fiber geek watching dystopias

[untonuggan]

ok ok

so i'm really liking the 100 now I've gotten past the beginning, and actually now I've gotten to canon f/f pairings i'm ON BOARD.

however the thing that is bothering me with a lot of these dystopias is FIBER.

i get the whole "let us wear grungy black clothes for a cool look" thing costumers are going for, I really do.

but I feel like if no one has figured out how to manufacture new fibers (which everyone is wearing machine made stuff, so yeah?), then it should be WE MUST CONSERVE THIS AT ALL COSTS, not "rip it up all the time because arrows and pulling them out and blood and stuff."

do they have some secret stash of dead peoples' clothes somewhere from when the bomb went off? that have lasted 100 years? seriously?

has no one remembered how to mend things with a sewing needle and thread?

because otherwise, seriously, stop ripping all the fabric into gritty pieces.

(seriously, there's no *patching* on anyones' clothes in any of the societies, which you think someone would have come up with somewhere.)

./fiber rant

(i know it's tv, but. still! some dystopia somewhere should think of the clooooooooooooooooothes)

Comments

[maramcreates]

Perhaps the radiation has caused the textiles to grow on trees?

I agree with your assessment though. Clothing is either a valued resource (and should thus be conserved), or it is not (and we should be seeing a whole lot more skin than we are).

Still, to make it fit canon-wise, I wonder if perhaps the material used could be of a serious synthetic that degrades very slowly? That could work, at least for a while.

[untonuggan]

EVERYONE IN NEON LYCRA

ahem

[maramcreates]

O_O
YAASS!!!

[spiralsheep]

♥

[untonuggan]

right back atcha

♥

[kittydesade]

Oh my god The 100.

Okay, so, for reasons incomprehensible (I know them, I just can't quite wrap my head around this is my Twitter life now) to me one of the more recent showrunners and I are mutual follows on Twitter. And a while back there was a thing, in some cases a rude thing but still a thing, about where did these people get hair dye how are people coloring their hair and clothes what is this.

I may have accidentally at least a three tweet mini-rant on no, actually, since some of these processes are for protein fibers and these are the plants you can use to dye both hair and clothing and technically human hair is a protein fiber anyway but you'd need something to bind it with so here's how you hair with henna which they could totally harvest and process and did I mention one of the most common mordants for fiber dyeing is pee?

And I'm reasonably sure he RT'd it.

You're not the only one who watches post-apoc dsytopias and goes BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FIBER. There's a tumblr post like this too.

(I should watch The 100 probably.)

[jelazakazone]

Are you watching Outlander? Because you want to geek out about fiber and costumes? That's the place to go. There is a scene where they "waulk" the wool. It's kind of hilarious. :D

watch here because I don't know why it won't embed in the comments.

[kittydesade]

... That is awesome. Up to and including the fact that yes, in fact, they did pour urine all over fabric and stick their hands in it and here's why. Excellent. :D

[jelazakazone]

Unfortunately, they cut the best part of the scene where they go and drink after and make Claire piss in a bucket. But yay for getting fiber history right!

[untonuggan]

yay for fiber history!

unfortunately i cannot do Outlander at all because I read the books right around when I was dating Asshole Abuser Ex, and That One Scene (or several) were...kind of entwined with a lot of those memories.

but I am glad you are enjoying!

[jelazakazone]

OMG I completely understand that 100%. Ugh. :( :( You could watch this scene though. Only women in it! And they are waulking the wool. It's super great.

[untonuggan]

also recent rant ppl in my house have heard:

WHY ARE THEY NOT USING MORE PLASTICS

surely a TON Of plastics would have survived the apocalypse, not just BADASS METALS

i would expect a bunch of "let's turn all these six-pack-rings into rope" and "i'm using these milk jugs for all kinds of things"

also glass! using glass shards for weapons and tools and occasionally badass decor.

AHEM.

you *should watch it*

THE KISSING SCENE
i cried honestly just for the representation
also it was a really sweet kiss

[kittydesade]

XD I've been feeling guilty for not watching because I know a couple of the senior writers from Twitter and I actually went to high school with one of the new writers.

(She has a semi-unusual name, so when one of the senior writers I know RT'd something from her, I blinked at the name and was all "wait. That's not. HOLY SHIT THAT IS." She was in my class and we used to do Shakespeare together.)

SO. Good to know I will most likely enjoy the watching. :D

[silveradept]

Makes total sense to me. Also, the clothing should probably by a lot blockier, since they won't have machines to stitch curves.

[indywind]

What?

Wait, are you being sarcastic? I tend to miss sarcasm.

[silveradept]

I would have to dig out the article or post, but it was talking about the history of clothes, and that what we think of as clothing, with a lot of the curves and form-fitting tees and the like are only possible because we have electric machines to do that kind of stitching. If we go back to a pre-electric situation, according to this, clothing starts to look more rectangular than curved, because rectangles and straight lines are easier to stitch, patch, and repair by hand, and they preserve more of the fabric.

There could be things like belts to help give the clothes more shape, but it's not as likely that we would see clothes with lots of curvature. At least according to the thing I saw.

[indywind]

Oh, okay, fair enough; as a broad generalization for popular audiences that's not inaccurate.

I'm a historical textile nerd, specializing in pre-sewing-machine-times, though, so I know enough more that "more-or-less accurate in a simplistic way" begins to look more "so oversimplified it's no longer accurate." Some curved-construction methods are easier by hand than by machine, a few are FAR easier (inset gussets OMG), many are equally fabric-sparing, some fitted constructions *more* fabric-sparing than rectangular versions of similar garments. But curved and pieced construction takes more time than making a roughly-human-sized rectangular sack, so it tends to correlate with *either* time-saving mechanization, or with different prioritization around clothing than we (modern western first-world) take for granted. For instance, our clothing expectations tend to emphasize quantity (owning many different clothes) and standardization (being able to buy off-the-rack) over durable utility and custom fit. Repair-vs-replace is another ideology trade-off that's apart from technology; it is often easier to repair by hand (rather than by machine) clothes constructed in any manner. But it is easier to replace factory-constructed clothes than to repair them, because the labor cost is distributed and externalized so we don't notice it.

Erm, I apologize if this was more than you wanted to get into. My geekery sometimes slips the leash.

[silveradept]

This is useful. It's a pretty standard role that "it's always more complicated" than whatever's been said, so it's good to know what a pre-electric textile industry could look like, and that rectangular blobs isn't what everything would look like. would work clothes start taking on a more boxy look?

[indywind]

Historically, working clothes have been less-ornamented versions of clothes meant more for display-- or maybe it's the other way round, clothes not meant for working have been more-ornamented versions of clothes for work. The general shape, and construction methods/complexity have been, usually, substantially similar; instead, different materials are used, and non-work clothes include more additional details that don't add to functionality. This generalization is modified by other variables like wearer's class/social conditions, gender, cultural aesthetics, climate conditions, and work conditions.
Where individuals own few clothes (and occupy a relatively fixed social role), one person might use the same main garment or set of garments for both work and nonwork, and add or subtract minor elements for function or decoration --like putting on an apron for work, or jewelry for nonwork. Where there's a distinction between a working class and a leisure class, all the clothes of the leisure class tend toward a more extreme, less functional version of whatever the current cultural aesthetic is.

[silveradept]

Thanks. I'm sure that knowledge will rattle in my head at exactly the right time I need it to. Probably with something to do with fiction.