Historical Correlations in Dishonored

I've seen multiple sources talk about Dishonored as taking place in an industrial society, and I completely agree, but I think that the costumes the characters wear have correlations to historical clothing in other eras as well.

Hiram Burrows Chain of Office

I will admit that I spent the whole torture cutscene freaking out over the fact that it looked like he was wearing a modified version of a chain of office-itself a type of neck order. These served as a formal indicator of the wearer's rank, they are still in (rare) use today, as part of ceremonial wear.

Lady Boyle's Hat
It;s so Edwardian. It has the wide brim that was popular in the early 1900s. False flowers were often part of a hat's decoration, along with feathers, ribbons, and generally anything else they could put on it. I actually quite like the roses on either side of the head, as they remind me of the way the sides of a woman's hair would be visible under the brim of the hat.

Side note here: If you think about it, the Edwardian hat served a similar purpose as the 18th century French pouf hairstyle; it could have almost anything on it, and did express the wearer's sensibilities.

Corvo's Gorget

The big metal looking thing around his neck is called a gorget. This was a collar worn around the neck to protect the space between the helmet and breastplate (aka a person's neck where their head is attached-unfortunately Corvo's is being worn low enough that it isn't doing any good). 

During the 18th century the gorget became a ceremonial/uniform piece. It was commonly a crescent shape with engraving. By the end of the 19th century they were no longer a part of military uniform in most western countries. The only big exception of the 20th century was the Nazis(read into that what you will), the military police wore gorgets as part of their uniform.

Interestingly enough: gorgets-in the original armour function-are coming back into use by modern militaries, with the design being attached and integrated into ballistic protection.

City Watch Officer Helmets

They look like the German Pickelhaube Helmets worn until WWI. The helmets were originally made out of leather, which offered basically no protection against shells, and the spiked finial made the wearer an easy target. In 1916 during the Verdun campaign the Stahlhelm was introduced.

Collars+Cravats on Society men

Using Pendleton because he's easy to find screencaps of

If you look at the collars of the high society male characters they all have the tall starched collars that were common during the regency era. It also looks-to me-like he's wearing a sort of abbreviation or variation of a cravat. Though most were white, there is evidence of other colours being worn.

LET ME PREFACE THIS BY SAYING THAT I AM JEWISH, SO PLEASE DO NOT HASSLE ME FOR "TALKING ABOUT THINGS I DON'T KNOW ABOUT" OR BEING AN ANTI-SEMITE

Sokolov the Stereotypical "evil jew"

I mean just look at him vs Nazi propaganda

It's terrifyingly similar. Also, the other characters in the game are ALWAYS bringing up the fact that he's a foreigner-aka not "one of us." 

I don't know if this was intentional (I really hope it wasn't) but it definitely made me uncomfortable.


Well, that ended on a controversial note. I'd love to hear what anyone actually reading this thinks.
Thanks for visiting.

Bioshock Infinite Main characters-Part 2

Elizabeth's Second Costume
This dress formerly belonged to Lady Comstock, who died in 1895, because of this, I will be assessing its accuracy for both 1912 and 1895.

If you look at the front of her corset, you can see that it has hook and eye closures down the front, meaning that it is a split busk corset. In 1912, the standard corset started at the bust point or underneath the bust. The job of corsets at the time was to slim down the hips and bum-rather than nip in the waist-to create the popular columnar silhouette.  If we compare it to a corset from 1895, it's actually semi accurate. The popular silhouette at the time had a tiny waist, an accentuated bust, and the hips pushed back to create the fashionable "S curve" silhouette. But the biggest problem is this: You can see her corset. She's wearing her corset on the outside of her clothing, and to top it off it isn't even a period accurate corset. This is the 1912 equivalent of walking around almost fully dressed, with only your bra on on top.

Moving on from that, the shrug she's wearing irks me. Bolero style jackets did come into fashion in the mid 19th century, but by the late 1800s they had changed style. Most had the gigantic puffed sleeves that were popular at the time, and reached further across the chest. By 1912 boleros seem to have fallen out of fashion.
The skirt looks nothing like the slimmer style favored in 1912. It does have a similar shape to the flared skirts popular in the 1890s. These would be supported by a number of petticoats(I'm not sure if the white part at the bottom of the dress is supposed to be one, but it certainly wouldn't be enough).

One last note, I really wish she hadn't cut her hair midway through the game. I get the writers were trying to make it look like she was having a big character development moment and "growing up", but the bob haircut didn't become a symbol until the 1920's. I would have preferred if they had her put her hair up, which-in 1912-actually signified that a person was a "woman."


Rosalind's hairstyle

Rosalind's hairstyle looks like it is based on the Gibson Girl hairstyle. It has a similar look from the side and front to some of the pompadour style of the day.

The one thing I find a bit odd is the back, I just don't understand how her hair could work like that.

Robert Lutece
Speaking of hair, his is actually quite nice, I'm not quite sure about the weird turned up part in the front, but it doesn't throw me too far out of the game.

I'm going to be a little bit lazy and say check out what I wrote about Booker for the shirt and pants. The suit confuses me. It looks a bit too open. As far as I can tell, it only has one button, while most suits of the era had at least 2 or 3, and fastened higher on the chest. For the waistcoat, look at Booker again. I'm ok with the tie, it's not completely accurate, as many of the ties seen in photos and illustrations are wider, but there is evidence of narrower ones existing.

The pants look perfectly decent to me, the shoes are, again, wingtip brogues.

Burial at Sea

Just a few things that I noticed.

This woman's outfit is Dior's new look from 1947.

Both of these women are wearing dresses with a "shelf bust" design. This became popular in the mid 1950's and defined a garment with a "shelf" built into the bodice which enhanced the appearance of the bosom(personally I am not a fan).

Thanks for reading.

Fashion in Bioshock Infinite: The main Characters

I my previous post I discussed the costumes on the NPCs in the game, this post will look at the major characters. These are not screenshots that I took, rather they are pictures from the web, and renders from artists on deviantart.

Elizabeth (First outfit)
Her first outfit consists of a blouse, tie, skirt, button up shoes, and a cameo necklace selected by the player(though the bird one seems to be the default). The shirt seems to be an attempt at a shirtwaist, however it follows the line of the bust. True, by 1912, women's fashion was starting to move away from the dramatic pigeon breast look, but her blouse has a modern day fit. The 3/4 length sleeves did exist but-from what I can tell-were not common.  I was able to find an image of a shirtwaist similar to Elizabeth's. Despite this, the most well known image of the shirtwaist has a high neck and long sleeves, with a loose front. You can also see little lines on either side, which seem to represent pleating, which was commonly found on shirtwaists. The thing that irks me the most about the blouse is that it's so close to good, but so far away. The necklace is described by official sources as a cameo, but the official reproductions by irrational seem to be made of metal set into black resin. Traditional cameo jewelry was carved out of multi coloured stone or shells, with the top layers being carved away to create a design.

The skirt is too short. If she's old enough to be wearing separates, she's old enough to wear a full length skirt. That being said, pleated skirts did exist, but from what I've seen it seemed to be more common for the pleats to circle the entire skirt, or for inverted box pleats (woman in grey skirt) to be used. Fastenings on skirts were also quite visible, but they were mainly buttons, rather than the fabric belts seen on Elizabeth's skirt. The belts do slightly remind me of the belt detailing sometimes seen on hobble skirts, but I may be reaching here.

Her boots are definitely based women's boots from the period. While the iconic high button shoes were fastened on the side, lace up boots were fastened up the front.

If you want to learn more about shirtwaists, and their involvement in one the deadliest manufacturing disasters in US history click here watch PBS's American Experience documentary "Triangle Fire" (viewer discretion advised, PBS never goes out of the way to be gory, but the subject matter is quite grim).

Elizabeth (Unused White Dress)

from ananina23.deviantart.com

I actually quite like this dress, it SCREAMS Edwardian child to me (was that creepy-it wasn't supposed to be). It also reminds me of the "Lingerie" style tea gowns worn during the summer. These were white, lace embellished dresses that were usually belted at the waist with a colourful ribbon. You can also see that she is wearing button shoes, rather than the laced ones in her final deign. These were the types of shoes that would be done up using button hooks. Unlike modern women, Edwardian women couldn't just bend at the waist to fasten their shoes (this was because of corsets, but I will be discussing those later). Button hooks allowed them to reach their shoes without having to bend over.

Despite everything nice I have to say, I have one big gripe.

WhyTF is she wearing socks?!!!!!!!!!!!

For those who don't understand my rage, Edwardian females (this includes little girls) ALWAYS WORE STOCKINGS that were held up by garters attached to the corset. They never wore socks.

Booker Dewitt
Striped/pinstriped trousers were common for informal summer wear in Europe, but the style never really caught on in America. This is something that I've seen in multiple media; a character will be wearing an article of clothing that did exist at the time, but was not accurate in the context of the story. I can't speak specifically to the shoulder holster, but the devices were invented in the later part of the 19th century, making Booker's possession of one plausible.

The first big question I had when looking at Booker's costume was: did men in the era actually wear a vest and shirt-sans jacket (looking exclusively at day-wear). The answer is yes. Not in polite society (a.k.a. rich people), but there are photos of working class men wearing vests with their sleeves rolled up above the elbow. Despite this, his vest still has issues. The majority of the vest seen in pictures do not have lapels. Vests with lapels were sold, though the most common design closed high on the chest with straight edges. Booker's vest, on the other hand, has long lapels-at the time suit lapels tended to be short and wide-that, from the sheen, look like they're made of pleather.
The shirt is mostly hidden by the vest, but the part of it that catches my eye is the collar and cuffs. Both are white in the cover art, and the collar still is in the render. Men at the turn of the century would often times use detachable collars and cuffs, as these were the parts of a shirt that wore out quickly.

Rosalind Lutece

One of these pictures is a crop of a full body image from the wiki.
Rosalind and her "brother" Robert were designed to match despite being different genders. While menswear inspired womenswear did exist in the form of female suits, Rosalind's outfits doesn't quite fit the model. Most of the time the jacket part of the suit reached to the hips or below. Female suits also had a variety of collars/lapels, so it isn't much of a stretch to think that suits with notched lapels existed.

Daisy Fitzroy

The truth is, her outfit is so simple that it could kind of fit in anywhere in a western industrial society. You can tell that it's supposed to be menswear that she re-purposed, the pants are too large, and the shirt is baggy. Her boots look like riding boots from the period, which had laces on the top of the foot, and buckles on the shaft.

Zachary Hale Comstock

Comstock is actually one of the better dressed characters. The only thing that immediately bothers me is the shoulder cape thingy. It might be there as a reference to the Pellegrina worn by members of the Catholic church, but I may be reaching (seriously though, if you look at pictures, you realize that the pope has to have the patience of a saint-joke intended-to deal with that thing). The suit looks like it's a wool weave, and is of a good length, reaching down around the hips. It also fashions higher on the chest, which was fashionable at the time. The waistcoat isn't very visible, but it looks alright. I didn't find large amounts of information on trouser during 1912, but from the illustrations that I've seen it seemed like trousers were mainly straight and not closely fitted to the leg.

I'm going to discuss Rosalind's hairstyle, Robert's clothing, Elizabeth's blue dress, and some of the things I saw in Burial at Sea in my next post.

Thanks for reading.

Leading Character Costume Syndrome

Also known as LCCS. This is a (slightly nonsense) word that I came up with. Basically it's those times when all of the extras/secondary characters are in decent/semi decent historical costumes, but the costume designers have decided to put the main character in an outfit that would appeal more to a modern audience.
Here's a few example from Frock Flicks: here and here.

Fashion in Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag

Ah the golden age of piracy. Oh boy. To quote the main character of the game:

"We're pirates...we take as we please and become who we like." 

This is one of the more difficult eras to do any kind of research on because of all the legends that have built up around it. When it comes to clothing research, the main obstacle comes in finding credible sources. These usually weren't the sort of people to sit for portraits, making the most reliable resources for their appearances engravings. These were-like all depictions-subject to the opinions of the person making them. They also didn't follow current fashion trends.
In summation, for the sake of this post you should read the opening quote as

"We're pirates...we wear whatever we want."

That being said, however, many of the characters wear modified version of standard clothing, so these can be compared to standard 1715-22 clothing. I will be making as many comparisons to woodcuts as I can, but these do not exist for all of the figures in the game.

I was actually really bored watching a play through of this game. I just really didn't like any of the characters.

Edward Kenway

Ok, so it looks like he's wearing 3-4 layers. There's the leather vest like thing on the top, what looks like a white and blue waistcoat underneath, and his shirt and the hanging sections around the legs. As far as those go, I'm not sure what they're supposed to be, so all I have to say about them is: no. Same goes for the leather vest thing. So the only thing on his torso to look at the waistcoat thing, which we can see basically none of, but from what I can see, it looks alright. The boots are kind of stereotypical pirate boots, but I saw a couple pictures of period boots that looked similar.

Mary Read

This is the most well recognized engraving of Read, but let's be honest here, what sensible person would have their shirt that open?...That's all I have to say. I can't really make much comment on her costume.

Charles Vane

The large cuffs on the jacket are nice, but otherwise it just looks like a modern trench coat. The thing I really don't understand are the striped trousers. These are seen on multiple characters in the game, and I wasn't able to find a historical precedent for them.

Blackbeard

Lots of brown. It's not in this picture, but in the game they include him wearing lit fuses in his hat as a fear tactic. Multiple engravings depict him wearing multiple guns, so it was good to see it in the game.

Caroline Scott-Kenway


First off her hair should be up. There's a lot in this dress that is "close but no cigar." The gathering at the sides did exist, as it was-in some ways-a precursor to panniers. The 1710's are a weirdly difficult time to research for female clothing

Anne Bonny

NO. This is some Ren-faire, barmaid BS if I've ever seen it.

Bartholomew Roberts

I mean, kinda? It looks close enough to somewhere in the 18th century to not throw me for a loop, but it isn't accurate, except for the tricorne hat.

Woodes Rogers

It's a trench coat. The man is WEARING A TRENCH COAT IN THE 1710's! The leather(WTF) waistcoat is clearly trying to be regency if anything. The hair is an abomination. The only positive thing is that it looks like he could be wearing breeches.

Benjamin Hornigold

I love Ed Stoppard, but his character's costume is awful. It clearly wants to look like a coat from the American revolution, but there's just too much wrong with it-and that includes the fact that it's 50 years ahead of its time. The kind of weird thing is that the coat texture looks like it's denim-a textile that wouldn't be invented until the mid 19th century.

All in all, Edward's descendants had a better costumed game, which I'm saving for last because it's my favorite. Thanks for reading!

Fashion in Bioshock Infinite

So I rushed through this game to finish it before winter break was over.  Rushed means that I still did all the exploring, and random stuff I normally do in a video game, but I spent more time playing the game than I normally would. I actually wasn't planning on doing a blog post about this game, but I found that once I started looking at historical costumes in video games, I couldn't stop. So here we go. (I'm using screenshots that I took for NPCs(non-player characters), and other image for the more major characters).
The nice thing about Infinite is that it takes place in a single defined year.

Still from Outsidexbox

Best of all, it's a year when photography was around, and we even still have some clothes from it, unlike most of the era's that Assassin's Creed takes place in. Assassin's Creed games also take place over a period of time, meaning that I have to keep an eye out for fashion changes.
IMPORTANT NOTE: WHEN IN DOUBT I AM GOING TO BE LOOKING AT AMERICAN FASHION OF THE TIME, AS AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM IS A THEME OF THE GAME

Male NPCs

Enemies

Overall it's pretty similar. The single row of buttons seemed to be mainly used by British police. It actually looks much more like a military jacket of the time, with the collar, and epaulets

Yes, he is dead, there was no other way to get a screenshot.

This is (according to the wiki) another type of policeman-I thought they were soldiers. Once again it uses a military style. It most closely resemble the uniforms worn by British soldiers in WWI(a mere 2 years away). The punches secured to the belt would be used to hold extra ammunition, it was also sometimes be worn as a bandolier. They also are seen wearing Brodie helmets. The wrappings around the legs are known as puttee. The name derives from the Hindu word "patti" meaning bandages. They were worn for protection and support, and were a part of the British khaki uniform from 1902 to 1938.

Columbian Citizens

Both of these men are wearing sleeve garters. These came into fashion in the later 19th century when shirt sleeves only came in a single, extra-long, length. Sleeve garters were used to pull the excess fabric up above the elbow and secure it, keeping the cuff out of the way. Once sleeves lengths started to vary, and buttons or cuff links were used to secure the wrist, they were no longer necessary.

These two men are the same guy (and no; that's not some sort of big twist ending, it just means that they're the same character model, but reskinned-aka colour changed). Both are wearing standard men's coats over waistcoats. They, and other NPCs, wear bowler hats. The felt hats were invented in 1849 as protective wear for groundskeepers. They eventually became a part of popular fashion, becoming closely associated with businessmen in the early part of the 20th century.

Many male NPCs wear these shoes, which seem to be Oxford Wingtip Brogues. I know basically nothing more about shoes.

These men are seen at Battleship Bay. They wear the basic, iconic bathing suit of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The man on the left here-and in the first pair of pictures-wears a boater hat. These straw hats were fashionable in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with official "straw hat days" designating the appropriate time for them to be worn.

No comment, it's accurate.
Need I say more?

Misc.

This is Albert Fink, the man responsible for Columia's anachronistic music. From what I can tell, he's in fairly standard evening wear for the period.

This guy is found in the cemetery, near where the Lutece's are encountered. It's possible to find many vintage ads for similar underwear. I thought it was an interesting touch that they put in the game.

This man seems to be wearing overalls folded down and belted around his waist. Many sources put the invention of the garment down to the need for sturdy work clothes.

A couple of workers in Finkton.

Female NPCs

There are a few female enemies in Infinite, but they mostly just wear fitted versions of the male uniforms, with masks rather than helmets.

Columbia Citizens

 These two are seen on the beach in Battleship Bay. All of the female there wear reskinned versions of the same bathing suit. Many bathing suits of the era used a naval theme (i.e. sailor collars, anchors, and ship's wheels), not seen in the game.

These other two wear beautiful Gibson Girl esque hairstyles.

This woman looks like her outfit was taken directly from two illustrations that I found. The long, narrow silhouette was made popular in 1908 by the designer Poiret, with some Edwardian corsets extending from beneath the bust to below the hips. 

 This woman's jacket is a much more modern design. I wasn't able to find any contemporary example of such a style. It's anachronistic, but not so much that it throws me out of the game. Her hat, on the other hand, is quite nice. Straw hats were popular summer attire for both sexes, with ones for women being ornamented.

These two seem to be wearing the same blouse, with the one on the right having lower sleeves added. All in all, it's quite similar to blouses of the time, with embroidery on the front and large, loose sleeves. The one on the right also has a very nice period hat. If you look up 1912 hats there is a slew of similar hats.

Many of the female NPCs are seen wearing this hat. It looks a bit ridiculous, but there are examples of hats completely covered with artificial flowers.

 The thing I noticed about this woman was the design on her skirt. It's clearly made from an old cloth bag. Though I was unable to find any contemporary examples of such clothing, we do know for a fact that in the 1930's women wore dresses made from feedsacks. It isn't hard to imagine that people made similar garments in earlier time periods.

I only saw this woman once in Soldier's Field. Her dress seems to be a simplified version of  many Edwardian dresses. The plunging v neckline with the bandeau part beneath it can be seen in many dresses from the era.

Random lady in a weird dress.

This dress looks remarkably similar to the one on the right designed in 1912 by Lucille, Lady Duff Gordon. I'm not sure how Lady Comstock had it, as she was dead by 1895, but *hand wave*

I'm going to be discussing the main characters in my next post about Bioshock, along with some of the fashion in Burial at Sea.

If anyone out there who reads this has an idea for a gae they want me to take a look at suggest it in the comments. Thanks for reading!