![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Some hallmarks of steampunk
May. 31st, 2010 01:25 pmI've never really done costuming. For one, I'm just not a seamstress, and for another neither the available SCA styles nor the available anime styles have appealed to me as something to actually wear all day. Steampunk, though, has a lot more of the "found costume" vibe to it, and it has the potential to be comfortable.
To do this, however, I need to have the project of it straight in my head. So let us go back to the question of what steampunk is.
( Contemplation of some patterns in steampunk literature over time. )
Perhaps as a result of the need to have a narrator with the appropriate outside perspective to convey the wonder or the critique involved, the primary aesthetic identifier seems to me to be "things out of place": robots and other automation in the 19th century; fictional characters acting as self-conscious reality; a strange environment, though with familiar aspects.
Thus, it makes sense that the costume aesthetic that most speaks to me of steampunk is one that takes historically accurate items and mixes or modifies them. Skirts are cut short or reduced to the top-most rear flounce. Corsets are worn as outerwear. Aspects of men's fashion, such as vests and leather, show up in women's outfits. The tools of a worker are hung over fabrics and styles, albeit abbreviated, of the leisured class.
As has been noted, it's a lot easier to perform a critique of gender or class via costume than it is to perform a critique of race or colonialism.
Contemplating how this might be accomplished is the project of the next post.
To do this, however, I need to have the project of it straight in my head. So let us go back to the question of what steampunk is.
( Contemplation of some patterns in steampunk literature over time. )
Perhaps as a result of the need to have a narrator with the appropriate outside perspective to convey the wonder or the critique involved, the primary aesthetic identifier seems to me to be "things out of place": robots and other automation in the 19th century; fictional characters acting as self-conscious reality; a strange environment, though with familiar aspects.
Thus, it makes sense that the costume aesthetic that most speaks to me of steampunk is one that takes historically accurate items and mixes or modifies them. Skirts are cut short or reduced to the top-most rear flounce. Corsets are worn as outerwear. Aspects of men's fashion, such as vests and leather, show up in women's outfits. The tools of a worker are hung over fabrics and styles, albeit abbreviated, of the leisured class.
As has been noted, it's a lot easier to perform a critique of gender or class via costume than it is to perform a critique of race or colonialism.
Contemplating how this might be accomplished is the project of the next post.
