Explorer wear
Mar. 25th, 2018 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethImagine a coat where the basic function is that if it starts raining you don't have to care.
If you can imagine this you are ahead of the apparent majority of women's wear designers.
Now add pockets and you're pretty much in the men's section.
:eyeroll:
This problem exacerbated by discovering Women's Coats is not in fact a section of all coats sized for women, because Women's Sports Outerwear exists.
And when I went looking on sites with keywords like hiking I found a lot of coats but very little about their function on many sites. The one that did have a functions list had by far the most coats filed under 'commuting'.
If as well as waterproof, British levels of warm, and pockets, you also want to be visible ie a color other than green navy black, well, it gets difficult.
I was shopping in a vaguely distracted way because LARP website coats don't always even button up, let alone look like they're for running around in the woods in the weather, so I started imagining a Pathfinder explorer adventurer in a more modern idiom. More Banestorm, more buttons, more zips.
https://www.johnlewis.com/four-seasons-waterproof-wax-coat/p2975117?colour=Cherry
https://www.johnlewis.com/four-seasons-waterproof-wax-jacket/p2975095?colour=Cherry
https://www.johnlewis.com/barbour-international-trail-waxed-jacket/p3354771?colour=Deep%20Red
Today some of these are on clearance and I don't think any are in my size, but avoiding goretex and thinsulate gets you a more fantasy look, and I'm pretty sure waxed cotton has existed for ages. You'd have to layer it for adjustable warms, but, it's a look.
As you can see, my day has been busy and productive.
There's a difference though between historical fashion and fashion a fantasy world could come up with. The former needs sources and has fixed parameters, the latter just has tech levels. And possibly magic. You can make magic items that let you ignore the temperature in a very wide range, if you put enough hours in. ... factory made fabrics seem better, more accessible.
But there's ways of making clothes that were limited by the tech of the time, and imagination. There were ways and ways that were used before the sewing machine, for instance. ... imagine cross world trading and being the one to introduce sewing machines. Shiiiiiny... Weaving had tech levels too, and there were whole sots of fabric they either wouldn't use, or where using them implies spectacular things about the textile industry. Brocade and damask and jacquard... I don't even know the words. Fancy patterns and fancier textures. Lace, as an industry. Times when you wouldn't cut the fabric, because weaving it in the first place took that much work. Just, fabrics and stitches and buttons and bits all have to be aailable.
But once they are the multiverse can come up with anythung they're technically capable of.
And some fashions have to be lower probability than others.
I mean there'll be shapes that are a natural result of the textile tech, and shapes where someone did a weird thing and fashion followed, and importing the latter to a theoretically unrelated to our history world seems... odd.
Or like architecture: I feel any world could invent brutalism, once they have concrete. It's big rectangles. It's pretty easy to invent big rectangles. And Romans had concrete, so, basically, go wild, and film your fantasy 'verse at the UEA.
(yes, i know, windows. but aside from that...)
Some of how we think about ye olde days is tech limited, and some is not, and I suspect it is more fun and internally consistent to go back to basics and have understanding to build on. I just... don't usually has it.
But I feel there's no reason not to stick Pathfinders in wax jackets and peacoats and so forth
and give them decent luggage with the straps all worked out
because their world might have figured it and just not got around to cars.
If you can imagine this you are ahead of the apparent majority of women's wear designers.
Now add pockets and you're pretty much in the men's section.
:eyeroll:
This problem exacerbated by discovering Women's Coats is not in fact a section of all coats sized for women, because Women's Sports Outerwear exists.
And when I went looking on sites with keywords like hiking I found a lot of coats but very little about their function on many sites. The one that did have a functions list had by far the most coats filed under 'commuting'.
If as well as waterproof, British levels of warm, and pockets, you also want to be visible ie a color other than green navy black, well, it gets difficult.
I was shopping in a vaguely distracted way because LARP website coats don't always even button up, let alone look like they're for running around in the woods in the weather, so I started imagining a Pathfinder explorer adventurer in a more modern idiom. More Banestorm, more buttons, more zips.
https://www.johnlewis.com/four-seasons-waterproof-wax-coat/p2975117?colour=Cherry
https://www.johnlewis.com/four-seasons-waterproof-wax-jacket/p2975095?colour=Cherry
https://www.johnlewis.com/barbour-international-trail-waxed-jacket/p3354771?colour=Deep%20Red
Today some of these are on clearance and I don't think any are in my size, but avoiding goretex and thinsulate gets you a more fantasy look, and I'm pretty sure waxed cotton has existed for ages. You'd have to layer it for adjustable warms, but, it's a look.
As you can see, my day has been busy and productive.
There's a difference though between historical fashion and fashion a fantasy world could come up with. The former needs sources and has fixed parameters, the latter just has tech levels. And possibly magic. You can make magic items that let you ignore the temperature in a very wide range, if you put enough hours in. ... factory made fabrics seem better, more accessible.
But there's ways of making clothes that were limited by the tech of the time, and imagination. There were ways and ways that were used before the sewing machine, for instance. ... imagine cross world trading and being the one to introduce sewing machines. Shiiiiiny... Weaving had tech levels too, and there were whole sots of fabric they either wouldn't use, or where using them implies spectacular things about the textile industry. Brocade and damask and jacquard... I don't even know the words. Fancy patterns and fancier textures. Lace, as an industry. Times when you wouldn't cut the fabric, because weaving it in the first place took that much work. Just, fabrics and stitches and buttons and bits all have to be aailable.
But once they are the multiverse can come up with anythung they're technically capable of.
And some fashions have to be lower probability than others.
I mean there'll be shapes that are a natural result of the textile tech, and shapes where someone did a weird thing and fashion followed, and importing the latter to a theoretically unrelated to our history world seems... odd.
Or like architecture: I feel any world could invent brutalism, once they have concrete. It's big rectangles. It's pretty easy to invent big rectangles. And Romans had concrete, so, basically, go wild, and film your fantasy 'verse at the UEA.
(yes, i know, windows. but aside from that...)
Some of how we think about ye olde days is tech limited, and some is not, and I suspect it is more fun and internally consistent to go back to basics and have understanding to build on. I just... don't usually has it.
But I feel there's no reason not to stick Pathfinders in wax jackets and peacoats and so forth
and give them decent luggage with the straps all worked out
because their world might have figured it and just not got around to cars.