Fashion Friday DE

[bjornwilde]

Are there any cultural prohibitions* regarding fashion from your canon? How does your character view such prohibitions? Adn feel free to take this to mean anything from clothing, to jewelry, to hair, to whatever.

*prohibitions is a strong word to use but it seems the only one I can think of. I was originally thinking something along the lines of how those who present as male tend to get frowned upon for wearing skirts, dresses, and other traditionally female attire. Feel free to run with this or dig deeper.

Comments

[takethatnature]

Don't Starve is notionally set in the early 20th century with characters who mostly come from Western countries, but the character designs aren't meticulously accurate to the era. When they get the ability to change into different cosmetic clothes in Don't Starve Together, any character can wear any clothing item or they can walk around in their old-timey underwear instead of equipping anything, and it doesn't affect gameplay at all. Even in terms of default outfits Wolfgang wears a swimsuit all the time, sometimes with the top half torn off, and nobody cares. They've got bigger problems to worry about, like killer frogs and giant bees.

Overwatch is set in the semi-near future; what's fashionable to wear has changed a little, but not really the cultural norms about what you shouldn't wear. Or at least, none of the guys have skins wearing skirts or stuff like that. I feel like people would get a lot less flak for it in that era than they do today, but none of the player characters actually do so.

Fallen London is in much the same position as Don't Starve minus forty years, although with fewer clothing options to choose from in play. Player characters can wear whatever they want, although most human NPCs either dress according to the norms of the time or wear fantasy-type clothes.

We're originally told that trolls think fashion is stupid, but that's not completely true. It's normal for trolls to have a closet full of identical plain-coloured outfits, and I think Karkat (the POV character for that comment) is way out on that end of the caring-about-fashion spectrum, but it's not out of the ordinary to have some aesthetic flourishes, and I don't recall anyone actually insulting another troll for being too fashionable in either Homestuck itself or the Hiveswap games. Guys don't seem to wear skirts on Alternia, or at least none are seen wearing one, whereas some girls and nonbinary people do, but I'm at a loss to explain how that became part of their gender norms. My idea is that troll gender norms are partly based on lusii and partly based on whether you are or aren't the same gender as the Empress, but lusii don't wear clothes any more than Earth animals do and the Empress is only seen wearing wetsuits. Wearing bright or pastel colours is how you express that you're goth, because those colours are what Alternia looks like in the daytime and trolls are nocturnal. It might be frowned upon to wear large amounts of colour associated with a higher blood colour than your own, but again, no one gives Kanaya any shit for wearing blue or purple dresses.

[skyhigh_seance]

So, in Klaus' where and when it's still a social norm for him to not wear skirts/dresses/etc... but it's been a long time since Klaus has cares what society thinks. He looks damn good in a skirt.

[cottoncandypink]

The extremely meta answer: lol no.

The more serious answer: Maybe, but Wilford filmed an episode of what's supposed to be a very serious news program in fishnet stockings and his signature pink bowtie, so also probably no.

[cottoncandypink]

tbh, it probably fit him better than it did Allison anyway.

[cottoncandypink]

I'm always so torn on the cosmetics in Don't Starve. On the one hand, I kind of don't care. On the other hand, Wilson looks so fetching in his pink skirt.

[skyhigh_seance]

Klaus thinks so, anyway. Allison should just give him her closet.

[takethatnature]

Totally style!

I like the suits best, myself.

[splash_of_blue]

Many of mine are 21st Century Westerners, so... yes. Although they vary somewhat in their responses to it.

Sam just wears clothes to fit in and not look too conspicuous. He's not really bothered about or interested in clothes at all: it happens that scruffy black male-coded clothing is both inconspicuous and comfortable, so that's what he wears. As to what other people wear, he doesn't give a damn.

Molly dresses for practicality and to play up the girly/young element. It's convenient to be underestimated, while still leaving her able to move quickly, easily and throw a punch. Fashion doesn't interest her particularly, although she'll ooh and ahh with Karolina at the Oscars dresses etc. She encourages sparkles and glitter for all sexes.

Victoria dresses like a Lady mostly to maintain her cover, but she does find the inevitable twinsets deathly boring. She's most comfortable in sensible mission/military attire and army boots, but does enjoy occasionally getting to wear a nice frock and being the centre of attention. As regards others' outfits her tastes are relatively conventional, but she would be far too polite to pass comment.

Coulson, like Sam, dresses to be as unnoticed as possible, although in his case he needs to look fairly smart in order to properly Expressionless Secret Agent. It's a habit that's hard to shake off in his private life, so he does tend towards fairly nondescript clothing out of work as well -- but he does enjoy bright colours and sparkles in others. (See: a Certain Superhero's costume design...) It is my private theory that his boyfriend, Leo, has a beautiful pink sequin minidress of which Phil is very fond...

Snow Leopard Woman pays precious little attention to the mores of humans. It so happens - possibly a certain amount of unconscious borrowing - that her outfit as a human codes as female, but if it didn't she wouldn't give a stuff.

Raoul's world is very clear on male fashions versus female fashions, although being quasi-mediaeval it's much more enthusiastic about bright colours on men than is common in the 21st-century West. Raoul can't think of anything worse than wearing fussy outfits - he's not exactly thrilled about ever having to wear masculine-coded formalwear, let alone feminine-coded clothing. In Tortall gender roles are generally strongly codified and men doing anything considered 'women's work' is particularly strongly frowned-upon; in his work around the realm Raoul has met men or AMAB people who prefer to wear women's clothing and he's entirely relaxed about it - he takes the view, as in most things, that if it doesn't hurt anyone then by all means do what makes you happy - but he's very much in the minority in their society.

McGonagall's world tends towards pretty gender-neutral clothing for witches and wizards: robes in bright colours are considered suitable for all genders. She spends most of her time in black at school, because Dignity Is Important, but enjoys a bright red tartan (and lots of it) when given the opportunity. She's slightly bemused by the muggles' insistence on Men's Outfits and Women's Outfits and that never the twain shall meet, although in her WW2 years she rather appreciated the practicality of trousers.

War deliberately dresses to appear alluring to the warmarkers (let's be honest: generally men) wherever she happens to be. As to what other humans wear, she has no particular interest.

BB-8 is a robot. He has no views on organics' casings.

Poe... ooh, this is a tricky one. I've tended towards the view that Star Wars-verse (outside of the Nazi-analogue of the week) is pretty cool on subjects like gender expression, sexuality, race, etc. On the other hand, Poe's "She's not what I expected" comment upon meeting Admiral Holdo, in her beautiful dress and pink hair. On the third hand, Leia dresses pretty femininely most of the time and he had no difficulty in respecting her, so maybe it wasn't about the feminine outfit/hair? Basically, I don't know, is what I'm getting at here.

[splash_of_blue]

Molly concurs on the skirt thing. More boys (and more people in general) should wear sparkly stuff like Klaus does.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato's from early 21st century urban Japan, and the cultural prohibitions regarding fashion in his world pretty much match those of -- well, now in Japan, because Tri's writers aren't great at remembering it's 2005.

He doesn't have much of a view on it, but good god, he and Taichi have the least interesting fashion choices of the lot. Sora, Mimi, Jyou and Hikari are unfailingly dressed stylishly, Koushiro and Takeru are fashion disasters, and Yamato and Taichi are so singularly pedestrian that they're actually wearing the same outfit in different colours.

Canonically, Sora is just about starting off on her career path of being a fashion designer who utilises the Takenouchi school's designs in her clothing (as a way of being both heir to that school and doing her own thing), so hopefully Yamato will get some strikingly coloured floral shirts and jackets in future.

[configuration_birdwatcher]

I'm not sure Bastion even knows skirts are atypical clothing for men. They can identify a skirt, but neither on the battlefield nor as a forest hermit did they have any reason to care about fashion rules. (Human soldiers and guerilla resistance forces generally wore pants.) Gender is a fact that they are aware of but don't particularly understand, for that matter. They know just enough about it to usually get people's pronouns right in English (or other gendered language features in German, etc). Omnicode might not even have grammatical gender.

[moisturewave_aesthetic]

Cirava's all for it.