Clothing

Basic Information

Clothing is a very useful technology, it keeps you warm, and protects you from both the elements and charges of indecency.

In terms of price and utility, clothing varies extremely widely - from the cheapest stuff available to top line fashions, from the utilitarian to the visually impressive and from minimal covering to the heaviest of cold weather gear.

In the modern era, there is quite a large gap between the price of the cheapest clothing on the market and that of the most expensive, but by historical standards, clothing is cheap¹. In previous eras poor people might well only own one set of clothes, carefully patched and darned - even to the extent that rich people would often pass on unwanted clothes to the poor by way of charity. You might be too good to wear patched clothing, but someone else would be glad of it. By contrast fashionable individuals in Elizabethan England might own a wardrobe of clothing that was worth more than their house, which is virtually unthinkable in the modern era. To some people clothing might well constitute treasure - hence all the stories of people² being robbed of their clothing as well as their goods - and, indeed, items of clothing being left in wills. The Mosaic Law includes regulations on mortgaging your cloak and even the quite recent past contains records of people pawning clothing and bedding in extremis. One of the possible interpretations of the nursery rhyme "pop goes the weasel" is that it concerns the protagonist pawning his suit or coat to make ends meet³.

There is an immediate visual contrast in most eras between clothing worn for work and that worn for leisure - although in some eras owning leisure clothing will be a status symbol. In many societies, include most dystopiae your clothing may indicate your caste, or some other aspect of your status⁴. Where these distinctions are important, Sumptuary Laws may be enacted to ensure that only the "right" people wear the relevant clothing.

Workwear may be simple and utilitarian, may be a livery of your employer's and/or may include protective aspects appropriate to your work. And that's not even considering armour. There is also the question of camouflage, both literal and metaphorical, in which clothing plays a significant part.

Here is a list of pages on Arcana Wiki pertaining to clothing:

• Armour
• Blue Jeans
• Colonial Economy
• Chocolate Show
• Cloth of Gold
• Dress Code
• Foot cloth
• Gang Colors
• Ghillie suit
• Heraldry and Livery
• Mask
• 'Master of blue jeans' holds key to fashion riddle
• Parti-Color
• Silk
• Space Suit
• Sumptuary Law
• Textile
• Why men love scarlet women

Sources

Bibliography

1. How to Be a Tudor, Goodman, Ruth.

Game and Story Use

• How someone dresses can be a good bit of characterization.
  • The Bad Guys are the ones who wear skull motifs and a necklace of ears.
  • Some professions have associated dress codes, such as a priest's "dog collar" or medical scrubs.
  • The person always dressed in designer labels and who makes sure everyone in earshot knows how expensive they are… whether legitimately vain or running a variant on the melon drop.
  • The bewildered time novice dressed in a completely era-inappropriate way.
• As mentioned, clothing has treasure potential.
  • In eras where the only thing most people have is homespun, an extra set of clothes can be a big deal.
  • Knocking out guards and stealing their uniforms is a classic trope.⁵
  • A gift of clothing, especially livery or something restricted by a sumptuary law, might carry social or even supernatural implications.
    • More than one fairy tale involves gifts of clothing making or breaking contracts, especially with the fae - as recycled in at least one popular fantasy franchise.
  • Speaking of supernatural… magical clothing might be a thing, especially considering that textile work was considered a foundation of seidr.
  • High-end clothing might still count as treasure in the modern era.
• Wearing the wrong clothes can be a source of trouble.
  • Being over- or under-dressed for an occasion is likely to draw attention, and not having the right clothes can bar someone from a number of places.
  • In some situations (whether the dystopia in the main article or a soldier out of uniform), there may be legal penalties for not being dressed appropriately.
    • Worth considering some penalties to social rolls if PCs come stomping into polite society in the same unwashed dungeoneering clothes they've been wearing for a week of hard fighting in the city sewers…
  • Having clothing inappropriate to the weather can range from mildly uncomfortable to lethal, depending on just how bad the weather is.
  • Nudity taboos, including diagreements about what level of clothing is "appropriate" or which body parts are "shameful," are a classic source of comedy and occasional drama.
• Clothing can be a clue in a mystery.
  • Fibers caught on a branch are one of the classic tropes for tracking someone or proving that they were in a certain place.
  • Someone dressed flashily might stick out in witnesses' minds.
  • Players might not consider that their characters' latest bit of violence has left them with bloody clothes.

Footnotes

1. For example, as per the Goodman source below, in the Tudor era, based on household accounts of costs for cloth and sewing, a canvas shirt - not of the highest quality but the sort of respectable, hard wearing garment that a responsible employer would issue to a retained servant - cost around two shillings, in an era when a labouring man might take home three shillings a week. The same source later cites a young serving man as owning three canvas shirts, two good and one worn and indicates, based on laundry bills, that such people likely turned their shirts over on a weekly basis.

2. like the victim in the story of the Good Samaritan

3. More generally the Goodman source shows Tudor notables pawning gowns and similar items of high status clothing for £2-3 or more, which could be over a year's wages for a servant.

4. e.g. the clothing restrictions placed on Dhimmi under Sharia law or those placed in the past on Jews by the Church of Rome

5. In real life, this would be considered espionage, and potentially a war crime, but things are often much looser in fiction.