Fantasy clothes...

by dropping little bits here and there.

"The peasant's ragged blue tunic was too big for him..."

"The girl turned a pirouette, obviously delighted by the heavy weight of her new dress..."

that sort of thing. Nothing I hate worse than a "The peasant wore a blue tunic kirtled over black ragged-end pants. He was barefoot...blah blah blah."

Most readers will assume that the peasants are dressed in a poorer fashion than the nobles--unless you're writing about Utopia, of course.

For a modern person transported into a fantasy world, it probably would be in character for him to note the clothes in a fantasy world, which would be unfamiliar to him. Unless it's a most unusual fantasy world where peasants wear jeans and the nobles are wearing three peice suits - come to think of it, he'd definitely notice that if it were Standard Medieval Fantasy Land in all other aspects, too. However, he also probably wouldn't spend too much time time studying the clothes. Maybe confine the description to one, maybe two sentances at best, and sometimes try to make them say as much about the MC as the clothing.

So when it's written from his POV, observations like "The peasant wore a well-worn brown smock," or "The nobles' idea of finery reminded him of an explosion in a ribbon factory. He wondered how they could walk without tripping over the dangling strips of fabric," would make sense. He'd probably spend a bit more time examining the clothes than the natives would.

For the natives of Fantasyland, they wouldn't bother to make very much of a note of clothes from their own land, but it might be in character to show them sizing up a person by their clothes, reacting to some particularly ostentacious clothing, etc.

Robert Jordan got away with describing dress in very great detail.

I don't do it.

I put the details in where they're relevant, i.e. when one of my protags comes home to his poor parents after spending a year in a high noble household, and his mother marvels at his clothes. Things like that.

What mscelina and Matt said. Also, I think the amount of description would vary depending on how long the modern protagonist has been in Fantasyland. When they're first dropped, they would note a lot of things just because they're different from the twentieth century, and because said protagonist is trying to work out what the heck just happened and where New York (or wherever) has got to.

Besides, "what people wear" can be a significant part of scene-setting. If you're in fantasy Russia, for instance, the peasants cannot possibly go barefoot all year; there's a set of boots per household. Good, sturdy, warm boots. If it's winter, expect fur hats and coats. And so on, and so forth. There are probably going to be some things about medieval life that seem incongruous to the protagonist, who may have gotten the Hollywood version of history.

After a while, though, they would start to get a feel for this world. So they'd start picking out incongruities that really are incongruities, like a noble who dresses ascetically or a supposed peasant who doesn't go barefoot all summer. In other words, plot points, red herrings, the things you really want to spend time on.

Izunya

Izunya said:

Besides, "what people wear" can be a significant part of scene-setting. If you're in fantasy Russia, for instance, the peasants cannot possibly go barefoot all year; there's a set of boots per household. Good, sturdy, warm boots. If it's winter, expect fur hats and coats.

Izunya

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Err, Izunya. I am sorry, I have to respond to this. Russian peasants wear lapti, shoes woven from straw, in the summer. People do not go barefoot. In the winter, there are felt boots, or valenki. Everybody poor has those; there's no such thing as one per household.
Poor people certainly did not have fur coats, or at least it wasn't universal. Poor women - as late as early 20th century - had only the single down shawl, in which they went out into the snow and the blizzard. In fur items there is also gradation. A well-off peasant might have a sheep tulup. It is not considered a "fur", even though it technically is. But the more upscale furs? Nope.
Sorry for hijacking the thread. Back to regular scheduling.

Robert Jordan didn't quite 'get away with it'. He is almost universally ridiculed for it. His publisher did print it though.

Don't forget about wooden clogs. A very popular european peasant footgear. There's also sandals. In fact, I'd bet barefoot peasants are more of a fantasy cliche than a real life phenomenon.

A 20th Century character will definitely notice clothing unless he or she is dumped into a world similar to the one he or she just left. Unless your character is a re-enactor who is used to wearing said clothing, s/he has to adjust to them - both in the wearing of said clothing as well as the simple matter of getting in and out of them. You don't have to go into detail but the character is definitely going to be either grumbling about it or wanting to rip it apart to find out how it was made.

It's a whole different way of thinking when you're dealing with corsets, layers of long skirts/robes and tunics. There's not such thing as slouching in a corset. The weight of mud/water on the hems of long skirts/robes will remind you of how they wrap around your legs when you move. You have to pay attention when you're entering/leaving doors and climbing stairs when dealing with long sleaves as well as the skirts/robes. And that's only a part of the differences between what we wore then and what we wear now.

So I guess I'm trying to say is that while you don't have to actually put all this on the page, but it would be good for you to know so that it shows through in your writing.

Describe everything the first time Mr. 20th Century encounters it. After that, just include details of dress if they affect the action, or you need it to convey some information.

Like: Henry raced down the Rue Marevál, the stash of silver testons and dixaines carefully distributed in six different pouches under his tunic.

Or: They made him strip and bathe. He expected the usual insults a naked man gets from those who are still clothed, but the troopers stayed silent. Once he was wearing trews again, the barber shaved him close and lopped off his pony-tail.

I think descriptions of cloths can be important, as you can tell a lot about a person by what they’re wearing.

“His food stained white shirt was partially un-tucked and wrinkled as if he had slept in it.”

Just from that short description, we can make judgments on this character. He doesn’t care for how he looks, he’s dirty, and he’s a slob.

Thinking in this way helps me show not tell.

Gray Rose said:

In the winter, there are felt boots, or valenki. Everybody poor has those; there's no such thing as one per household.

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Huh. I guess I fell for an urban legend, then. I heard/read that in Russia, taking or destroying a poor family's pair of boots was an extraordinarily cruel thing to do, given the probability of frostbite. I wonder where that story comes from?

And as Sarpedon points out, shoes on peasants are a lot more common than I'd been envisioning. When you stop and think about it (I didn't, I'm afraid) you don't really want to do farm work without them. I guess I'll blame the fact that I'm in Tennessee, where summer seems to be fun barefoot time for all the neighborhood kids.

Sorry for the misinfo—but I think the general point, about clothing helping to describe the culture, might still be valid.

Izunya

Izunya said:

Huh. I guess I fell for an urban legend, then. I heard/read that in Russia, taking or destroying a poor family's pair of boots was an extraordinarily cruel thing to do, given the probability of frostbite. I wonder where that story comes from?

And as Sarpedon points out, shoes on peasants are a lot more common than I'd been envisioning. When you stop and think about it (I didn't, I'm afraid) you don't really want to do farm work without them. I guess I'll blame the fact that I'm in Tennessee, where summer seems to be fun barefoot time for all the neighborhood kids.

Sorry for the misinfo—but I think the general point, about clothing helping to describe the culture, might still be valid.

Izunya

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Oh yeah, the point is absolutely valid.

Re: Russia and fur coats, to see what kind of coats poor people wore in old Russia, one can read Gogol's classic story "The Overcoat".

A peasant without a pair of lapti or valenki would be poor indeed, because the ground is wet that far north, even in the summer, and things can bite you. Lapti-weavers were much respected. Leather boots were a luxury item to be fantasized about; they often appeared in fairytales.

I'm polishing a short story where the first thing the protag notices about a man she meets in the wild is his clothing. Whereas she wears tanned hides during the summer like most of her people, she can't help but noticed he's wearing woven cloth. To her, that's a sign of great wealth and possibly even otherworldly origin.

For fun or pure bore I made some drawings of what type of clothes would peasants and higher classes wear on the fictional culture I am trying to make. It has something like a mish-mash of clothes of other cultures (the inner part and outer from Roman togas for the highest class, a thiner Japanese Obi as a belt, etc.) and a hat that is something between a tricorne, a birreta and a gets strapped to the ears


In my expirience, which is not much but I try to help, the best is having descriptions of the most particular remark, perhaps a comparition to the classical ideas but try not to be technical with braies, houppelandes, chaperons, etc. Since your MC is not (what I guess) a medievalist neither your audience, so try to explain it in simple concrete words

Gynn said:

In a medieval setting, is it a necessary evil to mention that the peasants dress simply and the nobles do not (and then describe the apparel), or is it a safe bet that the reader can figure that out on their own and instead only describe outfits that are different?

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We often use clothing to assess someone else's social status, personality and intention. Unless we're fashion-slaves or film-noir detectives though, we seldom itemise. We just take key impressions: scuffed shoes at odds with a nice suit, frayed cuffs, food-stains, beautiful blouse grown a little too tight... it's often the contradictions that are the most interesting and memorable.

What you describe really depends on your narrative viewpoint. First person or close third person narrative really needs to describe what's of interest to the character - otherwise the character just becomes a vehicle for shopping lists. For third omni I'd suggest just describing enough detail to sketch personality and highlight contradictions. As other posters have mentioned, Jordan was quite rightly ridiculed for his excessive descriptions.

Ruv Draba said:

Jordan was quite rightly ridiculed for his excessive descriptions.

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And his skirt-smoothing and braid-tugging.

MAKE IT STOP!