Physical Description Of Characters

It's a common problem, with the focus of fashion being on the female form. —grumbles about the good old days and waves cane—

Not just fashion, though - somehow, I can find time to slip in that a girl has bleached-blond hair and is freckled, but not that a boy is brunet and tanned?

Argh. Thinking of women appearance-first. I'm a part of the problem

I kind of like working with turn-of-the-20th-Century period pieces for that very reason. I don't have to worry about oversexualizing women, because everybody is wearing prudy old shit from back in the day that doesn't show anything.

No they weren't

Turn of the Century? That's Edwardian! The corset was kicking until WW 1!

Have you SEEN the outfits?

Hell, before WW 1 started, we were in a swing of new fashion! Orientalism (that was what it was called at the time) was in full swing! It was awesome!

edited 20th Jan '12 6:05:17 PM by MrAHR

Well, I'm working with alternate history, and I usually try to make a point about the repressiveness, as both of my settings put near the period are regressive due to how the timeline develops.

Though I'm not a fashion person, no, and I have yet to do a lot of fashion design for it. I just know that I won't be working with bikinis or such of that category.

Careful. AHR's the one who took a class on the history of fashion.

Hmm...I have a habit of giving basic descriptions of key characters, so I usually don't have this problem in terms of gender ratio.

It was repressive, yeah. By dolling up women in giant dresses that made them blow around in the wind! Repressive doesn't always mean being a prude!

Honestly, I'm more familiar with the fashion of the 1870s-1890s than I am for anything up to about the '20s or '30s. I'm just not a fashion person, though. It's really tedious to try and figure out what would be accurate.

I mean, for god's sake, it's easier to design fictional weaponry than it is to figure out what the real life fashion would have been...

Edit: I should clarify that I don't set out to be a prude. I just noted that I won't be worrying about having "objectifying women" problems, in the modern traditional sense, because the fashion is so radically different (for women) from today's things...

edited 20th Jan '12 6:10:37 PM by Flyboy

This isn't 1920s, that's mid to late 1800s.

Victorian Era. Which had a bunch of mini-eras, which led to turn of the century.

edited 20th Jan '12 6:10:19 PM by MrAHR

Well, my point is that my settings tend to be behind on fashion. One is set in the '20s and has fashion from roughly the 1890s-early 1900s, while the other is in the '40s actually, almost the '50s and is just getting to '20s-'30s-style fashion...

edited 20th Jan '12 6:12:38 PM by Flyboy

And here's a fun fact, almost any time you go, once you get past the black plague, there is going to be some sexy clothing for men and women involved, until you hit wars and depressions. Every era in between has plenty of outfits meant to be VERY sexy for the time. No matter how old fashioned it is.

I mean, if you wanna talk about women's roles during the Victorian era, oh yeah, they took a beating, but turn of the century? That's when they started getting it back! Gibson Girl man! Gibson Girl!

edited 20th Jan '12 6:17:53 PM by MrAHR

Well, what was sexy for the time might not be sexy today, and these two stories respectively have sex as relevant not at all and very little.

Though as I understood it women had an upturn in rights in the early 1900s (at least in the US), then it fell off again in the '50s... for one of these stories, there's no female main characters at all (World War I), and the other one has a female protagonist (the difference is stark, I just realized...), so women's rights are an issue.

...

Yeah, I do wish I knew enough about fashion to tell you what I'm shooting for, but...

Hell yeah they did. First wave of feminism!

the 1950s was a time right after the war, so everyone was all WE HAVE TO BE SUPER NORMAL GUYS! SUPER NORMAL! NORMAL!

And also all "YOU CAN GO BACK HOME WORKING WOMEN, LAWL"

It's actually where a lot of depression originated, because women were trapped in modern day homes, without even the need to go food shopping, because they now had refridgerators that kept food for long periods of time.

As a result, women become more interested in looks, and started going to beauty salons, just to get a social outlet, because they didn't have any contact outside of that.

It was also a time of a brief resurgence of a corset-like look.

But now I'm rambling.

edited 20th Jan '12 6:24:44 PM by MrAHR

Well, you're the fashion person, apparently. Maybe you can help me.

I won't bother with Innocence Lost here. That's mostly military uniforms anyhow, which is shit easy to do compared to civilian fashion.

Midas, on the other hand... well, basically, imagine a world where after World War I there was no Roaring Twenties, but rather a slow, regressive slide into a Great Depression analogue, which keeps on going into the '40s. What do you think fashion would look like? Some kind of bastardized mix of the '20s, '30s, and '40s, or something else entirely?

Well, first you have to answer, why would there be no roaring twenties? After big events you always get a huge upheaval in fashion. If things happened so that the USA basically stayed in a state of chaos, the fashion would probably stay similarly wholly utility based, until it finally ended, and then fashion would start to pick up from there.

You see this in the depression where fashion went from, well, flappers, to much more restrictive dresses. Utility. Not sex appeal.

Once it finally ended, you'd get a HUGE upheaval, probably something similar to the roaring twenties, only with entirely different contexts and clothing.

Most importantly, there are always going to be people who lead the fashion. Lots of influential people. We copy celebrities, ye olders copied the royals. So whoever are your popular people, what they wear, people will want to wear. And will probably wear cheaper and conservative versions of it.

edited 20th Jan '12 6:37:01 PM by MrAHR

Because in this setting, the World War I equivalent (it's not like it was in history, but it's at roughly the same time, level of intensity, and is roughly the same length) didn't so much end as it tapered off and came down to a low simmer, rather than a totally hot conflict.

Hence why the depression gets so bad: you can't sustain mobilization for so long and hope for it to end well...

Well, look, if you remove one era, you might be able to bring some familiarity, but fashion would sorta skew off into something else.

Like, if the Elizabethan era never happened, we probably would not have the modern day tie. Maybe. Who knows? The tie CAME from the ruff, which Elizabethan totally pimped out, but there's no way of knowing if it would eventually come to us in another way.

edited 20th Jan '12 6:49:19 PM by MrAHR

Hm... well, is there anything fashion-related that's really important that I have the Roaring Twenties for?

I don't think I could get the Roaring Twenties in either way, though, as I have it now...

Not really. It's just that after every bad event ends, you get a revolution in fashion. Black Plague, World Wars, all that jazz. That is when people start going " whoah...LET'S GO HAVE SEX!" or something like that...

If the bad event never ends, I guess you're...somewhat fine without it?

edited 20th Jan '12 6:53:30 PM by MrAHR

Well, the great thing about it is that men's clothes are easier than women's clothes, insofar as period pieces go. It ultimately boils down to "go to Google, find out what type of suit was popular at the time, and done."

It's still annoying, though. :/

If the character is human, I describe their hair style (curly or straight) and eye color. If the character is non-human, I only describe their hair color. I always tell if they're tall or short, fat or muscular. I never describe their clothing, but armor and weapons get mention.

I mostly tell the general facial structure, hair color, appearance, musculature, clothes, and even down to the "air" they have.