…and can be different every time.

When I reblogged this post I forgot to add an inspirational-costume example I’ve used myself and which is now in print.

I saw this on Tumblr a couple of years ago:

it was described as a “steampunk corset”, but that gold embroidery made me think of something else, which was this…

“Aldric was too polite to ask where Tehal Kyrin’s handsome grey mare had come from, and she most likely wouldn’t have answered. Nothing about her invited questions, although her daytime wear invited admiration from a safe distance.

It resembled hunting costume of doeskin boots and breeches, a russet leather jerkin and a white linen shirt, and looked feminine enough with a lady’s cymar riding-mantle flung casually over all. The details were rather less so. Whorls of gold embroidery decorating the jerkin were wire, not thread, and one of its three purses, with thick braided cords wrapped around the fastening, was heavy enough make the entire belt sag. Aldric knew a sling and a pouch of lead slugs when he saw them, just as he recognised the dry click and rustle of metal where none was visible.

At a guess the jerkin was like his own riding-coat, with lamellar scales or mail concealed between leather and lining and held in place by that sturdy ornamental wire. Then Kyrin laced blued-steel plates from a light cavalry armour over her sleeves, cross-strapped a Jouvaine estoc so its hilt rose high at her left shoulder, and any notion of concealment went by the board.

It meant that idle passers-by gave them a wide and wary berth…”

“The Horse Lord” (ebook, Venture Press) © Peter Morwood 1983, 2016.

If I’d been writing about another character wearing it, I could have described it as

“…she was dressed in the current Imperial fashion for looking tough and military, but though her metal-embroidered bodice clearly hinted that it was a brigandine, most brigandines were never so delicate or costly…”

When you’re writing fantasy, a costume - whether modern or period, real or imagined - doesn’t have to be what it is, it can be what you want it to be if you describe it that way.