Lois’s answer to “Reading the Vorkosigan Saga inspired me to pick up drawing after a 10-year hiatus and draw some fan…” > Likes and Comments
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I'm sorry, I am very nerdy about fashion haha
@ yang hwa --
Glad you are a fashion nerd, so I don't have to be. (I do know some convention-acquaintance master costumers, so I get the vibe.)
Fashion certainly has been changing by the decade in our world -- one can date art or photos pretty nearly by it. There is always a mania from young persons to visually distinguish themselves from their parents/old persons, so I'd say once a generation is the minimum rhythm. Apart from cultures with very strict dress codes (Amish, ferex) or grinding poverty, and I'd bet the latter still find little ways to set themselves off. And yes, big political or cultural shifts tend to be marked in dress, and Barrayar has certainly had those.
So, end of Time of Isolation, Cetagandan invasion/occupation, post-Yuri, Komarr conquest/annexation, sure. I expect the pace of change would pick up post-Komarr, with a steadier influx of galactic ideas. Aral's regency vs. Gregor's reign would doubtless have sartorial markers as well, to the alert eye.
Ta, L.
Thank you so much for the replies, it's been fun to hear your opinions on it!
I've always pictured Barrayaran fashion to be vaguely late Victorian / Edwardian, even before I ever saw any fanart for it. My guess is that people tend to do so because the culture/aesthetic of the earlier books (i.e. Shards and Barrayar) definitely has Victorian/Edwardian vibes, so they tend to imagine the clothing matches as well? That said, I agree that the actual description of the clothing styles more closely matches mid-20th century ones. If I had to headcanon it, I'd say that the era of the first two books could be roughly equivalent to the Edwardian age - so 1900s-1910s - which would make the era of the mid-series books - which take place roughly 30 years later - the equivalent of the 1930s-1940s.
(Oh, and I tend to imagine Ivan as blond too, even though I'm well aware he's not!)
I confess I always saw Ivan as blond. He just seemed that way.
I think it's because he a) has a Russian name and b) has a kind of a frat boy personality. Both of those are associated with blonde men.
yang hwa - for the curious, would you be interested in posting your fanart on AO3 for others to see?
So the fanart is gonna be really slow going because a) I have a PhD to write as well and it was meant to be a thing I do like an hour a day to unwind my brain and b) I'm very meticulous about details (if you haven't noticed) so right now I'm doing studies of disabled people's bodies so I can make up a realistic body for Miles as well as traditional Slavic fabric patterns for the fashion.
But once I actually produce something I planned on making a Tumblr for it, and I'll be happy to post the handle here :)
I don't do tumblr unfortunately. I'm a member of a generation who were taught how to use slide rules!
@ Marti Dolata -- So am I. I don't even know what tumblr is! Hopefully if a link is posted we can go there and see her art without having to sign up or pay for anything.....
Tumblr is a microbloging platform. It doesn't require registration or payment, I just prefer it because it's image-friendly (you can scroll down somebody's blog or dashboard and see the art directly rather than saving it in a format where people only see the title and textual description like you would on AO3). And also because I have a community of people there who like both art and the Vorkosigan saga and who would be interested in seeing it :)
If you Google "Tumblr art blog" and click on some of the results you can see what they look like and realize that they're nothing that requires figuring out.
Right now, there doesn't seem to be a well-defined dominant fashion that I can see, just rapid-fire fads. Nor does it seem likely that one would develop, at least not for everybody, although the culture wars might produce parallel fashions. I remember as a girl being forced to go to church with a hat with a veil, white cotton gloves, and nylons with seams, and it was the end of the world if anybody saw your slip strap. No more, thank whatever.
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I'm sorry, I am very nerdy about fashion haha
@ yang hwa --Glad you are a fashion nerd, so I don't have to be. (I do know some convention-acquaintance master costumers, so I get the vibe.)
Fashion certainly has been changing by the decade in our world -- one can date art or photos pretty nearly by it. There is always a mania from young persons to visually distinguish themselves from their parents/old persons, so I'd say once a generation is the minimum rhythm. Apart from cultures with very strict dress codes (Amish, ferex) or grinding poverty, and I'd bet the latter still find little ways to set themselves off. And yes, big political or cultural shifts tend to be marked in dress, and Barrayar has certainly had those.
So, end of Time of Isolation, Cetagandan invasion/occupation, post-Yuri, Komarr conquest/annexation, sure. I expect the pace of change would pick up post-Komarr, with a steadier influx of galactic ideas. Aral's regency vs. Gregor's reign would doubtless have sartorial markers as well, to the alert eye.
Ta, L.
Thank you so much for the replies, it's been fun to hear your opinions on it!
I've always pictured Barrayaran fashion to be vaguely late Victorian / Edwardian, even before I ever saw any fanart for it. My guess is that people tend to do so because the culture/aesthetic of the earlier books (i.e. Shards and Barrayar) definitely has Victorian/Edwardian vibes, so they tend to imagine the clothing matches as well? That said, I agree that the actual description of the clothing styles more closely matches mid-20th century ones. If I had to headcanon it, I'd say that the era of the first two books could be roughly equivalent to the Edwardian age - so 1900s-1910s - which would make the era of the mid-series books - which take place roughly 30 years later - the equivalent of the 1930s-1940s. (Oh, and I tend to imagine Ivan as blond too, even though I'm well aware he's not!)
I confess I always saw Ivan as blond. He just seemed that way.
I think it's because he a) has a Russian name and b) has a kind of a frat boy personality. Both of those are associated with blonde men.
yang hwa - for the curious, would you be interested in posting your fanart on AO3 for others to see?
So the fanart is gonna be really slow going because a) I have a PhD to write as well and it was meant to be a thing I do like an hour a day to unwind my brain and b) I'm very meticulous about details (if you haven't noticed) so right now I'm doing studies of disabled people's bodies so I can make up a realistic body for Miles as well as traditional Slavic fabric patterns for the fashion.But once I actually produce something I planned on making a Tumblr for it, and I'll be happy to post the handle here :)
I don't do tumblr unfortunately. I'm a member of a generation who were taught how to use slide rules!
@ Marti Dolata -- So am I. I don't even know what tumblr is! Hopefully if a link is posted we can go there and see her art without having to sign up or pay for anything.....
Tumblr is a microbloging platform. It doesn't require registration or payment, I just prefer it because it's image-friendly (you can scroll down somebody's blog or dashboard and see the art directly rather than saving it in a format where people only see the title and textual description like you would on AO3). And also because I have a community of people there who like both art and the Vorkosigan saga and who would be interested in seeing it :)If you Google "Tumblr art blog" and click on some of the results you can see what they look like and realize that they're nothing that requires figuring out.
Right now, there doesn't seem to be a well-defined dominant fashion that I can see, just rapid-fire fads. Nor does it seem likely that one would develop, at least not for everybody, although the culture wars might produce parallel fashions. I remember as a girl being forced to go to church with a hat with a veil, white cotton gloves, and nylons with seams, and it was the end of the world if anybody saw your slip strap. No more, thank whatever.
Anyway, follow-up question: how quickly would you imagine the fashion changing on Barrayar? Obviously each galactic culture has a basic silhouette ( just like we kinda do even today with the ubiquity of the internet and the much shorter distances information has to travel), but did, say, the influx of wealth and trade opportunities that came after the Komarr conquest make the skirts particularly rich and poofy and made of weird new materials in the following years, as economic booms tend to do in our world? Did the ongoing emancipation of women lead to more menswear-inspired styles for women in periods when it was particularly salient (say, post Vordarian's pretendership with all the buzz about badass patriot Cordelia, or when girls started being accepted into the military?), so perhaps jackets/boleros with more military detailing or stiffer fabrics?