#everything is mixed (you look up west african stuff and end up w east african stuff etc) and actual historical dress is harder to find than

[moodr1ng]

one super interesting thing i keep running into while gathering references of historical clothing from across the world is while you would imagine that those clothes are super different across cultures, you kinda end up running into super similar elements the world over. like, ive looked at historical dress of north africa, western europe, eastern europe, and to a lesser degree various parts of asia and africa (i do tend to mostly take inspiration from the mediterranean and the slavic - i also dont tend to pick from indigenous american stuff too much as it is kind of the exception where i see a lot less overlap and it feels a lot more dicey to lift from those sources when the inspiration would become a lot more obvious and come w implications of coding and appropriation i dont feel equipped to tackle) and kept seeing things reappear. layered skirts and aprons, short vests over blouses, jewelry over the chest in layers of metal circles, hair coverings... in a way it makes total sense, people come up w the same thing everywhere bc people have the same bodies to accomodate everywhere so it just makes sense, but its also rly rly fun to be like "this traditional russian costume has so much in common w traditional north african costumes" yknow? it also rly helps to define general trends across geography and history when designing fictional traditional clothing bc i can mix and match the elements i like most and still end up w something that looks real and tangible. thats what i did for ajdig (that one comic i made for my grandma) - the original refs for the character designs came from all over the world but i think when you look at them you feel like these are the real clothes of a people