recogniced as a men's hat (well, at least by social media political busybodies anyway), she wears this fictional hat called the Meridiana - which means sundial in italian - that is very a rare, but very widely recogniced women's hat where she lives. It was marketed as a classless hat, which might be why it never quite caught on, becoming a hat that only women with a peculiar taste in it would wear. Molly being one of them.

PaulEberhardt at 6:41AM, Aug. 22, 2023

Bravo kind of reminded me of something that a woman named Esther Vilar wrote in the early 70s ( https://selfdefinition.org/psychology/Esther-Vilar-The-Manipulated-Man.pdf She was later beaten up in a ladies' room by radical feminists for writing it.) Among other things, she theorised that women's clothes are purposefully impractical and men's clothes tend to have more pockets and are generally easier to move around in, because that's womens' subversive influence on society dropping a broad hint who is supposed to do all the work to feed the family (i.e. especially the woman) and who is the boss in said union, dealing out the rewards (i.e. sex) according to how well the husband-slave does his job. Just in case you're wondering: I've never said I agree with any of it, but what makes "The Manipulated Man" worth reading anyway is the way it is guaranteed to make you think outside of your comfort zone, especially about gender issues.

Tantz_Aerine at 6:28AM, Aug. 22, 2023

Love that portrait of the Duck's royal ancestor. XD

Ozoneocean at 5:06AM, Aug. 22, 2023

In may countries male and female doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff wear almost exactly the same outfits depending on their role.

Ozoneocean at 5:03AM, Aug. 22, 2023

@marcorossi - Yes but the thing is that gendered differences in clothing have little to do with the clothing, rather it's a result of layered factors... just sating "culture" is too broad a way of looking at it. It's logical for a sci-fi world to be able to get rid of gendered differences because those factors can be changed: occupation, fashion and custom are the overriding influences for a lot of gendered clothing, eg.police and military uniforms. Most of the renaming differences are there for nothing but nod to custom, usually it just comes down to different hats, but even then often there are no gendered differences.

Ozoneocean at 4:44AM, Aug. 22, 2023

It's like the way the poor victim of a huge misfortune looks at the wealthy and sees a vast conspiracy, that the wealthy planned and schemed and deliberately enacted it to keep them down and crush them... When in reality the wealthy are NEVER that intelligent, rather they're simply in a position to take advantage of things that happen and they don't care about the fall out and who suffers. They don't even think about them.

Ozoneocean at 4:39AM, Aug. 22, 2023

@Bravo - that's more of a perspective. The outfits of the rich can be impractical because they can afford to emphasise style over practicality. The purpose isn't to say "look at my hugely wide skirts! I don't need to work so I can have a dress that's 10 feet wide and a wig that's 2 feet tall! Hahahaha!" It's more that they WANT to have that kind of extravagance because fashion is all about two things: Fitting in with the popular styles and having the very best version of it- which means you take things to the extreme if you are able to. It doesn't show that you can afford to be impractical, it shows that you can afford to take things as far as everybody wants to- even the poor. You heels can be super high, your hat super wide etc. A poor person might look at that and just see impracticality, but a rich person would look at that and see no-impracticality what so ever because there is none in their position. It's all perspective.

bravo1102 at 3:26AM, Aug. 22, 2023

One thing that cuts across cultures is that high class clothing of the very wealthy was often purposely designed to be completely impractical for any kind of labor to emphasize the high status of the wearer.

marcorossi at 2:24AM, Aug. 22, 2023

While it is true that the specific gendered rules (e.g. man:short hair, women: long hair) are culturally determined, all cultures that I know of have some sort of gendered dress code. Gender-blindness is a very recent ideal (which is not to say that it is wrong, it is correct, but IMHO we have to acknowledge that we have to go against pretty strong tendencies to reach gender blindness). PS: in my sci-fi comic I decided that most female characters will wear culottes. Culottes are cool.