guys you can see the cute little lower back dimples… oh my fucking god……

#also kind of a bizarre pants design. why do u need two different lace up sections I don’t understand

I saw your tags and I think I can help answer that question. The ties at the back are for adjusting how the pants fit. You know how corsets have laces at the back and also fasten in the front? It's like that.

@wisteria-lodge knows more about the specifics of historical fashion than me, and one thing I learned from her is that Stede's pants have little ties in the back so they can be adjusted too.

You saw back-ties on basically all 1700s breeches. Clothing was a lot more expensive before the Industrial Revolution, a single garment was supposed to stay with you though various changes to the size of your body, and so a lot of stealth re-sizing laces were included.

It's actually really nice to see those back-laces in OFMD. It's just a nice little detail you often don't see them in historical tv and film, because back-lacing can look a little goofy by modern standards, and there's no real reason to build an actor's costume to be resizable. But here's another glimpse of them on Ed's Privateer uniform:

Izzy's pants ARE weird though, because unlike Ed and Stede who have your expected 1700s fall-front breeches (albeit in leather)

(notice how there's no fly or center seam, instead they've got two buttons holding up a flap) (and also notice Stede's cute little non-functional, non-period side lacing)

Izzy is wearing these very unusual lace-front trousers.

My personal theory is that Izzy's costume is supposed to be subtly evoking *1600s* men's fashion (instead of 1700s) as a way to make him feel old-fashioned, unchanging, and kind of a stick-in-the mud. Front lacing (or buttoning) like that is something you DID see on 1600s breeches.

That kind of sleeve shape he's created for himself with his sleeve-garters (where it's tight to the elbow and then puffs) is EXTREMELY 1600s.

and so is that specific kind of tied + folded over collar with nothing underneath.

So yeah. The back lacing is one of the few details of his outfit that's 1700s. Also Izzy would look really good with a single teardrop pearl earring ^^^ It would fit his style profile perfectly.

AY YOOOO I just learned some things thank you!! And I LOVE the costume analysis of him being meant to look older fashioned, that’s so cool! :O

Rings of Our Flag Means Death

This is somewhat conjecture but I have a theory about Ed's rings on Our Flag Means Death and I need to get it out of my head and written down. I'd be thrilled if @davidjenks could confirm but I understand if he's too busy!

I'm sorry about how bad these pics are, because of how Max blocks its content I had to take photos of my computer rather than screen grabs.

My theory is that the bright green ring Ed wears in Season 2 belonged to Stede and that when Ed destroyed the ship right after Stede left in season 1 Ed found the ring and kept it. I am basing this on nobody wearing it in Season 1, it being way too big for Ed, it being Stede's color, and Ed not getting rid of it when he gets rid of the "poisoned" loot. As you'll see below, Stede's rings are canonically too big for Ed. There is NO reason for Gypsy Taylor to make Taika Waititi wear a ring that doesn't fit unless there was a specific reason for the ring.

Additionally, When Ed gets rid of all the treasure in 2x6 why would he keep the ring if it was part of the plunder? There is no way he'd keep it unless it meant something important to him.

Then Ed throws his leathers overboard but he STILL keeps the green ring. Why would he do that if it was part of what the leathers meant to him?

It HAS to have a different meaning, and I believe that meaning HAS to be Stede.

We all know that Ed kept Stede's black tie after they switched clothes in 1x4. He wears it through most of season 1. He has a history of keeping part of Stede close to him.

You can't see the tie in season 2 until he has decided to drive the ship into the storm, so sometime between when he leaves Izzy with the gun, and when he tells Frenchie to let him steer the boat he put the scarf back on. After he and Stede are reunited we don't see the scarf again until it is placed on Izzy's grave. Why?

I think it's because the crew knew that the scarf belonged to Stede. If Ed had worn it prior to driving into the storm the crew would have definitively known that sweet Ed was still in there. Clearly they knew why Ed was behaving in the way that he was, but I think Ed probably thought he wasn't being so obvious.

He could wear the ring and thus keep Stede close to him because nobody had seen it before and would just assume it was from a plunder, not as a reminder of Stede.

Stede could have given it to Ed before they got separated, I'm assuming if he had we would have seen that. But regardless if Stede gave it to Ed or Ed took it, the fact remains it HAS to be Stedes as far as I'm concerned.

Once Stede and Ed are reunited he doesn't need the scarf anymore. It's too reminiscent of the life he wanted to leave, but the ring symbolizes Stede without the pirate baggage.

_______

These are Ed's rings in season 1. I have watched pretty darn closely and other then when he and Stede change clothes, they remain the same all season. AND THEY FIT HIM.

This is Ed wearing Stede's rings. They are clearly too big for him. All of them are sideways nearly the entire time he wears them.

In 2x1 Ed is suddenly wearing this ring. It's a bright green rectangular stone being held in by 4 prongs. It is NOT seen in season 1. The image below is from the sequence of them going on all the raids and is the only clear pic i could get of the green ring in 2x1.

You can see it a lot more clearly in 2x2.

It also does NOT fit Ed well, just like Stede's other rings from 1x4. He wears is all season except in 2x5 when he doesn't wear any rings. He does wear it in 2x8 I just didn't take a picture. You can see it most clearly when Ed puts his hand up when he is trying to save Izzy.

Ed gets rid of his leathers but keeps the green ring

Heartened by the response to my costuming meta, I'm going to write something bossier about a pet peeve of mine that will make all of my new followers leave.

I am always, always seeing descriptions of Ed and Stede unlacing their or each other's pants/breeches and I am here today to tell you that that doesn't make sense.

We don't often get to see the tops of Ed's leather pants or Stede's breeches, but when we do, we see what's called a "fall front".

(I haven't come across a good screencap yet showing this on Stede's breeches, but it's there. We don't see it a lot because his waistcoats cover it, but when he's just in a shirt and breeches, like the "run me through" scene, it's visible.)

In Actual 1717, breeches tended to have a buttoning front fly like you'd find on a vintage pair of jeans. Waistcoats were generally about knee-length and fully covered the breeches, as you can see in my earlier post about fashion of the period. As a result, it didn't really matter how clothes looked at the crotch.

In the second half of the century, men's clothes got tighter and more body-conscious, waistcoats being made shorter and coats with cutaway skirts. Tailors likely developed the fall front in response to the fastening of the breeches being suddenly on display - it smooths everything out and hides some of the buttons. Here's a terrible old b&w photo showing how it works:

So they button at the waist, and then the flap (the "fall") comes up and buttons over the bottom of the waistband. No laces necessary!

I would argue that it's even sexier than laces, too, tbh.

THE Captain Bonnet suit is, of course, the light turquoise one from the first and ninth episodes, the one most fanart depicts him in.

This is wildly different from what he wore in his old life! The color is vivid - colorS, actually, because the waistcoat is slightly different in both iterations - and the coat and breeches are made of very shiny satin. The coat is also dripping with braid, and actually has shaping to accentuate his waist and flare out into skirts. Each end of his cravat has two lacy ruffles, and they are not hidden at all. He's still wearing the secondary tie, but it's much thinner than the others, hardly covering the main cravat. There are rosettes on his shoulders, like military epaulettes but more delicate. And the shoes, of course, have adorable white bows rather than buckles.

The other outfits Stede wears as a pirate have lots of similarities. Very bright colors, contrasting in the same outfit. The lacy cravats, frequently without a colored necktie on top (especially after he gives the black one to Ed). Closer fits. Velvets and satins. Embroidery. The all-white "man for sale" outfit!

It's tricky to situate these costumes with regard to normative English masculinity of the period. Duller colors go all the way up the social spectrum ca. 1717, but satins and velvets and embroidered waistcoats were very much a part of elite men's fashion; at the same time, the idea of the proper English gentleman went along with plainer things - see the example portraits from the last post. There were a number of effeminate male stereotypes in the 18th century, even before the macaronis of the 1770s, usually incorporating a supposed feminine interest in fashion and an affected way of speaking and acting not unlike more modern stereotypes; it wasn't unusual for them to be referred to as "neuter" and assumed to be either (what we would now call) asexual or homosexual. In that sense, the issue is less exactly what Stede would wear, and more that he clearly cares a lot about it, amassing a large wardrobe and being exacting in having it made up a certain way.

Within the context of the show and the way other gentlemen dress in it (not counting the party aristocrats because they're basically clowns, but Stede's father and the men in Bridgetown), Stede's pirate style is definitely not normative. It's queer. It's not just Stede bringing his aristocratic/gentry style to sea and reveling in his class privilege, it's him taking up a style that he is not allowed to wear as a supposedly heterosexual patriarch. It's even in his nightclothes - the nightshirts he wears on the Revenge have ruffles and lace, and the ones at home range from "basically just a shirt" (1x10) to "well, there's a tiny bit of embroidery" (1x04 flashbacks).

There is one outfit - well, technically three - that does something really subtle with this.

Stede apparently owns three fairly similar coats trimmed with gold braid and two matching waistcoats, one on sea and two on land. The one he wears in 1x05 is made of a damask (you can see the pattern woven into the fabric if you look at it full-size) and uses two different types of braid; he also wears it with a prominently knotted cravat that ends in a van dycked lace, which matches the lace on his cuffs. The 1x10 suits, on the other hand, are wool broadcloth (or something approximating it). The collarless one, which is bluer onscreen, has gold trim without as much of a pattern, and the trim on the one with a black collar is actually black with gold details.

Crucially, in 1x10, his cravat is tucked completely into his waistcoat to hide any potential lace on the ends, and his sleeves have plain or barely trimmed ruffles. He's squeezing himself back into the straight mold society requires, but at the same time ... this is a more exuberant look than his flashback outfits. The only teal he wore in them was in the family portrait, and that coat was totally unfitted and had no trim. He's fundamentally changed, both from getting to be himself on the Revenge and from the kiss on the beach - that's good and bad, encompassing both his realization of his own queerness and, you know, the whole "unhand me or bleed" thing. Instead of burying himself in books and quietly crying by himself, he's now doing things like getting drunk and confidently making scenes in public. "I don't fit here anymore, do I?" he asks Mary when they have that nighttime conversation.

I definitely get where people are coming from when they portray him as more rugged, and I'd be surprised if s2 had him acquire a full wardrobe again immediately, unless it picks up after some time's gone by. a) This show isn't overly concerned with realism, but I mean he did just arrive at the island in a dinghy with absolutely nothing and b) we do need the symbolism of him starting over. But be careful of interpreting his clothes as just a representation/extension of his class, as @appleteeth pointed out here. The way Stede dresses throughout most of s1 is very much part of his self-expression.

(Part I)

One thing I tend to see really disparate takes on is how much of Stede's presentation is masculine or feminine, and I keep thinking about it. The tricky thing is that of course standards of masculinity have changed between the early eighteenth century and now, and at the same time this production is very much not one that's going to be historically accurate in such a way that it confuses the audience!

So, 1717 masculinity first.

There's a stereotype that prior to Beau Brummell, there was no sense that men should be restrained in dress, but it's not true at all. Even in the 1710s and 1720s, English gentlemen were expected to have a certain soberness in their clothing - portraits show a preponderance of browns, as well as darker blues, greys, and occasionally reds; there's not that much trim, either, beyond buttons and occasionally a line of gold or silver braid. John Blathwayt is among the flashier, with a waistcoat and massive cuffs made out of a silvery damask - but attached to a brown silk (and really, grey-on-grey isn't that flamboyant). To a modern eye, the flowing wigs and stockinged calves relate to women's fashion, but both were symbols of masculinity in the period - women's hairstyles were more contained and natural, and their legs were covered with skirts.

The clothes Stede wears in the scenes set before he goes to sea generally reflect these norms. They're in darker tones, and cut fairly loose and not showing off his body. The orangey-brown anniversary outfit has the lightest colors and the closest fit, and it's still shades of brown and a pretty boxy shape. His cravat is often lacy, which really isn't very masculine for the period, but it's partially covered with a colored tie/secondary cravat - along with his lacy shirt cuffs, that's definitely something that can be read as a small expression of his style/queerness, which he's also half-concealing. In the betrothal scene, his cravat is actually a strangely rough fabric in a light grey, and I think it's tucked into his waistcoat so we can't actually see the ends.

I also want to note that the suit fabric really matches the upholstery in Stede's father's carriage. It's hard for me to not read this outfit as being chosen by Bonnet the elder to repress anything non-masculine about Stede, and also to show him as a possession, just like the carriage. On the other hand, the anniversary suit seems to be the brightest and most fitted, with a contrasting and I think floral-patterned waistcoat, and that was the scene where Stede tries to be more open than he's ever been with Mary about what he likes and wants.

There's a similar thing in the scene where Mary tells Stede to play with Alma and Louis. He starts off reading and ignoring Mary in a plain dark green coat, the ends of his cravat hidden behind his book and the top of it largely covered with a green tie. Then we jump cut to him playing with the kids and he has taken off the plain coat to reveal a patterned, light blue waistcoat (short and fitted), and he's tied the green tie around his head to uncover the white cravat, which is also revealed to have intricate lacy ends. Likewise, when he runs away to sea, he wears a fairly yellow waistcoat, embroidered with flowers - the only embroidery we see on him in the flashbacks apart from a little bit on his nightshirt right before he runs away.

So, how does this compare to what he wears as Captain Bonnet? (Part II)

#the fact that his signature colour is muted when he gets home#and it doesn't look nearly as extravagant#people need to realise just how much his clothes mean to him and how they show his joy of being on the sea compared to life on land#i hope he gets to continue showing his passion for clothing even if he's not rich any more because it's clearly important to him#and fashion is not a frivolous hobby ESPECIALLY with someone bad at expressing themselves emotionally#(yes I'm projecting here a little)#and ESPECIALLY for queer people expressing their freedom away from 'normal' society#actual ray of sunshine become human stede bonnet via @appleteeth YES

Jenkins immediately wants it known that Christine Wada designed [Blackbeard’s] costume. “The brief was Road Warrior and then a picture of Prince from 1979. And you remember that little half shirt?” As Jenkins talks he stands up and tucks his shirt in, showing off just the littlest bit of his torso. I am delighted, this is so fun and silly. I cannot believe David Jenkins is demonstrating the parts of Blackbeard’s outfit that are most like Prince. “Then, we thought that he should slowly morph into Prince’s colors. He should start all black, and then the purple comes out as he falls in love and embraces falling in love with Stede.” I don’t mention that this will confirm a lot of meta that’s out there, but I think that maybe he knows. |  Our Flag Means Death Showrunner David Jenkins on Fandom and Queer Fantasy

The fact that we KNOW it was literally the same robe. Not a refitted copy. Taika is literally wearing the same exact robe we earlier see Rhys in, because the costume department only had enough fabric to make one robe total.

So the way the robe is comically big on Taika and swallows him whole while it was just kinda Aesthetically Oversized on Rhys is literally just. The difference in their clothing sizes, shoulder and chest measurements specifically.

What I'm saying is despite what Taika's stage presence, head-to-toe leather, and some fanfic would have you believe, Ed is clearly the smol one in the relationship. And he needs to be cuddled like, now.

still not over how much I love this

Posts that would kill a peasant from 1173

Mephistopheles and Margaretta, A Double Statue - medium: sculpture, sycamore wood, sculptor unknown, 19th century. Currently located in the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad, India.

i’ve reblogged posts featuring these two separately, but they go great together

MOAR costuming shenanigans

So @grison-in-space got a follow-up comment to that viral post…

…and then she tagged me in, so OH BOY, here we go!!

(Here’s the photo set so you can follow along at home.)

I didn’t weigh in on the last round of the joey vs. hcav costuming-optical-illusions debate, because I know nuffink about theatre stuff, but now we’re talking about SUITS and gremble can talk about suits. :D

Okay, so—there were two things that IMMEDIATELY jumped out at me:

#1: GORGE, a.k.a. how low is the V down the front of your chest? One of these creates the impression of less chest, and one of them gives the impression of MOAR CHEST!!!

Joey is wearing a waistcoat (fashion-forward choice, I dig it 👌), which gives him a very high gorge. Meanwhile, hcav’s two-button suit creates a substantially lower gorge, maximizing the amount of chest he has on display. It is, for anyone who knows about men’s fashion, a mildly conspicuous choice here, because the two-button suit is generally the province of younger men. It reads as more fashion-conscious, and hcav is admittedly a movie star, but I daresay the default choice for someone of his age and height/build would be a three-button suit—

🚨🚨 KILL BILL SIRENS 🚨🚨

OH. OH. OHHHHH.

So I went back and double-checked that photoset to make sure I was counting his buttons correctly (because the watermark was making it hard to see in that pic), and it turns I wasn't—

—because hcav isn’t wearing a two-button suit, he is wearing a goddamned ONE-BUTTON SUIT, which.

What the FUCK. What EVEN.

You can no longer pretend this was an accident.

Deep breaths.

Okay, so:

Three-button suits are the standard, the default, the thoroughly unremarkable option. You can wear them open, or you can do up the top two buttons. When wearing a suit jacket, the lowest button is always left unbuttoned, full stop; it is purely decorative. (You’ll notice that Joey is wearing his waistcoat correctly by leaving the bottom button undone.)

I’m not sure when two-button suits went mainstream, but they definitely enjoyed a renaissance with the “metrosexual” trend of the late 90’s/early 2000s. They can be part of a full suit, or just tossed on over a t-shirt and jeans. By virtue of the lower gorge, they look less stuffy than a three-button suit—more casual and lived-in, perhaps more athletic. Even people who aren’t consciously aware of the two-button/three-button distinction can nonetheless feel the vibe difference between them.

Meanwhile, one-button suits are.

Uhm.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but—

For women.

Women’s white-collar wear, hampered as it is by the conflicting directives of “do all the same power-signaling stuff that menswear does, but do it suited to a female body, and also be sexy~~!!” results in… norms that are far less standardized than white-collar menswear.

Womenswear invented one-button suits, because they are power-signaling while fitting better to female curves. One-button suits, on women, will give the same LIKE A BOSS profile that two- or three-button suits give men.

But one-button suits on men are so rare that they’re practically a mutation that doesn’t occur in the wild.

Like, for people who aren’t nerds for men’s fashion, I’m pretty sure I can’t convey to you just how fucking weird it is to see hcav in a one-button suit. Like. This is akin to watching him walk out onto the red carpet in a thong. You’d have to go out of your way to even FIND a one-button suit for men. This was not an accident.

Someone—and I seriously doubt it was hcav himself, considering that his ‘brand’ is a conservative, conventional sort of masculinity—picked out a one-button suit that lowered his gorge practically to his navel in order to put all that chest on display.

And as I’d pointed out to grison in groupchat—hcav’s jacket is too small in the torso. That crease you can see coming off the button, and the way his lapels are spreading across his pecs? Means it’s too tight. Which is also contributing to the impression that his manly busom is so huge that it is BURSTING to be free of this cruel prison. If hcav were wearing a suit that actually fit his frame, his physique would be far less noticeable.

(An aside: This is, in fact, the entire point of men’s suits. With the right fit, they will make literally any body appear to be the conventional mesomorphic ideal. They are designed to make average dudes look like hcav; when they get an actual hcav, they are playing down his musculature.)

But yeah. Gorge. It’s a thing.

#2 thing that jumped out at me was the width of their ties:

And while we’re at it, the width of their lapels and collars too, because these elements tend to coordinate across an outfit. Joey’s everything is very slim, from his tie and lapels, to the cut of his sleeves and trousers—and what that reads as, very distinctly, is a young man’s look.

In fact, everything about Joey’s look signals “young man who knows and cares about fashion,” because nothing about his suit is the standard/conventional choice. Super-slim fit. Three-quarter length jacket in contrasting fabric. (With weird buttoning pattern.) Waistcoat. Peak lapels. Clipped collar points. Highwater cuffs. He’s wearing a suit, but it’s a fashion suit not a corporate suit. Every element of that outfit is a marked deviation from the default.

(And as @redhorsedawn pointed out in the original costuming post, the open jacket also serves to obscure the shape of Joey’s torso, by suggesting that the width of his hips goes straight up.)

Meanwhile, hcav’s dressed like he’s auditioning for a Mitt Romney biopic. Everything about his suit is subtly (or not-so-subtly) cut to emphasize width. The tie. The lapels. That collar that’s spreading so fucking wide it’s taking up three seats on the bus. And while his suit is tight around the torso, it is cut very loose in the sleeves and mirrored in the loose cut of his trousers (I jacked the contrast down to make it easier to see):

(Incidentally, both of their jackets are too wide at the shoulder, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Except for that weird one-button, hcav’s suit is very much that of a businessman/politician—conventional design, with nothing that pushes the envelope like Joey’s outfit, and cut to enhance the impression of breadth and age.

If you still don’t believe me, here, have hcav vs. hcav-in-a-suit-that-fits-him:

Higher gorge, slimmer tie and collar, looser torso, closer fit in the sleeves and trousers. Bam.

In conclusion, whoever picked out their red-carpet looks for this event was deliberately doing everything in their power to make Joey look young and skinny and metrosexual, and hcav look broad and powerful and mature. (lol, sound familiar?) But it is, in fact, more lies and trickery and optical illusions, just like in the show.

(For people who would like further resources on how to become a nerd for men’s fashion, I recommend Alan Flusser’s Dressing the Man.)

(lol and tagging you in this @hellotailor​ cuz it’s your wheelhouse)

I literally gasped at the picture of the single button. My god, that’s fucking obvious!

Other notes:

Oh and I’m going to just for a little sec argue whether Henry Cavill would have an opinion on his suiting choices because his “brand” is conventional, conservative masculinity. That “brand” is an image that is his meal ticket as an actor, but he’s also a huge fucking nerd who paints models and wears his work costumes home. I could see him enthusiastically agreeing to these choices to preserve the image of the difference.

yep – I suspect, that in addition to the collar shape and knot, that Cavill’s shirt is a weeeee skosh too small in the neck, to help give the illusion that his Manly Neck is just Bursting Out like Gaston. In the suit-that-fits picture, you can see that his shirt collar’s fit is much better and that it makes his neck look significantly more normal.

idle Jaskier-related notion:

Joey Batey is really approximately the same size and shape as Henry Cavill, and there are a number of clever techniques in pretty much all Jaskier's costumes to hide this fact and make him look about three or four inches narrower than he actually is. The costumers work really really hard to make him look that twinky, often with cleverly cut shoulder decorations that pretend he's trying to look bigger than he is and have the actual effect of making him look a lot lighter.

On a Doylistic level this makes sense, because it's hard to make Geralt look Huge and Imposing next to your non-combatant harmless sidekick if said sidekick is a jacked six foot burly man.

On a Watsonian level, however, the notion of Jaskier as this big meaty dude aggressively arguing with all his tailors to ensure that he looks as non threatening and foppish and entertaining as possible while also looking as sexy as he can (for a Jaskier definition of sexy, at least) is generating considerable entertainment for me this fine morning.

"No! My shoulders must look slender!"

"But, sir, you could look ripped!"

"Absolutely not! I must look slim and gentle and unassuming!"

"As you wish, sir... So do you wish it to be cut with much excess fabric, so that you look small and also very wealthy to afford so much?"

[howling] "No! I must look slender and gentle and also above else very attractive!"

Geralt doesn't notice any of this until they try to share a tiny hostel bed on the road and Jaskier cuddles up to him and abruptly there is no more room in that bed

I need a full picture costume run down of this by someone in the fashion field stat

Ask and ye shall receive! I may not work in the fashion field but I do work in the costume production industry for theatre/film so this is totally my area. Using clothes to change someone’s appearance is super common, and Tim Aslam’s costume design for The Witcher is actually a really good example of this, so buckle up because this is a long ride!

Creating an illusion like this has two main components: shape (the style lines created by the clothes), and fit (the way the clothes hang on the person’s body), and is the result of close collaboration between the designer and the production team. 

We’re going to talk about season one, because that’s where the difference is the most obvious. Take a look at Geralt:

First, let’s talk about shape. The goal here is to make Geralt look strong and imposing, and the best way to do that is to exaggerate the triangle of his upper torso. See how much broader his shoulders look than his waist in both images? A loose shirt over tight pants is a classic way to establish this, because the shirt blousing at the waist (note that the pants sit high up at the natural waist) makes the hips looks narrower in comparison. Note also that his shirt has an asymmetrical closure - a centered vertical line down the shirt would make him looks slimmer, while the off-center one adds width.

His armor does this by giving him those massive shoulder pieces, which both lengthen and raise his shoulder line. I would estimate that they raise Henry Cavill’s shoulder line by a good two inches just from the bulk of the leather alone. His torso armor also does a really clever thing by having a very subtle V shape to the vertical lines, making his waist look smaller. If you count the number of stripes above and below his belt (again, sitting high at the natural waist), you’ll notice that the narrow stripe at the front edge of the armscye disappears, which allows the side stripes to make that V shape.

Now let’s talk about fit. The fit of Geralt’s shirt looks simple but is actually super specific. It’s very easy for an actor to get lost in a shirt that is too loose - if there’s too much extra fabric then it will just make the actor look smaller by drawing attention to how baggy it is. This shirt fits just right: the sleeves are full enough to allow for movement but still relatively fitted (and rolling up the sleeves actually also helps add breadth to Geralt’s torso by continuing the horizontal line at his waist). The body of the shirt fits smoothly across the shoulders and chest, and has just enough fullness to drape at the waist without feeling baggy.

Now let’s look at Jaskier.

We’ll start with this look. Shape and fit are very interconnected here so it’s just gonna be a jumble. First thing I notice: the jacket. Unlike your traditional fantasy/historical doublet, all of Jaskier’s jackets end at the waist, rather than continuing into a peplum/skirt like Geralt’s armor does. This cropped jacket is evocative of childhood/immaturity, an association that is generally considered to have its roots in schoolboy uniforms of the 19th and early 20th century (see the image of schoolboys wearing “Eton Jackets” below)

Jaskier also tends to wear his jackets open. This creates a vertical line down his torso, which is generally slimming, but it also totally obscures the shape of his torso. The brain is going to take the line of his hip, which we can see, and the armscye of his jacket, (which actually looks to be cut ever so slightly artificially narrow but it’s hard to tell) and fill in a line between them, which is likely going to end up being slightly narrower than his actual ribcage. He does have poofs at the top of his sleeves, which can be a technique used to add width, but if they’re cut and fit carefully you can actually hide some of the breadth of the shoulders inside the poof and make it look like the fullness comes from the poof and not the body.

Note: the “armscye” is the technical name for the armhole, but specifically the torso part. The corresponding sleeve part is the “sleevehead.”

Again, we have another open jacket, this one with strong vertical lines. See how the line of Jaskier’s hip flows up through the edge of the doublet all the way up through the armscye? This makes his torso look narrower despite the jacket’s shoulder tabs. In contrast, this line is always broken on Geralt’s outfits, whether at the waist with his shirt or with the giant shoulder pieces with his armor. Jaskier’s pants also tend to fit more loosely, which de-emphasizes the triangle of his shoulders to waist.

Okay this is my favorite image to illustrate everything we have going on here. Look at Jaskier’s jacket. What’s the first thing you notice? The bright yellow inset slashes in his chest. The high contrast in color draws the eye inwards and distracts from the breadth of his shoulders, where we have another cleverly cut poof. His jacket is again cropped, with strong vertical lines, over the baggiest pants he wears in the season.

Now look at Jaskier and Geralt together. Jaskier is all about long vertical lines, while Geralt’s predominate lines are either horizontal or diagonal. Additionally, Jaskier’s hips look even to his shoulders, even if they’re not, and Geralt’s shoulders are exaggerated. The two characters have a very different presence, even if the actors underneath are similar.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this introduction to costume design! Creating the illusory effects like this is one of my favorite things and I am excited to share!!

I… I did not expect anyone to respond, let alone respond with a fucking screenshot-worthy answer. I love you. I literally love you. Can I marry you? Wait, can you be my tailor? Do you have an Etsy shop? I’m gonna be an archaeologist one day, I’ll need OUTFITS PLEASE I WANNA INDEFINITELY HIRE YOU

This is not my ship.  This is not my subject.  This is really not anything I ever anythinged about.  I just have to reblog this because of the utter BALLER response this person gave, which revolutionized my perception of costume design without me even knowing I wanted said perception revolutionized.  This comment is everything good about tumblr in one place, and @redhorsedawn, I salute you.  Magnificent.

#and jaskier being consistently so much smaller in fic#is proof that all these tricks WORKED#and worked so well that people didn't even notice or question them#just accepted them and quickly incorporated it into their fanon

Why Dean’s Heaven Outfit is so Cursed

You may have seen my previous post about why Dean’s outfit in heaven is so cursed, but since then I have spotted even more.

According to Jared at the Virtual Con after 15x20 aired when asked ‘Were any lines added or ad libbed by you two [Jared and Jensen]?’ (starts at 29:28 timestamp)

So from this, we know that Sam on the bridge in 15x20 was supposed to be dressed like the pilot. I infer that Dean was also supposed to be dressed like the pilot but based on the wording it’s possible that’s not what he meant. As soon as we got BTS pics from the last day on set however, we all pointed out that they were dressed like the pilot but there is a difference.

So what did Dean wear in the pilot? He had on 2 different outfits. First a dark jacket and a red shirt.

After Dean gets covered in mud, he changes into a denim shirt and John’s leather jacket.

Another thing to note is that both Sam and Dean wear sneakers in the pilot. No boots for Dean.

So it looks like for Dean in 15x20, the heaven outfit is based on outfit 1 with the dark jacket, plain red shirt and jeans.

Dean consistently has plain red shirts through the seasons and continues to wear the dark jacket until 9x03 so I would bet that the very jacket was sitting in storage until s15.

Something to note is that while Sam is in a virtually identical outfit in 15x20 and the pilot, Dean is not. They must have had to source Sam’s outfit specifically for this. Sam does wear a hoodie and a beige jacket in later seasons so they could have built it out of Sam’s wardrobe but they chose not to. He does not wear these exact clothes at any other point in the series apart from in Heaven. Dean’s Heaven outfit is just made out of his clothing from later in the series. They both wore sneakers in the pilot but in Heaven Dean still has his boots while Sam is wearing sneakers.

Compare:

If I was building Dean’s heaven outfit out of later seasons outfits, I would have chosen his plain red shirt (note: this is not the Demon!Dean/MoC!Dean shirt, it is a different one).

By the later seasons, Dean doesn’t actually wear dark dark jackets much. His only black jacket in s15 was this denim one which he has had since 10x04:

But the wardrobe department decided not to go for these and instead decided on cursed items instead.

So what was Dean wearing in Heaven?

The Shirt

Now this shirt is just plain cursed. This is only seen at 2 other points in the whole series, and it was a new one for s15. 

We first see it in 15x04 Atomic Monsters for the Chuck AU where Lucifer!Sam kills Dean. Directed by Mr Jensen Ackles himself.

Thanks to him, we also get a good look at the shirt

So this is the first time we ever see this shirt and its for a Chuck AU where Sam kills Dean.

The second time we see it, its in 15x13 and this is another cursed appearance. It is worn by Huntercorp!Dean while pretending to be our Dean in the bunker.

And why was Huntercorp!Dean there at all? Because Chuck was destroying worlds.

When AU!Dean leaves the bunker, there is an exchange that is a bit cursed.

So the shirt actually gets a mention by Huntercorp!Dean.

What we see here is that this shirt is NEVER worn by our Dean. It is worn by a Chuck AU Dean and Huntercorp!Dean fleeing a world Chuck had destroyed while pretending to be our Dean.

We never see our Dean wear this shit until Heaven which seems like an odd choice.

Dean also doesn’t normally wear red and black plaid shirt. In fact, the previous one he had has an interesting history as pointed out by @wigglebox​ when we were discussing it.

It is first seen in 12x21 and he continues to wear it into 12x23 when Dean has to go into Mary’s mind.

We then see it again and for the last time in 13x16 Scoobynatural.

Both of these episodes are sort of AU episodes where he’s venturing into another character’s mind or heading into Scooby-Doo world.

So both Dean’s black and red plaid shirts have a cursed history relating things not being real and for this specific shirt, AUs. They could have chosen a plain red shirt almost identical to the pilot but they chose not to.

The Jacket

Dean has this jacket for a long time. He has a blue one and a black one. This black jacket has been around since s9 and gets worn a fair bit. On the whole, it doesn’t have a very happy history, its first worn for Kevin’s funeral in 9x10 and is worn after Claire is bitten by a Werewolf in 12x16.

However, the most notable thing about this jacket is what should have been it’s demise.

Dean is wearing it in 13x23 when he fights Lucifer and AU!Michael takes over his body.

At the end of the episode, we see that Michael has changed dean’s clothes and presumably ditched them somewhere.

Dean comes back at the end of 14x02 wearing Michael’s clothes. He arrives back at the bunker in 14x03 and changes into Dean clothes but is missing his watch for the whole episode, presumably because Michael ditched it. The denim shirt Dean wears in 13x23 is never seen again (yes, I have watched s14 and s15 just to check and have spreadsheets for Dean’s outfits!). His boots are back in 14x03 but I suppose you could argue he had multiple pairs.

We are left to assume that the jacket is also gone (and it really should be gone) but it makes a miraculous reappearance in 14x13 Lebanon.

Now this episode is an odd episode. They get their Dad back by messing up time, Cas doesn’t know them until they reset it back again. The shirt in this episode is also notable and I will write a post on it soon. So again, we have part of Dean’s heaven outfit connecting to alternative timelines where it really shouldn’t be at all.

BUT IT GETS WORSE EVERYONE!

This jacket appears at just one other point in s15. Now if you had to pick the most cursed of cursed times to put it where would you put it on Dean?

The Vamp Chuck future in 15x09 where Sam and Dean die as vampires.

So this jacket should have disappeared in 13x23 but reappears for an episode where time is altered in 14x13 and when Chuck is showing Sam the future in 15x09 if they ‘win’ and they die as vampires. Dean is then killed on a vampire hunt in 15x20 and ends up wearing this jacket in Heaven. Cool, cool.

This jacket becomes connected to our Dean but in altered timelines and worlds while the shirt is connected to alternative Deans. Both the shirt and the jacket have direct connections to Chuck.

So we see Dean in Heaven wearing this cursed outfit drinking cursed El Sol beer with the same cursed monkey from 14x13 Lebanon (see above, it was in the roadhouse too).

This is not an outfit that screams happy. This is not an outfit that screams Sam and Dean won. This is an outfit that seems to scream Chuck won. 

I guess we’ll just have to wait until Jackles manages to get a continuation…

One final odd thing to note. We all remember Jensen’s video posted before the finale when he was dressing up as Dean for the last time “at least for now”. Well he wasn’t actually wearing the outfit Dean wore in Heaven although all the Heaven scenes were shot on the last day of filming, the 10th of September.

He was wearing the Heaven plaid shirt, but not the Heaven Jacket. It was Dean’s black denim jacket I pointed out earlier. If you look it has seams that the Heaven Jacket doesn’t and the pocket flaps are a different shape.

I have gone through all the Heaven scenes and he is wearing the Heaven jacket in all of them. But I can’t think of a reason why on a hot day in September when Jensen is getting changed into costume he would have a different one of Dean’s jackets on over the shirt he needs to wear for the scenes.

Hear ye, hear ye, motherfuckers and make way for the queen’s exquisite ass

This was a joke but I wanna bring this back to point out her jacket. A jacket like this doesn’t really go with her dress. Rowena has wore capes over her dresses before and she’s worn jackets with her shirts but this is like her old witchy look versus her new business wear look.

In this one wardrobe choice, we see these two facets of Rowena merge, who she was was looking into the past and who she is hoping for the future. It’s a color (pink) coded in death.

Aziraphale’s Costume and Props

A detail I saw on screen but enjoyed seeing in person was just how worn down Aziraphale’s clothes look, almost as if he saw a waistcoat, loved it, and decided to keep loving it until it fell apart, or in this case, the velvet faded away. Can we class that as slow fashion?

The various knick-knacks were also fun to see - even if some of the prophecies do appear to repeat themselves. I notice that he and Crowley both have bound books, I’m ever so curious as to what would be written inside …

Crowley’s Costume and Props

Where to start with Crawley’s costume and props.

First of all I would like to say that when I first read Good Omens over a decade ago I had no living memory of the M25. Now I seem to traverse it twice a week for work and I now understand the hellish journey that is. Crowley, you earned that commendation! (Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds)

As for the sunglasses, they were a fantastic choice for David (and he still had to wear the snake contacts beneath, dedication mate) although they do match with Crowley’s expensive taste. (If anyone was wondering, they’re Valentino and the price tag probably matches Crowley’s London flat). In addition to the snake-skin boots I thought the Ouroboros-esk belt was genius (I remember the Ouroboros tattoo used in The Doctor’s Wife, my all time favourite Doctor Who episode, and ironically featuring Michael Sheen and not David Tennant) so aside from the reptilian link I wonder how conscious a choice that was…

I love the differences between Crowley’s style of note-taking (aka, scientific and equations for the plotting star-maker) compared to Aziraphale’s artsy flowery voynich script. It’s such a little thing that you barely get a glimpse of and yet, it’s there, another fine thread in the tapestry of things making this show amazing.

so on my recent trip to socal, i had just enough time for a brief stop at FIDM’s emmy nominee exhibit. everything there was gorgeous, but i was on a mission, and that mission was to get reference close-ups of aziraphale’s costume. if there’s anything i love, it’s thinking way too hard about menswear, so i decided to write up a deep dive to go with them!

these photos are as close as i could get without tripping over the display, and as close as i could zoom my camera in without losing too much clarity. below the cut, i’ve added more thoughts and info about the outfit’s details. honestly, you could get most of this from staring hard enough at behind-the-scenes photos and promotional art. but it was a fun outing, and if it’s any help to anyone’s writing, art, or cosplay needs, that’s just the cherry on top.

[sidenote: i passed a crowd of cosplayers on their way out of the museum - a handful of crowleys and aziraphales and, i believe, a beelzebub. if you were at the exhibit on saturday, september 7th, and you left around 1 PM, i saw you! you looked great!]

Keep reading

Appreciation post for the very stylish pinky ring Aziraphale has been wearing consistently, at all times, in every time period, for more than 6,000 years.

and what about it?

This is the ring Aziraphale has been wearing in his Pinky finger. It’s made by Danegeld Historic Jewellery. They said they had to adjust the size 3 times during filming.