superpowers, and suits
Jul. 17th, 2022 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliNothing is more iconic to the superhero genre than those brightly colored, form-fitting suits. And nothing is harder to justify.
The material they are made of, perhaps. Obviously some supersciency stuff is needed for the cloth to be plausible. But the clothes are more icon than the cloth.
The best I've seen is Marion G. Harmon's Wearing the Cape, where the first guy with powers slapped on a suit in order to give the public a concept to organize their thoughts with.
Of course, that's in part because we are in a modern society. In older societies, dress codes were more strict and consequently clothing communicated much more. And iconography was much more important. It could even be enforced by sumptuary laws, ordering who got to wear what, though that was generally an indication that dress codes were breaking down, and people dressed like their betters; Elizabethan laws claimed to be helping young men, who would otherwise be serviceable for their queen and country, from going into debt over clothing, but it's much more likely that the threat of these men being able to afford better clothing was the issue.
If superheroes were earlier --
Perhaps a king of earlier times could issue a law decreeing that these people with uncanny powers must dress after their station. They must wear such insignia as would warn bystanders of the nature of their powers, on top of the warning of their costumes that they had powers.
The material they are made of, perhaps. Obviously some supersciency stuff is needed for the cloth to be plausible. But the clothes are more icon than the cloth.
The best I've seen is Marion G. Harmon's Wearing the Cape, where the first guy with powers slapped on a suit in order to give the public a concept to organize their thoughts with.
Of course, that's in part because we are in a modern society. In older societies, dress codes were more strict and consequently clothing communicated much more. And iconography was much more important. It could even be enforced by sumptuary laws, ordering who got to wear what, though that was generally an indication that dress codes were breaking down, and people dressed like their betters; Elizabethan laws claimed to be helping young men, who would otherwise be serviceable for their queen and country, from going into debt over clothing, but it's much more likely that the threat of these men being able to afford better clothing was the issue.
If superheroes were earlier --
Perhaps a king of earlier times could issue a law decreeing that these people with uncanny powers must dress after their station. They must wear such insignia as would warn bystanders of the nature of their powers, on top of the warning of their costumes that they had powers.