SOUTHERN KINGDOM FASHION
This is a writeup I've been wanting to do for a long time! The fashion design surrounding the Southern Kingdom characters can look a bit random at times, but there is a method to my madness.
The "visdev" for Forever Gold had barely begun when I became co-developer; Dan had some ideas for how the Middle and Northern kingdoms looked and how their people dressed and the inspirations she wanted to take there, but the Southern Kingdom was pretty much a big shrug. The root idea was always that the Southerners were going to be merchants and Vestur's link to the rest of the world, and they were supposed to be very visually distinct from either the Midland or the North, but there wasn't much more to go on than that. In fact, when I fielded Dan for a root inspiration to start with, she said something to the tune of “I don’t know, pick something really out there, like ancient Minoan.”
And so, I did. Along with a bunch of other eclectic, geographically-distant inspirations. And now we are here! Read on for a more in-depth dissection.
SOUTHERN FASHION ETHOS
SYMMETRY:
Southern fashion ideals are considered to be woefully impenetrable to anyone who was not raised with them. Their ideas of modesty and gaudiness and refinement and gender norms differ greatly from that of their neighbors, which is a barrier on its own, but to muddy things further their ideas of proper dress are intertwined with a sort of feng shui-like cultural code that varies depending on region. Imagine if ideal fashion was dictated by horoscope, but the people on the other side of the river from you have a completely different idea of what determines your star sign and what shoes are tacky for a Capricorn to wear. Southern fashionistas bicker a lot, and they issue completely subjective judgments with intimidating confidence. It’s a very difficult world for a foreigner to enter.
One of the seemingly inconsequential things that Southerners imbue with meaning is symmetry. In most of the South, whether a fit is “predominantly symmetrical” or “predominantly asymmetrical” is highly gendered. Symmetry is stable, peaceful, and orderly – “womanly”, while asymmetry is “manly”: decisive, bold, and individual. (Sidenote: whether your outfit skews to the left or the right supposedly has further implications about a man’s character, but the interpretations are so varied that there’s no real dominant consensus about what each side means... no one takes it too seriously unless they’re really into those kinds of “small tells” mystic readings.) With specific exceptions (which I’ll go into later), to have a symmetrical outfit as a man or an asymmetrical outfit as a woman is a bit of a faux pas. It’s not as big of a social transgression as say, a Midland man wearing a dress, but it does read as eccentric and unfeminine/unmasculine at the very least.
It’s an arbitrary association but one very ingrained in the culture. Telling a woman she is “symmetrical” is a very archaic way of telling her she meets feminine ideals. Some women of younger generations find it condescending, the same way that some women irl are irked by people fawning over how “ladylike” or “petite” they are.
COLORS & PATTERNS & ORNAMENTATION:
“Simple and elegant” is not really an idea Southerners have. They have a long, long history of silk farming, as well as participation in international textile and dye trade. Block printing, weaving, and embroidery are all a big deal, and they have mastered these arts as much as any people can in a pre-industrial time. Even the common people have access to a variety of dyed and printed fabrics, even if that variety pales in comparison to what the Nobility can afford.
MAKEUP & BODY HAIR:
Makeup is gender-neutral, at least to a point. Both sexes might wear some sort of eyeshadow or eyeliner, but you’d be hard pressed to find a man who paints his lips. To be fair, though, women painting their lips isn’t terribly common either. During the South’s humid summers, most people are not eager to add more smearable cosmetics to their sweaty faces.
The South sees facial hair as a big marker of masculine adulthood. They share this with the Midland – although their ideas of what classy facial hair looks like differs a lot. While Midlanders prizes huge beards and mutton chops and mustaches, the South tends to prefer very styled and managed looks. To them, big lumberjack beards read less “manly and authoritative” and more “dock worker who doesn’t have the time for styling.” Usually, young men stay clean-shaven until they “come into their own” somehow – like when an apprentice finishes his training, or when a Nobleman gains his Viscountry.
Speaking of body hair, Southerners don’t usually have a lot of it... yet they are the only kingdom in Vestur to have adopted the utterly bizarre ritual of body hair removal. Perhaps it has something to do with the attention a thick carpet of chest hair draws when your neighbors think a bare arm is scandalous nudity. Regardless of the motive, shaving or waxing visible hair is something that Southerners are known to do. Not all of them, but enough of them, especially among the Nobility and wealthy commonfolk along the Midland border. It is a unisex practice.
THE FASHION PLATES
LOW COMMONER
Most Southern settlements are coastal and so their common labor takes the form of fishing, sailing, dock work, and the like. Thus, the clothes they wear must be durable, able to withstand getting wet, and breathable enough that you don’t braise yourself in your own sweat during a day’s work. Likewise, hair is kept short and unstyled. Long hair is heavy when wet, and who has the time to comb or braid or twist when you’re harvesting clams in the bay from dawn to dusk?
The low-born commoners aren’t entirely without options, though. A block-printed shawl or wrap is accessible enough, so long as you’re realistic about the colors you can afford. Reds, greens, and blues are plentiful (so long as you don’t mind them being muted shades made with cheaper dyes), and geometric one-color block prints are readily available.
Jewelry is minimal. A woman might have a few beaded necklaces made of bone, shell, or clay, but a man will rarely have much more than a pair of earrings. A married man usually spends his money adorning his wife before himself, in accordance with social norms regarding chivalry. Beneath a certain wealth threshold, being a man too well-dressed with too much jewelry becomes suspicious rather than sexy - if you’re married, you’re cheating your wife out of gifts, and if you’re not, you will be presumed to be some kind of unmarriageable rake more interested in himself than providing for a woman. Likewise, if you’re a woman without so much as a single necklace, bystanders will assume you’re either an unmarriageable shrew or some kind or a downtrodden housewife whose husband steals her money and drinks it.
Southern laborers might not be able to afford much, but they will be judgy as hell about what their neighbors DO buy...
MID-CLASS COMMONER
The Southern Kingdom is a trade empire, and so if you’ve any money worth mentioning, that power is yours to command (at a cost, of course). You can buy a garment in any color so long as you are flexible about the specific shade/pigment source (some are effectively too expensive for anyone but Nobility to wear), and your options for prints and embroidery are endless. Beyond imports, money brings you the ability afford local luxuries. For example: the South produces a lot of tyrian purple… but international demand means you’re bidding against the wealth of foreign markets when you buy it.
Men and women alike dress in heavy jewelry. Gemstones and precious metals are still a thing of scarcity and expense, but glass beads are very popular as an affordable alternative and orc ivory looks about the same as the rarer kinds. Most jewelry is unisex, though foreigners might assume that women’s jewelry is more ornate to that “dress up your wife before yourself” social norm I mentioned earlier.
Since the South associates short hair with poverty, most choose to grow their hair out if they can. Like… if you’re going bald, it’s perfectly respectable to shave it off, but otherwise it’s taken for granted that you want the longest and most beautiful mane possible. Dreads and braids are common; natural hair is seen more often on women than men. The fashion-conscious will sometimes lighten the ends of their hair as well.
NOBILITY
It’s hard to exemplify the South’s Nobility because the options for their fashion is quite varied depending on the individual’s dedication to tradition versus their adoption of Midland norms, among other factors (like how much money is actually in the family).
Take for example, whether or not a Noblewoman wears a veil or a cape. In the South, capes are seen as a traditionally authoritative, masculine piece of clothing, and veils are their historic feminine counterpart. But, in the past few decades, it has become perfectly acceptable for women to choose a cape over a veil. And, as their popularity grows, veils are increasingly seen as old-fashioned grandma wear.
The Noblewoman depicted here is definitely on the more traditional end of things. A traditional Noblewoman’s dress is a bespoke silk canvas, and any other sashes or layers are carefully chosen so that they do not clash or distract from the huge sheet of custom silk art wrapped around her lower body. Usually, such a skirt will be a nature scene depicting a local landscape or some flora/fauna from the territory she lives in. Meanwhile, her veil will be themed around her pledge – yellow in this example, with a cloud motif to match. Unlike a more “modern” Noblewoman, who is likely to have a huge mane of hair covered in bejeweled hairpins, a traditional Noblewoman’s hair is kept neat and unadorned so as to fit under a veil without being short like a peasant’s.
(The Nobleman here is a more “modern” Southern Noble a well, probably one who lives close enough to the Midland to wear a shirt and cover his ankles.)
ALNILAM NOBLE FASHION
...And then you have the other acceptable style of dress for a Southern Noble: the Midland-modeled style born in Alnilam. It forgoes a lot of the established norms in favor of emulating the Midland. Symmetry and asymmetry become gender neutral; skin is covered more than shown; florals are favored over geometric patterns. This style (or rather, an earlier version of this style) was in vogue as THE cutting edge fashion for Southern Nobles… many decades ago.
Younger generations find it to be a worst of both worlds between Southern fashion and Midland fashion. At best, it is seen as campy and enjoyed “ironically.” Yet, Alnilam fashion persists despite its critics, because Archduke Keshet is in his 60s and wholeheartedly believes it looks as sleek and cool as he thought it did back then.
Midland Nobles have fucking hated every decade of “Alnilam fashion,” by the way. It always manages to violate at least 3 fashion rules of the corresponding era.
BOREAL SOUTHERN (NOBLE) FASHION
Here we have another outlier among Southern fashion.
The Boreal South has a complicated history I won’t be going into here. In summary, it is a geographically isolated enclave and it spent a period of time functionally independent before it was reclaimed by the South following the Unification War. As a result, it is a distinct splinter culture. They’re economically and politically integrated with the rest of the South, but their customs have diverged. Their fashion is no exception.
A few notable quirks include:
1. A more muted color sense, preferring light pastel colors; for most of its existence, Southern dyes were not easily attainable in the Boreal South, and so they had to employ Northern methods or trade for Midland pigments. (Itaja’s black-on-black ensemble is quite unusual, and reads as something akin to “goth” or “emo” to his fellow Boreal Southerner.)
2. An insistence on depicting Southern flora and fauna either using Northern nature as reference or using no reference at all. In this example, the woman’s dress has a mango tree drawn with the proportions of a cherry tree, and the man’s cape depicts banana flowers growing on fir trees!
3. A more lax attitude towards gendered symmetry.
4. An affinity for feathers, especially ostrich down. Down is warm and feathers are (according to public opinion) a more elegant alternative to fur for trim and decor. The fashion of the Boreal South is almost obsessive in their enjoyment of feathers; the practice of dying feathers is seen as unique to the region.
5. Conditional use of fur. Through much of Vestur, fur is heavily associated with Northern frontier life and the idea of “barbarians.” The Boreal South is one of the few places outside the Northern Kingdom where that association affords it some respect. Wearing fur is cool, but only if you have the credentials to back it up – if you can trace your blood lineage back to the Boreal South’s founding. It’s seen as disrespectful for a Southerner to wear fur in Polaris otherwise, a claim of false pedigree.
6. And finally… a terrible refusal to dress for the weather among the wealthy and the Noble. In Boreal South high fashion, exposed skin and Southern cuts unfit for the climate are seen as a stylish way to express that you are indeed Southern. This is absolutely untenable for commoners working outdoors, but a man of wealth might work indoors or otherwise arrange his winter in a way that prevents him from freezing to death. Pretending you aren’t cold is a big macho (gender neutral) thing and any Boreal Southerner with self respect will assert that they are just so acclimated to the winters that freezing temperatures don’t bother them.
CETOLIST GARB
Last on the list, we have the vestments of the Cetolist faithful. Compared to the Holy Cerostian Church of the Midland, the South takes more seriously the idea of a vow of poverty. Even higher ranking members of the Southern Church live and dress simply.
There is little choice and little variance if you are in a Cetolist convent or monastery. Sybils wear a simple robe and veil, and their hair is cut so that it does not fall into the ivorywater when they’re channeling prophecies. Monks, once they have passed initiation, don a blue sash printed with waves and dye the tips of their dreads. They are allowed to choose the length of their facial hair… but not much else. A monk’s tattoos are earned over the course of years of dutiful piety, and follow a rigid template that seldom varies.
(...The tattooing of sybils is a lesser known practice. It is not forbidden to speak of or anything, but it is considered very intimate and personal. They’re typically drawn on the back and kept private by default. Unlike a monk’s tattoos, they are wholly unique to the individual.)
-LS
