This is why I kinda hate those posts that are like “why are we all so obsessed with the gay sex show they’re still just men 🙄” IT’S NOT FOR YOU. IT’S NOT FOR YOU. IT’S NOT FOR YOU. IT’S FOR THEM. IT’S FOR THESE PEOPLE. IT’S FOR THEIR PAST SELVES. IT’S FOR THEM.
My wife's service dog in training, Matilda, is trained to be super annoying at specific times of day. This is because my wife's executive dysfunction does not allow her to 'unfreeze' and therefore she gets 'stuck' in places/doing things long after she needs to move on to another task, room, etc. This isn't some arbitrary 'you should only play video games so long' type of thing. It's 'If unattended, my wife will not eat or sleep because moving from one thing to another is very hard'. Eating and sleeping are necessary things for survival, so moving to these tasks is necessary for survival.
Matilda has therefore been taught things like 'ten pm is bedtime'. In order to help Matilda with this, her feeding schedule is on a pretty tight timeline as well--this way her internal body cues are lined up with the schedule of the day. For example, Matilda is fed between 8 and 830 pm (usually at about 810 pm, as it works out). She poops at 830 pm after dinner and she will throw a WHOLE FIT if she is not let out at this time.
Daylight Savings has Happened to Matilda. She's only just a year old, so she does not remember Daylight Savings last year (she was two weeks old, roughly) and she does not remember the spring time change, either, as she was a fairly young puppy at that time and therefore not trained to a schedule like this.
She is BEREFT. We're making her wait an hour for dinner. We're making her wait an hour for bedtime. She knows she needs to go out at 830, but it is not time for her to poop yet, which is BAFFLING.
This poor dog. I'm sure she'll adjust in a week or two, but poor Matilda.
We need to outlaw Daylight Savings. For Matilda.
#ITS TRUE AND YOU SHOULD SAY IT #(ALSO THORIN AND KILI BEING ‘UGLY’ BY DWARF STANDARDS IS AMUSING CONTENT)
further take: Kili is straight-up ugly by dwarf standards. Thorin is like, the dwarf equivalent of Benedict Cumberbatch. Some dwarves think he’s an absolutely dreamboat, others think he is super weird looking, there’s very little middle ground.
A Needlessly Thorough Analysis of What Hardening Actually Means for Alistair
You can also read this analysis in a Google Doc if you find that format more palatable: here.
(I do recommend desktop for the comfiest viewing in either case, but both should be serviceable.)
Disclaimer: If critical discussion of a character’s feelings, motivations, and reactions to certain in-game choices could be personally upsetting to you, maybe don’t read this. None of this analysis is me judging you/your choices as a player, I am simply looking through the lens of Alistair’s characterization and the in-universe consequences of choices. Of course this analysis will be colored by my own bias, it’s inevitable. I can’t realistically include every potentially relevant line of dialogue, but I’m always happy to discuss if you think there’s something crucial I left out.
Hardened Alistair is often described as learning to stand up for himself and becoming more assertive, but why? Is it an accurate assessment? Even Alistair himself reacts to the hardening dialogue by saying he’s going to start thinking for himself and looking out for himself more, so surely it’s true… right?
To the contrary, I would actually argue that hardened Alistair tends to put others before himself more than unhardened Alistair. Let’s start by looking at how he becomes hardened.
The Hardening Process
After meeting Goldanna, Alistair is understandably devastated to find that the family he’s been dreaming of his whole life is not what he had hoped. He’s just been yelled at and turned away by the sister he’s never met, the only family he’s ever had a chance of knowing. He’s lost his hope at finding that sense of connection and belonging he’s always been looking for.
If the Warden wants to harden Alistair, they need to tell him, “Everyone is out for themselves. You should learn that.”
The message being sent is basically: suck it up, move on, grow up. This is the way the world is. Stop being so idealistic.
The message Alistair seems to receive, however, is a bit more complicated. In the follow-up conversation after meeting Goldanna, Alistair tells you that his takeaway from the hardening dialogue was that he needs to look out for himself more. This is, obviously, perfectly in line with the common belief that hardened Alistair is more assertive and more willing to stand up for himself.
But is that the reality that we see reflected in hardened Alistair’s choices?
Pre-hardening, Alistair tells you many times that he feels like no one cares what he wants; he believes it’s unfair and openly complains about it. Hardened Alistair, however, knows that no one cares what he wants and he accepts that as the way things are and must be. Unhardened Alistair will freely say he doesn’t want to be king and fights against it until he can fight it no more, while hardened Alistair will accept it, even going as far as to say he wants it.
Why would he change so suddenly from saying it’s his worst nightmare to saying he wants it? Does he mean it fully? Is this truly him seeking to fulfill his own wants and meet his own needs?
What actually changes if he’s hardened?
he is seemingly less reluctant about becoming king
if romanced, he will agree to a threesome with Isabela
he will agree to make you his mistress if you push the topic
if not married to Anora and chosen to fight Loghain, he will execute Loghain and take the throne
if not chosen to fight Loghain, he will insist on being made king
if married to Anora, he will become king instead of being exiled if Loghain is spared (Alistair will still leave your party, however)
he will approve of executing Jowan in Redcliffe
With the idea of “hardened Alistair putting his own wants/needs first” in mind let’s break them down one by one:
Note: some lines of dialogue have flags for “hardened”/“changed”, alternatively referred to as Alistair’s motivation being changed from “good to glory” or “Alistair 2”. These all refer to the hardening mechanic. The screenshots do have text that’s a bit small, because I wanted to be sure that I included the flags that show when lines are exclusive to hardened Alistair.
Less reluctance about becoming king
All along he’s said he doesn’t want it. You could potentially make a case that he didn’t truly feel that way and was only saying it because he’s insecure (which he is), but I don’t find this to be a terribly compelling argument.
This is hardened Alistair’s response to being told he would be a good king after he’s decided to sacrifice himself. There are several lines like this that I feel contradict the theory that unhardened Alistair only says he doesn’t want to be king because he’s insecure in his abilities. It’s not that his insecurities are not a factor, it’s that hardening him doesn’t get rid of those things, meaning that this factor alone would not change his attitude about accepting potential kingship. In fact, he still believes that realistically Anora is better suited.
I’d argue that someone who has consistently said one thing without fail and is now only changing the tune after basically being told to shut up and grow up may not be expressing their truest desires. He is going along with what Eamon is telling him, with what the Warden is telling him, with what he’s told is his duty and responsibility. For the greater good, not for himself.
And you might be saying that can’t be true, hardened Alistair says he wants to be king!
Personally, I’d argue that Alistair saying he wants to be king is much the same as your average person saying they want a job. Do most people want to go to work every day? No, not really, but you have to because it’s just what you need to do. So when asked, you’d say you want a job. Of course you would, because you have to have one. But removed from that necessity, would you still say the same? Likely not. I believe the same holds true for Alistair. If he wasn’t being told at every turn that him being king is what must be done, he wouldn’t feel a need to bow to that.
Hardened Alistair confidently wanting to be king is often accepted as plain fact, when it’s really not so cut and dry. We can dig into some of his dialogue and really look at his feelings on the matter.
Hardened Alistair is saying he wants to be king. Even he’s surprised by it. But what is the context of this line? He’s about to sacrifice himself. He believes that his sacrifice–not living to rule–is the single best thing he can do as king.
But is it pure happiness and willingness, or is it a man simply trying to make the best of a situation he’s locked into? I vote for the latter.
I often see the argument that having a Warden queen would make him happier with the idea of being king, but by all evidence it really doesn’t seem to be the case. Here is his response to the Warden confirming that she does want to be queen. Alistair still doesn’t like the idea of ruling. This isn’t a line exclusive to hardened Alistair, he will always have this line available.
“I wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for you” … “you owe me” … Even hardened, Alistair seems to see being king as something negative being thrust upon him. A punishment, perhaps? What would his response be to being told that being king is not a punishment?
On the surface, he agrees, but take a look at that VO comment for his actual feelings on it. He does consider it a punishment. This is indeed a line for hardened Alistair, as it occurs during the mistress conversation, which is a hardened Alistair exclusive.
Even if hardened, Alistair would prefer to stay a Warden if he can.
And if you don’t make hardened Alistair king? He’s grateful. Happy. Happier.
Agreeing to a threesome
Unhardened or hardened, he will push back when you suggest this. However, only hardened Alistair will relent and agree to it. Unhardened Alistair will simply refuse. Which one sounds more like someone standing up for his own wants?
This is the path the conversation goes if Alistair is hardened. His initial refusal and discomfort with the situation remains, but if you tell him to go along, he will.
He is, regardless, clearly not as comfortable with the situation as one should be. It certainly isn’t the kind of enthusiastic consent one would look for when asking someone to engage in a particular sex act. But he had fun, so it’s okay, right?
Well… did he have fun? Isabela jokes about borrowing him in the future and it seems quite clear that he isn’t interested in a repeat occurrence. Not only is he not interested, he’s awkward, uncomfortable. “Oh, but he makes a joke about wet frocks right after this!” He does. But it’s Alistair. He’s constantly making jokes to mask his discomfort.
Agreeing to making the Warden his mistress
Again, he will push back on this at first, only relenting if he’s hardened and you push the issue. If unhardened, he’ll stand by his original statement that he feels it would be wrong. Is he just saying he believes it’s wrong, or is that what he truly believes? Based on what we know of Alistair, I’d say it’s far more likely that he truly does find the idea of making the Warden his mistress to be disrespectful both to the Warden and to his wife, and that he is somewhat disregarding his own beliefs on that to bend to the Warden’s insistence that he take a mistress.
Whether he’s marrying Anora or not, his views on the matter are the same. He intends to be loyal to whoever he marries, and he knows he cannot do so if he continues the relationship with the Warden.
It’s clear that he finds the entire idea distasteful.
Much like the threesome, you do have to press him to get him to agree. He’s quite set in his beliefs on the matter, but he will acquiesce if the Warden pushes it.
Insisting on becoming king in the context of dealing with Loghain
These are the choices where I’d say there is potentially a case to be made that Alistair is making the decision he wants to make. However, I wouldn’t say that the decision being made is that he wants to be king. I would argue that becoming king is simply a means to an end to give him the power to get revenge in the way he wants.
In the first potential scenario here, Alistair will insist on being made king if he is not chosen to fight Loghain. Why? He wants Loghain dead, and he isn’t being given the choice to make that happen. He wants the power to make that choice, all else be damned.
Here you can see that hardened Alistair insists on taking the throne while making it abundantly clear that the reason for doing so is to take care of Loghain in the manner he wants.
Unhardened Alistair does the same. Why? Because the motivation remains the same whether he’s hardened or not. Unhardened Alistair simply hasn’t become so resigned as to pretend he’s any less displeased with it than he is.
In the second potential scenario, Alistair is chosen to fight Loghain and kills him. He finally achieves the goal he’s been working towards all along: getting his revenge on Loghain. He’s running on that high when Eamon immediately suggests he take the throne, he says yes, he’ll do it. There’s not really anything to break down dialogue-wise in this scenario, as his acceptance of the throne is the exact same dialogue as it would be in any other case. He simply says he accepts when it’s proposed.
Is it what he truly wants? Maybe. You could make a case for it. However, I interpret it more as running on that adrenaline high, feeling powerful and not fully thinking it over in the moment.
Accepting being king & marrying Anora if Loghain is spared
Alistair has been tunnel visioned on getting his revenge on Loghain the entire time, and this is the only circumstance in which sparing Loghain will not result in Alistair leaving and becoming a drunk. He both accepts marrying Anora (which he isn’t happy about) and sparing Loghain (which is very counter to his wishes).
He doesn’t like Anora and doesn’t want to marry her, but he does anyway. Hardened Alistair knows that marrying Anora is politically advantageous and prioritizes that over his personal desire to enact his vengeance, though he makes it clear to the Warden that his personal feelings on the matter have absolutely not changed.
Hardened Alistair goes along with marrying Anora after Loghain is spared and leaves the party, unhappy with the Warden’s choice to spare Loghain. If this line alone didn’t make his displeasure clear enough, there’s also this one:
He refers to the Warden’s actions as a betrayal. He’s obviously not happy.
Unhardened Alistair, however, stands his ground and refuses.
Approving of executing Jowan
Another case of a changed tune to go along with what the Warden is doing. Unhardened Alistair actively disapproves of the Warden executing Jowan. We could assume that hardened Alistair is just more pragmatic, or perhaps simply more willing to accept it when the Warden tells him this is what must be done.
There is no Alistair specific dialogue to look at here, just the approval points, so it’s really just a matter of looking at what we know of him and the situation. I would say in general Alistair values life and values mercy. Are there exceptions? Yes. Loghain, for example, whose crimes Alistair has judged worthy of death. Clearly unhardened Alistair does not feel that way about Jowan. Hardened Alistair though? He approves of his execution, but is it because he personally thinks it’s best or is it because he accepts the Warden’s judgment?
I would argue that it’s the latter primarily because it’s completely in line with everything else we’ve seen from hardened Alistair. There really are just no solid cases of hardened Alistair asserting his own will when compared to unhardened Alistair, so I don’t see this case as being any different.
In Review
In each case of behaviors changed by hardening Alistair, we see him putting his own wants and needs on the backburner in favor of an externally imposed sense of duty or to bend to another’s will because he accepts that his personal feelings are irrelevant. I’d go as far as to say that hardening is really a misnomer, because what we’re really looking at would be better called resignation.
I actually didn’t include every single line I found of hardened Alistair expressing the sentiments I’ve laid out in this analysis because I didn’t want it to be too long, but there is more in the game. Now I will get into less concrete analysis and a bit more of an explanation of my own personal opinions on hardening.
Aside from looking at what hardening actually means for Alistair, we can also question its necessity. Do you need to do it if you want to do certain things in Origins (threesome, mistress ending, etc.)? Yes. But I often see people argue that hardening Alistair is necessary for him to grow or mature as a person, and I completely disagree.
My personal opinion is that hardening Alistair is neither necessary nor kind.
In terms of helping Alistair to grow as a person, I maintain that Alistair will become more naturally “hardened”, or more accurately, he will mature on his own if you give him the chance to do so. Why do I say so? Look at Alistair in Inquisition. That is not the same idealistic young man we see in Origins, and this remains true regardless of hardening status. Whether it’s Warden Alistair or King Alistair, he’s clearly grown and changed.
Sure, you can mod the game to make the hardening dialogue more palatable, but that’s an entirely different discussion. As is, you’re required to essentially kick him when he’s down, and I simply do not find it to be necessary for his own personal development.
If it’s not already completely obvious by me doing all of this in the first place, I really, really love Alistair. Of course I’m quite settled and happy as an unhardened Warden Alistair truther, but I’m always happy to discuss and debate. I’m very interested in any thoughts you might have, whether you agree with my assessment or not (as long as you’re nice).
Thank you for reading my (almost sickeningly thorough) little analysis if you made it this far!
As a treat (or unhardened Warden Ali propaganda depending on your perspective), here's my Warden, miss Neria Surana with her very happy unhardened Warden husband:
your muscles being pleasantly sore after exercise is such a nice incentive I can see why they patched that in. the forced regular logins to avoid losing progress however are a predatory practice and deserve nothing but scorn.
I'm kind of mad he didn't go for "math is objective" because it's not. We do most math in base ten because someone decided that and other people adopted it. All of our measurements are subjective amounts that were decided because they made sense to the people using them. Fucking knot theory is subjective to the presence of flexible lengths in an environment with friction. The philosophy most people think of as philosophy is exactly as objective as anything you do in math. The fact that you start measuring the side of a triangle from zero is something someone had to invent before pythagoras could get funky with it.
Philosophy of physics assumes a spherical cow. Philosophy of economics assumes a rational market. Philosophy of ethics assumes an average person. It's all fake all the way down.
If ANY of yall EVER do this shit to me, im deleting every single fic out of spite.
If I ever catch one of yall doing this to another author and I know youre a follower of my work I will block you personally on every platform
None of yall are the fic police. I DESPISE genai. I think its an insult to art, humanity, and the planet itself. But aint not a single fucking person here qualified to pick apart a strangers fic looking for a gotcha moment to make yourselves feel superior. If you think something is ai you can ask the author (most are proud of the ai use and will just tell you straight up) if they say yes you have your answer and can warn people. If they say no and you dont believe them you block and quietly keep it between you and maybe a close group of friends. Spreading misinformation is DANGEROUS. And NONE of you doing this shit are anywhere near qualified to do it.
Posting this here from my main too bc I feel that strongly about it
You dont get to witch hunt and scour peoples work just frothing at the mouth hoping someone messes up so you can publicly humiliate and gang up on them. Fuck genai and every single poser and lover that uses it but if you are not 1000000000% certain that something is made with it you shut. the. fuck. up.
I'm about to get mean because this shit? this pisses me all the way off.
"hurr durr these very common writing practices are SUPER OBVIOUS AI TELLS!!!!!!!!!! obviously this is an AI invention and not the result of AI being trained on THOUSANDS OF REAL FUCKING STORIES!!!!!!! we're all very intelligent!!!!!!!"
I hate yall. I hate yall for fucking ruining fanfic with your goddamn motherfucking AI obsession. "ooh there's em dashes!" YEAH REAL WRITERS USE THOSE. "there's long paragraphs!" YEAH BECAUSE THATS HOW PEOPLE WRITE STORIES.
we're not "writing like AI" - AI is writing like us, because it fucking stole from us in the first fucking place.
I've never used AI in my work, not ever, but guess what, my fics are ALL written like that. long paragraphs, long sentences, em dashes and hyphens and other grammatical tools, because I fucking know HOW TO WRITE.
quite frankly, if you think these things are "genAI inventions" you're just telling the world that YOU DON'T READ ENOUGH.
saw someone say that flipflopping between british english and american english was a "tell" and just did the haha im in danger chuckle to myself. girl im american and i was raised on neopets! i'm not keeping this shit consistent!
kinda random question but how do you go about researching? I’ve wanted to get deeper into fashion history than just watching youtube videos, but I don’t really know where to start.
ps. thanks for making such detailed posts. they’re really interesting to read.
Thank you! I'm really glad you've found my posts interesting!
This is great since I've kinda answered this in replies couple of times, but not properly. I very much understand the struggle. Dress history is a relatively new academic field and there's not that much reliable sources available and so so much unreliable sources everywhere. Internet of course has this problem but so does a lot of books too.
I thought this would be a short one and yet, here we are again.
Disclaimer: I'm writing this from a western fashion history perspective, since that's what I know best, but especially reading up on academic research and doing primary source research applies to non-western cultures too, though often it's harder to find sources for non-western fashion.
Getting started
Imo the best place to getting started is to read a book that gives a general timeline of fashion through history. I'm not sure if that's just how my brain works, but it helped me a lot of when going deeper into one period or another to understand the broader context and what roughly came before and what after. However these books are inherently difficult to make well, because there's so much nuance and variation in every period of dress history and if you're writing about the whole timeline through thousands of years and keeping it book length, there will need to be a lot of simplification to the point of inaccuracy. There's many popular fashion history timeline books with illustrations made for the book, but I would avoid those since non-contemporary illustrations often give a distorted image of the fashion, especially when it's about earlier periods in history. I've seen some really inaccurate illustrations depicting Middle Ages and Renaissance especially.
Costume and fashion: a concise history by James Laver - I'd recommend this as the starting point. James Laver was a art historian, an important pioneer of fashion history and curator of Victoria and Albert Museum, which has one of the most extensive costume collections now. The book is therefore based on serious academic study, but being a pioneer means you'll be outdated, when the field is more established, which is partly the case with this book. There's some outdated parts, but the images are primary sources and it does give good historical background. It should be taken as a starting point, not as the end point.
A History of Fashion by J. Anderson Black and Madge Garland - This is another similar book. It's more recent, but it also suffers from some outdated parts. The writers are not academics, but it has more primary source pictures which does help (at least me) understand visually what's being said.
Books
In a given subject I'm researching I usually start with seeing if I can find a reliable book on it or related to it, if I haven't already read much on it. Often what I want to research goes deeper into details than what a book usually does, so it will work as a starting point. As said it can be hard to find these books that are actually reliable, but here's couple of reading lists to help with it.
Here's a reading list by a retired professor of dress history from Helsinki University. It's very extensive and has a wide variety of books and papers listed. There's a bit of leaning towards Finnish sources, but most are in English and about more international western fashion.
Here's a reading list by @clove-pinks, who is excellent and writes a lot about the Romantic period, especially men's fashion here on Tumblr. These are all books that can be read free on Internet Archive, which makes the list even better.
Internet sources
There's a lot of bad sources floating around in the internet, but also some excellent gems. As dress history is such a new field, there's a lot of unexplored spots and lacking research still, but some troopers in the internet have done some great legwork in going through primary sources and gathering them together. These can be excellent especially when trying to research a specific garment, since often these blog posts are by historical costumers, who are detailing their background research in reconstructing a specific garment. It's not always easy to find them, since they might not come up in the first page of the google search, but I often find them through pinterest, where the blogs are linked into the primary source images and images of the reconstructed garments. Though be sure to look blogs like that with critical eye. The best sign that it's reliable is when each image is given a source.
There's some more general sources too that need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Fashion History Timeline - This is a page with entries to the whole timeline of fashion as well as entries of specific garments. It's very well sourced and has usually pretty good image sources too. I will say though that it often gives a pretty limited description of the period focusing on some specifics, without giving a good overall picture, especially in the Medieval sections. The medieval sections are honestly pretty useless. It's at it's best in 19th century imo (I haven't checked out the entries to 20th century since I rarely research vintage styles, but I'd assume they are pretty good too). But since it has great sourcing it is usually informative. It just shouldn't be relied upon to give full picture of a period.
Wikipedia, History of Western fashion - In some ways this is the opposite of Fashion History Timeline. Wikipedia has articles on each period. The sourcing on these articles is often quite lacking and the information shouldn't be taken at face value. Especially the terms for the garments are often used in these articles in very questionable ways. However what these articles have is pretty good primary source image collections, and what is nice is that in Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern periods they are often divided into regions, and they often have images of working class clothing, which are for some periods really hard to find. These articles often don't either give a full picture of the period, but in someways the basic picture of the period is easier to grasp from these than from Fashion History Timeline. I use these mostly for the primary source images, and the texts of them should be taken with a bucket of salt.
Academic papers
Going deeper into something will inevitably require reading up on some academic papers. I'm lucky since I get access to a lot of academic publications through my uni, but JSTOR (my beloved) gives free access to 100 papers per month (you'll just have to make an account). Through google scholar you can search for papers on a given subject, or if you don't have access to other publications, you can just use JSTOR's search engine.
Primary sources
If some MVP hasn't already combed through primary sources to gather them on a give subject, you can do that too. It's not necessarily an easy task though. There's thankfully a perfect guide for that.
A Handbook of Costume by Janet Arnold - Janet Arnold was a legendary dress historian, who really defined the modern field. This book details the process of researching dress history and how to analyze primary sources. And it's free on Internet Archives.
I'll give some basics here though.
Extant garment
Most of us who are not academic historians don't have physical access to extant garment, but many museums have nowadays excellent digital archives of their costume collections. Here's a list of the most well known ones. MET and V&A has sometimes great descriptions of the clothing and their history, but not for every item.
MET Costume Institute
Kyoto Costume Institute
LACMA
V&A Costume Collection
Palais Galliera
Extant garments are of course the ideal sources to study, since they are the actual garments and not just representations or descriptions of them. Sometimes the collections even have pictures of the insides of the garments, giving invaluable information about their construction. However, extant garments have limitations for research, since there's a strong survivorship bias. Firstly, they heavily lean on later periods as textiles deteriorate relatively quickly. You won't find extant garments from Middle Ages, at most fragments of them. Secondly, they are mostly clothing of the upper classes. Lower classes used their clothing till they broke down, and even then often salvaged any fabric that could be salvaged for new clothing and other textiles. Upper classes didn't necessarily have to do that, so what survives is usually very expensive formal clothing that people would wear rarely and rather preserve than salvage the fabric from it. Another limitation of them is that they don't provide context for the garments. There's really no way to know how these garments were used and in what situations from extant examples alone.
Photography
Since camera was popularized in early Victorian era, you don't get photos before that. Photography is a great source from the times it was available, since yes it's still only representation of the clothing, but there's less artistic interpretation than in paintings and illustrations, though importantly, there still is artistic interpretation. As long as there has been photography, there has been photoediting. They of course used it for creepypasta purposes by editing them holding their own heads and editing ghosts into backgrounds, but also editing their waists smaller. Basically the exact same way photos are still edited. So no, this is not really how small the waist got in Edwardian era, since this is edited.
Another obvious limitation for early photography is that it didn't have colors, so popular colors of a given time period and given styles have to be found through other means. A great thing about photography though was that compared to painting, it was relatively cheap, and therefore a lot of lower class people were able to photograph themselves. We even get people outside in everyday situations not posing.
Photography can be found with search engines like google and pinterest, though they should be always sourced then. You sometimes come across very Victorian looking photos that are actually just modern photos that are well edited. And also it's important to date the photos, which might not be easily with photos just randomly floating in the internet. Libraries and museums sometimes have good digital collections of old photos. For example:
Digital collections of New York Public Library (NYPL) - It has a wide variety of collections including photography, fashion plates and other illustrations. I haven't found a great way to search through the collections, but the best way I've come up with is to search images within the Clothing & Dress topic, put some limiting filters, then click some right looking image and then go to the collection it was from. I bet there's an easier way but I haven't figured it out.
Paintings
A great thing about paintings and statues is that they date basically through whole history of organized civilizations. Paintings are more delicate so even with murals in antiquity, you'll get more surviving status from that time period. But because of the strong artistic interpretation inherent to these art forms, there's some tricky parts to them as sources for historical fashions.
You'll find a lot of paintings by just searching for fashion or paintings of a given period in google and pinterest, but it's sometimes tricky to source them to figure out where and when they were painted. Therefore I often check from Wikipedia a list of artists from a given time and place, and search their paintings from digital archives of museums. It also helps when you choose artists who were specialised in specific type of paintings. What kind of paintings depends on what you're researching and the time period.
Portraits are of course great sources. They depict the actual clothing an actual person wore and if the person was historically important enough you can find out who they were and gain a lot of context for the clothing. However, they are usually all rich people, though not always. Another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes portraits portray the subject in a costume. This became a pretty big trend among nobles in 18th century. They had costume parties and would have their portrait painted with their costume, but also there were trends of costume that were not even worn for parties, but only for having a portrait. Sometimes the painting would be painted like a scene and not like traditional portrait. Van Dyke costume (first picture below) in first half of 18th century paintings is one such example. It referred to mid 17th century fashion that was seen as timeless at the time. Peasant costume (second picture below) is another example of a popular costume for nobles to wear in portraits. Costume balls continued to 19th century, but after the popularization of camera they were mainly photographed. People would continue to dress up in costumes for portraits, but it wasn't as big of a trend as in 18th century.
Genre paintings were a type of paintings that became popular first in 16th century Low Countries and then In Netherlands/Belgium area during the Dutch Golden Age (from late 16th century and thorough Baroque) and during Baroque's popularity all over Europe. Genre paintings depict normal everyday life of peasants, working class people and the bourgeois. During Baroque they often had elements of idealization, symbolism and even sexualization of the subjects, so they should be taken with a grain of salt, but they do usually depict accurately the clothes the people wore. Rococo era had a lot of these types of everyday scenes about the upper class. During the Romantic era peasants were heavily romanticized in genre paintings, but there was also a lot of genre paintings of bourgeois thorough 19th century that was wasn't as strongly romanticized. These scenes were sometimes also depicted in portrait form. Realism brought another interest into the genre and Realistic genre paintings often focused on the working class. They did the opposite of romanticism though and often exaggerated their subjects to look more wretched.
History paintings depict events and scenes that were for the time historical too. They became very popular in 19th century, when Historism was the dominant current in arts, but they have existed long before. There's even some from late Medieval period, and in those earlier history paintings, the historical figures are usually depicted in contemporary clothing and there's no attempt at recreating historical styles. In later periods, especially during 19th century Historism they very much tried to recreate historical styles. This is why it's important to always source paintings. I've too often seen Victorian paintings used as images for Medieval fashions.
Religious paintings have sometimes a bit of the same issue. They were very popular during Medieval and Renaissance periods, and usually the biblical figures would be depicted in contemporary fashions, though not always, sometimes in vaguely "biblical garbs". Religious paintings also have the issue of often being highly symbolic, so sometimes the characters in them are not dressed for the situation, or a character that in the biblical canon very poor is depicted in upper class contemporary fashions.
Illuminated and illustrated manuscripts
Medieval manuscripts with illustrations or illuminations (illustrations with gold) are invaluable sources for Medieval fashions. They are usually commissioned by royalty and detail historical narratives, so they mostly depict royalty and nobility, but some illustrated scenes depict commoners too. You often find images of the illustrations floating around in pinterest but they can be hard to source when the source is not linked (which is quite often). The illustrations can be spotted by the quite consistent style (though sometimes they are not from illuminated manuscripts but some other rarer illustrations like playing cards).
A lot of illuminated manuscripts have been digitized and British and French libraries have quite extensive online collections of them which are linked below. The manuscrips in those are mostly English and French of course but there's manuscrips from other places in Europe too, I've seen quite a lot of the German speaking area especially.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF)
The British Library
I recommend searching for manuscript guides, plenty of university courses and departments for example have them publicly available, where they list specific manuscripts related to a specific period and/or area. It makes navigating the many manusctipts much easier and usually mention also manuscripts from other libraries too than the two I mentioned.
Fashion plates
Fashion plates became a thing in late 17th century France to disseminate French fashions (though they become real big a century later and even more so in 19th century with fashion magazines), so they are not useful for periods before that. They are basically illustrations that show the latest trends and they were published generally in fashion magazines. They don't reflect the way everyone dressed, since they did show the latest high fashion and the people who would be wearing that were mostly young rich fashionable people. However, fashion at the time had a little different meaning than today as it was linked to dress code, and to be respectable you needed to follow fashion. So everyone, even working class people, would follow the new trends to an extent. This is especially true when we get to Victorian era, when industrial mass production and the emerging middle class made clothing cheaper and more available to more people. They wouldn't maybe follow every new trend or with every detail and with as much extravaganza or with the most expensive fashionable materials.
While the fashion plates didn't necessarily depict specific existing clothing, they were based on existing clothing and they were often used as guides for dressmakers. Kinda like you might go to a hairdresser with a picture of a famous person's hair or hairdressers sometimes use pictures of famous person's hair to show what they might do. And the people who might not afford something as extravagant as shown in a fashion plate, might still show it as a guide and get a simpler version of it made for them. People of the middle and lower classes especially would also use them as guides to sew themselves fashionable clothing.
Fashion plates are quite easily found on the internet, but as with other things, if you don't go straight to some organized archive, it might be really hard to date them accurately. Many bigger museums and libraries have fashion plates in their online archives, for example NYPL which I mentioned earlier.
MET Fashion Plate Collection - This is a pretty extensive collection.
Regional costume illustrations
When genre paintings became popular, artists didn't necessarily have the change to go and see what peasants wore in the places they were setting their genre paintings in, but because the whole point of them was to depict authentic real life, there was a need for illustrations of regional dress around Europe. And some artists would travel and create costume collections for resource to other artists. These are really invaluable to us today, though they should always be taken with a grain of salt, because sometimes the artists who created these drew dresses for places they never had even been in. For example some of these collections include non-European dress and they should all be probably disregarded as fantasy costumes basically. You can usually assume that the closer the region which dress they depict is to their own place of origin, the more accurate and based on reality it is. It's also good to try and google the artist and see if you can find information of where they actually traveled, because sometimes we know that pretty well.
These collections can also be found in the digitized archives of big museums and libraries, again there's some in NYPL collections.
British Museum's collections by Hippolyte Lacomte from 19th century
A collection from late 16th century on BnF archives
Honorable mentions
There's many other primary sources in different periods that can be helpful, but the ones I've mentioned are the major ones and easiest to access, when you're not doing academic research with institutional resources. I thought I might mention couple of other sources that have become handy to me as examples.
Magazine and news paper ads became wide spread in the Victorian era and from that onward is a great source. They advertise specifically ready-made clothing, so clothing that was much more available to a regular person and therefore can be really helpful to understand what a regular person might wear. Especially in Victorian era most of them were undergarments, sleepwear, shirts and accessories, so not an universal source but a great supplementary source, since these types of clothing are rarely preserved or depicted anywhere else. At least NYPL's image collection is searchable and has categories for clothing adds. Victorian mail order catalogues are also really usefull, and I've found some of them from Internet Archive.
Satiric comics can be surprisingly helpful for researching sort of alternative styles and seeing what trends garnered backlash. For example I've long been obsessed with Aestheticism and the other Victorian counter-cultural movements related to it, and there's quite a lot of women's Aesthetic extant garments, photos and paintings available, but very little of men's Aesthetic fashion. But then I found that Punch Magazine (conservative satire magazine) loved mocking the Aesthetes and therefore drew a lot of comics with men in Aesthetic fashion. Caution should be taken though since satiric illustrations do often exaggerate for comedic effect. For example the idea that 1770s ladies made ships out of their massive hair comes from a satiric illustration mocking the large and elaborate hair of the time.
Runaway ads of slaves and indentured servants are bleak, but can be helpful source for the clothing of poor people during 18th century. This is specific to US, but because of the colonialism poor people there would often wear at least similar clothing as those in Europe, especially Britain and France, which had the most colonial presence in that region. The clothes were described in great detail in these ads for identification purposes. These runaway ads can be also found in news papers of the era, many of which are digitized in archives of bigger US libraries, but it's definitely even more combing through. Though again some people have done some of that work already and documented it in blogs.
And for the love of god never ask ChatGPT for help.
An Introductory Timeline of Western Women's Fashion
I think a good place to start to get into dress history is general overview of the whole timeline. Understanding especially how the silhouettes change is really important ground knowledge to build the rest of the information on.
I'll start the timeline from Middle Ages and go till the first world war. I'll focus on upper class England/French sector, so keep in mind that before 17th century there were huge regional differences in fashion inside Europe and class differences too. There is a lot variance, changes and nuance inside any century and decade I'm about to discuss, but I'll try to keep this short and introductory and very simplified. I used a very scientific method of basically what makes most sense to me to divide the periods. I've made sketches what I would consider to be the basic silhouette of the period stripped mostly out of the detail and then I give couple of primary source examples.
12th century (Middle Ages)
Dress was simple one or more tunics over a chemise. They were overly long for upper classes, made out of straight lines. There were loose tunics often worn over another tunic, and tunics with laced bodice called biaut. In France bliaut sleeves often widened from the elbow, in England they often widened in frists.
13th century (Middle Ages)
Clothing was mostly very similar as in the previous century, though bliaut was mostly gone and new popular style was a loose sleeves surcoat.
14th century (Middle Ages)
Tailoring basically revolutionized clothing production, since clothes weren't made out of rectangles anymore and could be better made to fit form. Also functional buttons and lacing was popularized resulting in very fitted styles. The underlayer tunic, kirtle, became a fitted supporting layer.
15th century (Middle Ages)
Improvements in weaving technology and trade and growing prosperity in Europe showed in clothing as excess of fabric and variety of trends. Houppelande, a loose A-lined overdress lined with fur and fastened with a wide belt under breasts, became a very popular clothing item, and in later decades developed into the iconic Burgundian dress (the red dress). Fitted overdress continued to be popular alongside the warmer houppelandes.
1500s-1550s (Tudor period)
In the renaissance era clothing became increasingly structured and elaborate. The bodice was heavily boned and the skirt was also structured.
1560s-1610s (Elizabethan Era)
Both structuring and elaborate decoration reach it's peak during Queen Elizabeth's reign. She became the defining fashion icon of the late renaissance.
1620s-1670s (Baroque)
In baroque era the bodice was still heavily structured, but more curved than the conical Elizabethan bodice. Otherwise though structuring was replaces with dramatic excess of fabric.
1680s-1710s (Baroque)
In the late 17th century there was a huge shift in the clothing industry as mantua, a loose open robe inspired by Japanese kimono, came to dominate fashion. Rigid bodice was replaces by structured under layer, stays. Stays brought back the conical silhouette of Elizabethan era.
1720s-1780s (Rococo)
Mantua developed into the iconic Rococo dress in France, robe à la francaise (first example picture), and in England robe à la anglaise with closed bodice. Rococo fashion was characterized by the wide silhouette of the skirt.
Since Tumblr won't accept more than 10 pictures per a post I'll have to continue in a reblog. So to be continued!
Already before the French revolution the excess of Rococo had gone out of fashion as hatred against the ruling class and their lifestyle started mounting. After the revolution the rest remains of the Rococo style and silhouette were very quickly abandoned in favour of much more simple ancient Greece inspired dress. Structuring was minimal and the new stays had very little boning if at all, their main purpose was to push up the chest.
1830s-1860s (Victorian Era)
I included 1830s here even though it's not actually part of the Victorian era, since Queen Victoria wasn't in power yet. However it's the start of Romantic fashion, which characterized the first half the Victorian era too. Start of the Victorian era is characterized by the increasingly wider round skirt and wide neckline. More structuring was back with boned shapely corsets.
1870s (Victorian Era)
Natural form era is a brief fashion characterized by the long sloping trail. The strongly curved corset of the late Victorian period takes shape and creates the curved hourglass figure.
1880s (Victorian Era)
1880s is often considered the quintessential bustle period. The bustle becomes very high and shelf-like.
1890s (Victorian Era)
Last decade of Victorian era is very distinctive. Art Nouveau movement was at it's height and it shows in fashion too in the bold shapes and organic details. The bustle is gone, though a bit more volume remains in the back, but the skirt is more A-lined now. Volume goes to sleeves which reach their peak in the middle of the decade.
1900s (Edwardian Era)
Art Nouveau continues as the dominant art movement in the Edwardian era. The S-shaped corset and the round pigeon chest dominate the silhouette.
1910s
Sometimes 1910s is also counted as the Edwardian era, even though Edward VII died on the first year of the decade. The fashion has a lot of visible similarities to Edwardian fashion, Art Nouveau is still going strong, but the silhouette is significantly different. The corset used is very similar so there's still a bit of the S-curve left, and the round chest is emphasized, but otherwise the curves are gone in favour of much more slender and simple figure.
An addition with some more in-depth look at the fashion evolution and also some of my though process behind this post. Further reading under the cut!
Books:
Here's couple of very good books that give two different introductory views on dress history by very influential dress historians.
Costume and fashion: a concise history, James Laver
A handbook of Costume, Janet Arnold
Museum websites:
Museum collections are very good places to find primary source examples of dresses.
Met Museum Costume Institute
Victoria and Albert Museum fashion collection
Dress history Youtube channels:
Abby Cox, dress historian
Nicole Rudolph, dress historian and shoemaker
Bernadette Banner, seamstress and experimental dress history
Welcome to the corner of the interned where I nerd about (mostly) Western dress history! This is the post I will update with all my more structured and researched articles. I have the same navigation on my blog, but it's only for the browser so I figured it would be useful to have navigation that work for the app too.
Some basics
An Introductory Timeline Of Western Women's Fashion
How I do my research into dress history
Dress History
Lacing in Western Fashion History
Dress Etiquette Thorough Western History
When Did It Become Acceptable For Western Women To Wear Pants?
When Did Skirts Stop Being Acceptable For Western Men To Wear?
Is Lingerie Going Backwards - A Rebuttal
Victorian Era
A summary of different kinds of corsets
Victorian Dress For Every Occasion - 1890s Edition
1890s Day Dresses
American Civil War era (1861-65) ball gown
Regency
Debunking the common narrative about Beau Brummel - The whole modern men's fashion is not the fault of One Guy
Gender non-conforming Regency styles
18th century
The Colonial History of How Cotton Became the Most Important Fabric
Overview of Rococo Fashion (1680-1770)
Working Class Clothing In Late 18th Century France
Early Modern Era
The history of showing your boobs for fashion
Deep Dive into 15th and 16th Century Working Class Fashion in Western Europe
Medieval Era
Late 14th to Early 15th Century Bohemian and German Men's Fashion
Construction of Men's Hose
Codpiece
Construction of the French hood
Iron Age
Viking and Crusader Age Finnish men's dress
Historical Sewing
Sewing Medieval Bathhouse Dress
For Dolls
Sewing mid-16th century Venetian dress in doll scale
Sewing mid-16th century Venetian dress in doll scale - Part 2
Sewing 1890s day dress in doll scale
Historical Costuming
History of the Fantasy Corset
Met Gala 2022 Costume Commentary
Pride and Prejudice 2005 Costume Analysis
Ranking Men's Costumes in Renaissance Period Dramas - Part I: The Bad
Ranking Men's Costumes in Renaissance Period Dramas - Part II: The Good
Redesigns for "Historically Accurate" Disney Princesses
Textiles
Hemp's properties
Sustainability
How to see through the greenwashing propaganda of the fashion industry - Case study 1: Shein
The Real Cost of the Fashion Industry
The Morrisian case against fast fashion
Architectural History
History of Sauna and Steam Baths
Art History
Two Tahitian Women, Paul Gauguin and Colonialism
History
Palestinian History Between Great Powers
European History Is Not White
Queer History
Julie d'Aubigny
Roughly 10 Cool Historical Queer Figures More People Should Know About: From Ancient Era to Early Modern Era
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