Fashion Worldbuilding in FMA:b
From a historical fashion standpoint, the fashion in FMA:b (and the manga) is all over the place, but since the 1914/1915 setting of Amestris is not actually linked to the real historical time period there is no need to apply rigid fashion rules to the worldbuilding. And yet, I think it is very interesting to explain the fashion of Amestris through a Watsonian lens.
And what better place to start with than the very a-historical skin-tight, skin-showing clothing of our teenage characters?
Winry is always dressed practically and job oriented (coveralls, gloves, something to tie her hair back with) and yet she’s also dressed like a typical modern teenager. Crop tops and short skirts are the norm for when Winry is doing everyday stuff outside of her workshop or extreme territories. She is by far not the only character that dresses like this - we see both Matel and Paninya in similarly tight and form-fitting outfits.
And the world around them doesn’t react to this excess of skin with disgust or outrage - their way of clothing seems to be the general norm, or at least pretty widespread and accepted. But if we look closer, it seems that this is only a societal norm for young people.
Most of the older women we meet, are dressed rather conservatively, with dresses and long skirts being the norm. Hair is most often drawn in a bun on older female characters, and the general dress shape seems to be late 19th century inspired.
In this crowd scene for example, we can see a handful of young women wearing pants with their hair open, while the majority of the women depicted seem to be wearing skirts, dresses, and aprons as befitting a working women, while others seems to have scarves wrapped around their shoulders as if out and about on a stroll through town.
Which would make sense. This would divide the expected “proper” way of dressing along the axis of age (and/or marital status), with the cut-off being somewhere in the mid- to late twenties. Characters like Riza Hawkeye, Matel, and Sheska play into this, as they are all more conservatively dressed as Winry, but do not yet follow stricter fashion rules as they seem to be common in older demographics.
In this scene Riza is wearing a skirt that covers her knees and a jacket that covers her neck and the entirety of her arms. We later see her dressed in different civilian clothes as well, with a white blouse, a pink cardigan, and comfortable loose pants. As such she is in a transitional phase of fashion, between the more loose and short styles of the youth and the more traditional cuts of the older generation.
Shezka is much the same, her blouse and typical turtleneck much more “grown up” than the clothes Winry and her age-mates wear, and yet the rest of her clothes have not yet reached the same level of “age”. Both of these characters are also unmarried, which could be another factor in the way they dress - historically speaking, expectations on dress were different between single women and those that were married, so there is a distinct possibility of the same being the case in the world of FMA.
Which brings us to another very interesting axis of analysis: how do jobs and fashion interact in Fullmetal Alchemist?
The way I see it Amestris is a country on the verge of changing. We see a noteworthy amount of female soldiers, but only one female General - so much so, that Sloth is ordered to kill “the” female General, because Olivier Mira Armstrong is the only woman in the upper brass. The other female soldiers we meet all have ranks up to First Lieutenant, but nothing above. There are no female State Alchemists. Most of the other professionals we meet are men.
It makes sense for Olivier to be the first female general based on her family history and the fact that she was probably an outstanding soldier - but it also highlights that the military as a structure has probably only allowed female soldiers for up to 30 to 40 years by the time we meet the Elrics and their world. And I see much of Amestris through that lens - most gender-based laws have probably been repelled by now, but the society at large still remembers a much more divided structure. This is reflected in the fashion, of course.
In a country that has only recently changed its views on which professional fields should be open to all genders, the divide between the fashion rules for those that remember more rigid structures and those that grew up without certain assumptions is growing. Societal standards are slow to change, but they do reflect the opinions of the general public - or at least the rules and traditions people tend to cling to.
Let’s take Gracia for example. While the hemline in general seems to be rising in all age demographics (except the elderly, while staying relatively conservative in older demographics and - hypothetically - married women) Gracia dresses less form-fitting than other women in her age range (Riza Hawkeye, Rebecca Catalina). She is generally dressed more “proper”, even later on when we see her wearing skirts that end above the knee. What I really find interesting though is the comparison to her younger self - roughly eight years younger, as this is a picture from the end of the Ishval War. Even though she is probably about twenty to twenty-three in this picture, she is dressed a lot more conservative than all the other female characters we have met in that age range so far. This can have multiple reasons. Maybe Gracia is from a more conservative, rich family that favors more traditional style of dress - or we can see the rabid change in society in just eight years.
Again, Amestris as a society in the middle of extreme social change.
We can even see it in the military uniforms. Female soldiers in active duty wear the same clothes as their male counterparts.
(including the butt-cape)
But what we see multiple times is other female officers employed at Central Command (or other military headquarters) wearing a different uniform - with a much shorter skirt (tho a longer skirt option seems to be available, as we also see female soldiers wearing skirts that cover the knees).
This could imply two things: a) the longer skirts were the normal uniform for female employees of the military not cleared for active duty, and only recently shorter skirts became a part of the uniform as a reaction to the changing fashion landscape or b) the shorter skirts existed for longer as some sort of sexist tool of the upper brass to demean their female employees.
For the sake of our current worldbuilding, let’s go with Option A).
Again, the general hemline seems to be rising - in a way, it wouldn’t even be historically unheard off. In the 1920s the female silhouette changed so much in young, city-dwelling circles that you might even see the occasional knee peak out from under a skirt - Amestris could be experiencing a similar change in fashionable dress.
There is one other thing I want to mention while I’m at it: the influences of other cultures on Amestrian culture and fashion.
Amestris is an imperial power, and while that means that it has a very strong national identity on the one hand, we can also see how it has adapted other cultural influences in its daily life. While the wearing of traditional Ishvalen clothing is probably demonized and a sure way to get othered, influenced from other nations Amestris is war-ing with can be found.
Xing-style clothing seems to be pretty common, and if anything it seems to be a sign of status to be able to afford clothes from Xing.
We see Mrs. Bradley were Xing-style clothing multiple times throughout the show, and it always seems to be something a lady of good standing can do without consequences. This implies a certain level of cultural trade and exchange between the two countries, especially once you consider that Xingese features seem to be common enough in Amestris that Ling always has to mention his status as a foreigner since his appearance alone would not give it away.
(And the fact that all Lan Fan and Fu had to do to go undercover was exchange their Xingese dress for classical Amestrian clothing and suddenly they could disappear in a crowd without a problem)
And this bit of decor in General Grumman’s office? This also implies some sort of cultural influences from Drachma.
There is also the fact that class probably does play a role in the way people dress, with people from Rush Valley, a certified weird town full of weird people, dressing more wild, with less need for social conventions in a place like that. And people from the countryside favoring practicality over fashion, and much of the women we see there wearing loose dresses and aprons, which makes sense. At the same time, what little we see of the Armstrong family, they seem to favor a more conservative style of dress, even at a younger age.
Which makes sense - fashion is influenced by a lot of different factors, class, age, gender, gender representation, work and cultural influences all making a difference.
And just as an aside - while this post mostly discusses women’s fashion in FMA:b, I think it applies to men’s fashion as well. At least to a certain degree. While most men are much more uniformly dressed in “old-timey” clothing, the current shift seems to be happening when it comes to wearing hats.
And I also think teenage boys are less tied to the fashion expectations of their time - Edward for example dresses very modernly and weird. BUT and - this is very interesting - his sense of fashion is constantly considered as outside of the norm. Part of his Growing-Up Arc is starting to wear the clothes society expects him to wear… which means that while women’s fashion is rapidly changing, men’s fashion is still rather strict in comparison, with breaking of the rules being perceived as socially “punishable” in comparison.
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