🌏 Worldbuilding: Clothing

The 5Ds of Dress

On any given Tuesday morning, just after 6:30 am¹, you may catch me out front of our house, wheeling the garbage and recycling bins to the curb. I am usually wearing comfortable pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt. Now, imagine that same scene, but I am naked (No. I take that back. No one needs that), but I am wearing a hazmat suit. I suspect your imagined story of what is going on would change drastically. The simple act of changing what a character wears can dramatically change a reader’s assumptions about what is happening in your story.

Clothing (or the lack of it) is a cultural universal common to every society making it a critical consideration of comic storytelling. As a writer, I prefer to leave the actual design of the clothes my characters wear up to the artist. Instead, I prefer to provide an artist with the function of the clothing unless a specific detail is important to the plot.² 

Clothing serves multiple functions. Let’s look at the 5Ds of dress.

Defence - Protection

I would argue that the most important reason clothing exists is protection, especially from the environment. 

As you write, think ahead to all of the hazards your characters may or may not encounter. Clothes can shield your characters from the elements, including wind, sun, and cold temperatures. Protective clothing can also guard against rough surfaces, sharp objects, rash-causing plants, insect bites, and even hazardous materials. Your character’s clothing may provide protection from various weapons they are likely to encounter. In extreme situations, clothing might even prevent suffocation or ebullism.³

In the prologue to The Lump Sum Saga, my characters all arrive on Earth wearing space suits and helmets. Without precise advanced knowledge of the chemical makeup of the planet's atmosphere, this is an obvious fashion choice. More subtle is the fact that, even though Pilot (a Lightsider) takes off his helmet, The Commander (a Darksider) does not remove her suit until after dark, and this suit looks more like protective armour. This speaks to her vulnerabilities and role on the exploration team.

Decoration

Decoration is often what we think of as “fashion.” From an evolutionary perspective, decoration is all about increasing the likelihood of passing on one’s genes bow chicka wow wow. While this may seem cynical, understanding this aspect of clothing and accessories is at the core of understanding fashion choices that are impractical or, in some cases, outright dangerous. 

Pragmatically, this aspect of clothing extends beyond the page to the reader as well. Shirtless superheroes and Spandex bathing suit cut costumes can be as much about your reader as they are about their practicality in your story. In the perfect world, desirability and practicality come together in the plot, but I’ve seen way too many characters running from peril in high heels to suggest that this always happens.

Decency - Modesty

Modesty in clothing refers to covering the body according to a society’s standards of decency. What is considered modest varies greatly across cultures and historical periods. You just need to compare women’s bathing suits from the 1920s to those on Instagram today to see this aspect of clothing in action.

In The Lump Sum Saga, my Lightsider characters all have umbrella tails, an adaptation used to protect the species from direct sunlight. However, in the time frame of the main story, the hair and bristles of a “naked” tail are always covered with decorated coverings; it is a cultural faux pas to expose a naked tail in public. I am using this feature as a palette for visual-only exposition and, among other things, a way for young Lightsider bullies to exploit and victimize the vulnerable.

Distinction - Status

This is a slight variation on “Decoration,” distinguished mostly by motivation. Clothing can signify social, professional, or economic status. For example, white-collar (note the clothing metaphor) professionals might wear suits, which are seen as a symbol of their status. Ultimately, a King’s crown is just a fancy hat, but it is a well-understood symbol of royalty.

Designation - Identification

Clothing can serve as a means of identification, signalling membership in a particular group, organization, or nationality. Uniforms are a prime example of clothing used for identification, as they can indicate one's role, profession, or affiliation with a specific group or cause. 

Even something as trivial as colour variation can convey a lot of information about belonging. We recently did the character designs for Lump Dog - the next issue of TLSS. I completely forgot to discuss costume colours in the script. I had to ask for teh characters to be re-coloured when a single member of the Mission Control team was dressed in green, and the President had the same colour as everyone on the Mission Control team. We quickly adjusted the status of these two characters by reversing the colours of their clothing.

A Special Note About Human Cultures

If you are creating a story bible for a strictly human world, it is important to use reference works that are available for many geographic regions and times in history (see below for just a few). Do your best to portray the attire correctly. 

Sadly, this does not always happen. Many people raised on old Hollywood movies might not realize that there is no religious requirement for all Muslims to wear turbans. In my part of the world, it is relatively rare to see a pastor in a suit unless he or she is at a funeral. The conventional clothing tropes are just that - tropes. As creators, it’s important to at least try to represent people’s clothing accurately.

One exception to this rule comes if you are deliberately creating an alternate universe. But even in this case, you’ll want to match “what is different” in the clothing to the reason your universe is different. As an example, The Man in the High Tower TV series does a very good job of this, imagining how attire would be different in the US if the Allies lost the war.

The other exception that comes to mind is the outsider rule. It is possible that you have a character who is either using clothing choice as an act of rebellion or who you want to portray as an outsider for another reason. Clothing can be one of the easiest ways to telegraph their outsider status.

Conclusion

For something so ubiquitous and rarely top of mind, clothing offers creators an extremely useful and complex tool to layer exposition about their world into their work. Guide your artist with an understanding of the function of the clothes you want your character to wear and let them run with the possibilities.

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Some sites for inspiration:

1. Fashion History Timeline (fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu)

2. The Collector (thecollector.com)

3. Google Arts & Culture (artsandculture.google.com)

4. History of Clothing (historyofclothing.com)

5. Fashion-Era (fashion-era.com)

6. Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org): The "Clothing in the Ancient World" page.

1. Yup. That early. We can’t put our openable bins on the road the night before because any food waste or wrappers in them might attract bears. Yes, I live in a city. Yes, we have bears. Ha!

2. Right about now, I can hear Sergi (my TLSS artist) yelling, “Liar!” all the way from Spain. We just went back and forth about the shoelaces in a particular character design. But really, I had reasons. Ha!

3. Ebullism is the fancy term for when a body explodes due to lack of pressure.