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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
#97#ive definitely had the experience of looking at like.#traditional slavic garments and going 'that looks a lot like some traditional amazigh garbs'#despite the vast geographical difference theres still those similarities!#i find that a lot in embroidery as well as its an interest of mine - patterns that seem v similar#sometimes bc theyre just so evident to come up w in the medium of embroidery that they show up all over the place#same is true for resemblances between various writing systems that use v geometric shapes!#like. tamazight ogham and slavic runes have a lot of symbols that look like they could all go together.#also its v hard to find good sources of historical clothing of subsaharan africa (dont love that classification either but.)#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#modern garb which is awesome but i AM looking for OLD stuff regardless of the region#and my searches keep somehow finding stuff from north africa? which i think is the algorithm being poisoned by my previous searches#but its still quite annoying#like if im looking 'historical clothing burundi' im NOT looking for algerian stuff.
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