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

[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.