Fashion Through the Pages

(X-Posted from First Edition!)

I'm not a firm believer in hard and fast rules for writing, but if there's any one maxim I think all writers should follow it's Write What You Love.* There's little I love more than a good book. On the Mary Scale of Enthusiasm, the only things ranked higher are great slices of Black Forest Cake or truly fabulous dresses.

Black Forest Cake, unfortunately, isn't enough to write a Young Adult novel about. A sonnet or ode, maybe. Possibly even a short story. But seventy thousand words dedicated to whipped cream and cherry preserves? That's for a braver (and more existential) author than I.

Fashion, though - now there's something to write about. Whatever age we choose to write in, fashion trends and style icons are some of the essential details we must deal with. One of the quickest ways to shove a reader out of the story is some slip-up in fashion that shows the author didn't do her research. A novel is set in the Eighties, but the heroine - a supposed fashionista - is still wearing the polyester sundresses and bell-bottoms of the Seventies? Either the character is meant to be clueless, or else the author just isn't paying attention. This sounds elementary, I know, but there are some big name authors who have had slip-ups - maybe not to such a ridiculous degree, but enough that their readers noticed. I was once reading a Nora Roberts book, happily enjoying her always extraordinary characterization, when I read a line which had me throwing the book against the wall. The heroine - a well-off, sophisticated woman, who up until that point had been decked out in designer clothes - was dressing for a date with the hero at a nightclub. What does she show up wearing?

Tapered blue jeans. (Aka - the dreaded "mom jeans")

This about did it for me. This well to-do woman, who I'm supposed to believe is an impeccably turned out 21st century ice princess, went to to meet the man she's got the hots for looking like a contestant on What Not to Wear? Ugh! I made it the rest of the way through the book, but only after some yoga breathing and counting to 10.

On the other hand, there are authors, like the amazing Eloisa James, who not only get the fashion right, but use it so well that it becomes another essential character in the story. In her last book, An Affair Before Christmas, both the hero and heroine become slaves to 1700s fashion after their marriage goes sour - Fletch attempts to make himself the most desirable man in England through clothes & style, while Poppy, trying to keep up with him, spends half the book miserably uncomfortable in her ever-growing hoop skirts. Not only were the characters suffering mentally, but you could literally see their pain through their wardrobe choices. As they fell in love again, each let themselves be more casual and comfortable than ever before - just as they were becoming more comfortable with each other. It was genius.

And such is the power of clothing in literature. The best authors use it fully in their works - either making their characters noticeably clueless of it, or using it as a tool to create mood, setting, and characterization. What would Scarlett O'Hara be without her curtain dress? Or Amelia Peabody without her trusty parasol?

For me, fashion plays such a big part in trying to write what I love, that I know someday I'll produce a thoroughly unpublishable historical romance set in the 1920s. Unfortunately there's no market for such a setting, but how can I resist writing in the age of woman's rights, mobsters, and most importantly - cloche hats? The styles themselves were such a revelation of the changing role of women, that I'm still surprised that there aren't more name-taking, super heroines from this decade!

Okay, honestly, I could go on about this subject forever, but what do you think? Are styles and fashions something you think about when writing your story or creating your characters? If you could write in any time period, based on clothing alone, what would you chose?



*note: definitely not "write what you know" - ugh! How awful! There would be no historical romances at all if the only people writing them were English History professors. And I truly hope all the "bodice ripper" authors of the 70s and 80s were not following this advice...that's a lot of trauma for one poor author to experience, if so.