dressing the heroine
Aug. 1st, 2013 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliOnce upon a time, there was a bookcover.
I don't remember it well, I have only the vaguest picture of it, and I wouldn't want to see it to disturb my memory -- as that would disturb the muse, who is snatching a heroine's short brown hair out of it. Also her clothes.
Since she's Not The Kind Of Girl, that means I'm dressing all the women of the world in the same attire, more or less, a smock over breeches. (Women's breeches, of course, not men's. I'm not sure that wearing men's breeches would be grounds for divorce, as it was in the Icelandic saga, but it would certainly been taken gravely and not well.)
Whereupon one villainess of the piece adorned herself with an enormous long smock that kinda defeated the purpose of breeches with its hampering her movements. She's rich after all. . . and when a religious order also had women wearing long smocks, the villainess added long sleeves, hampering her hands. Also rich cloth, and bedecked with jewels -- there's going to be a scene where the villainess noticably outshines the heroine, even though the villainess is supposed to be mourning.
Whereupon the muse observed that at some point the villainess is going to need to ride hard. And her clothes will be a problem. . . .
One more thing to fit in! (I suspect it will add to her motivations to be cruel to heroine and hero alike. After all, she would not have to ride like that if not for them!)
I don't remember it well, I have only the vaguest picture of it, and I wouldn't want to see it to disturb my memory -- as that would disturb the muse, who is snatching a heroine's short brown hair out of it. Also her clothes.
Since she's Not The Kind Of Girl, that means I'm dressing all the women of the world in the same attire, more or less, a smock over breeches. (Women's breeches, of course, not men's. I'm not sure that wearing men's breeches would be grounds for divorce, as it was in the Icelandic saga, but it would certainly been taken gravely and not well.)
Whereupon one villainess of the piece adorned herself with an enormous long smock that kinda defeated the purpose of breeches with its hampering her movements. She's rich after all. . . and when a religious order also had women wearing long smocks, the villainess added long sleeves, hampering her hands. Also rich cloth, and bedecked with jewels -- there's going to be a scene where the villainess noticably outshines the heroine, even though the villainess is supposed to be mourning.
Whereupon the muse observed that at some point the villainess is going to need to ride hard. And her clothes will be a problem. . . .
One more thing to fit in! (I suspect it will add to her motivations to be cruel to heroine and hero alike. After all, she would not have to ride like that if not for them!)
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Fashion Wars!
Date: 2013-08-02 07:39 am (UTC)People take things to extremes, when they can. I'm thinking of the medieval fashion of shoes with long, upcurving toes, held so by little chains fastened below the knee - a configuration which, as critics sourly observed, prevented the use of stirrups!
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jeff_duntemann makes an interesting comment thereto, that as the book I remember exists only in my own head, I'm free to write it!] This is an Ideas Workshop technique, for one student to draw something evocative, and another to write a story based on that drawing.
Just so, I can see how the figure-concealing neo-Puritan (or climate-dictated, maybe) fashion of breeches over a smock might be interpreted by a Renaissance court: The breeches would be fishnet! Or, opened down the outside seam like that dancer in Star Wars. The desire to Show Some Leg would come out in one way or another, unless a powerful Morality Police existed to prevent it.
I like your remark about “I wouldn't want to see it, as it would override my creativity” - I know exactly what you mean. [My friend
Re: Fashion Wars!
Date: 2013-08-02 12:40 pm (UTC)Our heroine is practically clad, and the fashion has just started to be impractical. To be sure, she's of lowly birth, but there will be another woman of high birth who, like her, dresses in the old-fashioned, virtuous manner, from eras when even the very highest ladies would spin and sew with their own hands, instead of lolling about at festivities like modern women do.
Re: Fashion Wars!
Date: 2013-08-02 12:45 pm (UTC)The odd thing is that there is no correlation between the books that the gremlins must have gotten to over the years -- because it's so much worse than I remember -- books that are the same, and the books that shifted from good to wondrous marvels.
Re: Fashion Wars!
Date: 2013-08-02 12:52 pm (UTC)Someday someone may ask about your version of Space Children on it. 0:)