I live in jeans, t-shirt, and hoodie, as do many people. It’s comfortable and practical, and it’s an outfit that can be dressed up or down, depending on your choices and personal style.
When I was developing the world of the Choices and Consequences series, I thought about clothing. It needed to be practical for both physical and sedentary work, and for travel, which is at a far more medieval level than our own world. I wanted it to be comfortable and broadly unisex, at least for everyday wear, and it would need to be reasonably economical – my world has limited resources. So I settled on something that is basically jeans, t-shirt, and hoodie.
It consists of trousers, which might be replaced by shorts in hot weather, a close fitting undershirt which can be long or short sleeved and then a warmer top or overtunic which again can be long or short sleeved, of varying length, and may or may not have a hood. But there’s a lot of variety, based on colour, or fabric, or fit.
Women tend to choose softer fabrics, brighter colours, and more close fitting designs often with a longer over tunic and more decoration but there’s no hard and fast rule about it. The overtunic might fasten back or front with buttons, buckles, or zip, or be a pull on style and might or might not have a hood. In hot weather, many will wear shorts and a short sleeved under shirt with no over tunic, or women might wear a short sleeved dress (slight gender bias there because I like summer dresses).
For formal wear, the colour, embellishment, and material of trousers, undershirt, and tunic will tend to be fancier and will often indicate the House the wearer belongs to. Each House has its own logo and this will form part of the decoration on formal wear. For example, the logo of House St Peter is a crossed keys symbol – it’s incorporated in Leonie’s necklace and some of the clothes that Brother Edward makes for her. It’s also embroidered on the overtunics worn by all the monks and nuns.
For House Tennant, the signature colour is green, and the logo is a stylised castle with little castellations. Tennant’s the birth House of Prospero (Perry). In this extract towards the end of book 1, Strand of Faith, Brother Edward knows that...and Leonie doesn’t.
Edward had brought me yet another new outfit and again he seemed to have woven some magic into it. This one was a shimmering emerald green silk which made my hair look redder than ever. There was no undershirt, just a short-sleeved tunic which fitted closely to my hips and then flared out, worn with matching leggings and ankle boots. The embroidery at the neck and hem line was in silver, little castellations like a picture book castle, interspersed with the cross keys of House St Peter. I found I was eagerly looking forward to wearing it, to Perry seeing me in it.
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