#me and sin even had an au where her and corvo are part of a fashion history reenactment group

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Jessamine's design has always intrigued me. the stark, full black suit and tall collar are pretty obvious status symbols. black was for the longest time an incredibly expensive colour of fabric due to how difficult it was to achieve proper rich blackness during the dyeing process and the collar, while most likely just a trend in Dunwall fashion inspired by the 1890s high collars can be read as lace, especially in some concept art, which is hard to care for and needs to be starched to hell and back to keep nice and stiff for a collar like that

but what I find a lot more curious about this is that the clothes appear very much inspired by Spanish renaissance fashion

which, honestly, would make sense with the real world inspiration. 19th century was obsessed with the past, with the romanticized medieval and renaissance times, and it was quite common to see fashion inspired by times long past (I mean, just look at Worth. the man invented haute couture and there is so much influence of medieval and Elisabethan fashion in his designs). it was also a thing for rich families to just kinda... invest in recreations of historical pieces of clothing and LARP in them.

Jessamine's clothes, in particular, reminded me of Spanish court dresses. especially of the portraits of Anne of Austria and Elisabeth of Valois

obsessed with those slit sleeves. too bad Jessamine didn't go the extra mile to have the sleeves hang long and heavy around her arms but they were more form fitting

there is also something to be said about the tall white (possibly starched lace) collar and the style of clasps used on her clothes

the mini cape thing she has on top is more similar to the style of capes worn by men in renaissance, but yeah, of course she reminded me of a Spanish princess when this is one of the most given example portraits for this style

I wonder if this was an intentional choice on the designer's side or if they were just inspired by the revivalism present in 19th century fashion. what really makes me consider that though is that one of her earlier designs has those sleeves much, Much more pronounced and obvious

oh the things that could have been...

still, it makes me wonder: if this was intentional, what does this tell us about Jessamine, and the history of the Isles themselves?