Thursday, December 2, 2010

Dresses – Seriously

There have been a few questions regarding our lovely heroines getting fitted for dresses during the last few updates. They have ranged from ‘why do the dresses look like that?’ to ‘wait, what?’ to ‘WTF?’

So, here’s a quick history of dresses:

In the way olden days, nice dresses were made by hand to fit a particular (wealthy) woman. They measured, cut out the necessary shapes from the appropriate cloth, and then stitched the whole thing together. Obviously, if the woman in question gained or lost any weight, the whole thing would have to be taken in or let out as appropriate.

A bit later, (in just the olden days) the individual parts for the dresses were pre-cut and then they fitted them to the individual lady. This was much faster, but everything still had to be custom-fit. And yes, still limited to only those who could afford it.

Only in the last hundred or so years have dresses (and clothing in general) been ‘off-the-rack’ so to speak.

NOTE: If you’re an expert on clothing and are now furiously screaming at your computer for my massive generalities (or mistakes), please do not resort to violence.

So in the scenes you saw, Lily and Iri were getting the second version: pre-cut pieces were being pinned on for fitting and comparison. Those were not the finished dresses by any means. You’ll be seeing those in a bit.

In short: trust us, we’re nerds. We live for the details. Heated discussions have been had over how a helmet would buckle, what kind of hilt a sword should have, and who was the better Captain of the Enterprise.

So have a good weekend and look forward to a new page on Tuesday! And vote! Pretty please! And don’t ask how I know so much about women’s clothing!

Cheers,
-Jason

8 comments:

Buzzcook said...

As long as it leads to filling bad guys with arrows and lopping off limbs.
If low cut gowns happen along the way,I'm good with that too.

Ed said...

Gah! I'm offended that you forgot to mention, in the really ancient times, there were no dresses.

Also, no mention of how, in both the olden days and the way olden days, they actually designed dresses (and any other clothing for the wealthy) specifically so that they could be let out. While didn't disappear instantly with the advent of pre-tailored clothing, it has been fading over the years. Thus, the pants I was wearing yesterday that had an unfortunate mishap looks like it'd been designed to be let out approximately 1 millimeter.

I'm glad that wasn't a typical "I've gained weight" mishap, or I'd need to buy all new pants, rather than having my tailor let them out. Wait a second - buying all new pants costs less than having my tailor let out my pants?!? WTF? (Even more crazy - I apparently can take those pants back to LLBean and get new pants for free.)

But on another note: I thought this was all genetically inherited knowledge that everyone had. So how the heck do I know any of it? I only managed to pass home ec by making a deal with the teacher that I wouldn't poison her with any more of my inept baked goods and I'd tutor any of her students with math problems in the maths portion of the class (that little bit where they actually covered 'economics', so that they could actually name the class 'home economics'), so long as she'd give me a 'C' and not require me to make any further attempts at making baked goods. I therefore obviously didn't pick it up in class.

BabylonRanger said...

Considering that there were several Enterprises, would it not be the best Captain? I'd rather vote for who was the best Commander of Babylon 5.

Jason Janicki said...

But what if they were to sever limbs and fill people with arrows in low cut dresses? It boggles the mind :)

Wow, Ed. You know about dresses AND can do maths. You win :)

How many Babylon Commanders were there? There was the first guy, Sheridan, and the woman, right? Or am I forgetting someone?

BabylonRanger said...

Sheridan and Lockley were technically Captains. But you only forgot the one commander in the last episode (whatever his name was). So, my vote would go to Sinclair for Commander and Sheridan for Captain.

shornk said...

Kirk, without a doubt.

Jonnalyhn Wolfcat Hall said...

*lol* Well, since I'm one of those geeks who include costuming and historical enactment on her list of obsessions, err, HOBBIES,I didn't find it too generalized.

Jason Janicki said...

I'll take your word on that one, BablylonRanger :)

And a vote for Kirk from Shornk. This is to be expected, considering what he named his son. Hint: It's James :)

Thanks, Jonnalyhn!