Clothing Your Characters
By Liz Michalski | July 30, 2013 |
Therese butting in for a second to announce that Liz Michalski, a frequent guest here at WU and assistant editor of the WU newsletter, Writer Inboxed, will be contributing here on WU the blog more frequently! I’ve always enjoyed Liz’s unique posts, and I think you will as well. Please join me in welcoming her!
Clothing Your Characters
Red Shoes by NAT – National AIDS Trust, on Flickr
Confession time: I am a fashion faux pas.
It could be the eight years I spent in a Catholic school uniform so plaidly hideous, my fashion taste buds withered and died.
It could be my first job as a newspaper reporter. (Poorly paid but righteous in their desire to report the truth, print reporters, as a rule, are the worst-dressed people in the room. ) Add in an equine addiction and a horse who required $150 in steel shoes every other month, and you’ll understand why my own soles were happy just to have bargain-basement sneakers.
That changed a few years ago, when I had an unexpected event. Normally, I’d call my sister or a friend and borrow an outfit from their closets, but neither were around. So I bit the bullet, went shopping, and walked out with a lovely dress that fit me — not my sister or my friend. I didn’t have to roll up the sleeves or tape up the hem. I went to my event and rocked it. And that, my friends, was my fashion awakening. At my very advanced age I finally understood that clothes, do indeed, make the (wo)man.
They also make the character.
Clothes, I’ve finally figured out, are shorthand for how we present ourselves to the world. Think about the people you see each day and how many of them have a unique style. At the school pickup lane alone, I see The New Yorker, The Sophisticated European, The Athlete, and The WannaBe Hippie. We dress to impress. We dress to fit in. We dress to show we (don’t) care.
Our characters do these things as well. Clothes can be an easy way to tell a reader who a character is, as well as what is on his or her mind. It’s a writing shorthand, a way to do two things at once — describe what a character looks like on the outside and give the reader a peek at what’s happening internally. And anytime you can use one set of words to perform two functions, it’s good.
So ask yourself:
What does your character like to wear, and what happens when she dons the opposite? In my first book, one of my characters dresses in utilitarian clothes, but for a special meeting, she purchases a gorgeous silk outfit. I wanted to show how important the meeting was for her.
What’s quirky about her clothes? The same character I mentioned above cuts holes in her tennis shoes to relieve her bunions. In The Graveyard Book, a heartbreakingly beautiful story by Neil Gaiman about growing up and the passage of time, the main character sometimes wears winding sheets — odd, yes, but a way to reinforce the main setting, which is a graveyard.
What’s in her closet? Is it designer or bargain basement? A person who makes minimum wage and saves all year to buy Prada sunglasses may have a very different viewpoint from someone who can afford to buy several pairs at a time.
What does your character reach for on an average day, and what happens when it’s not there? Do other people recognize her by her clothes? What happens when she’s forced to change her style for some reason?
Who does she steal clothes from, and how does wearing them make her feel? A woman who keeps her high school boyfriend’s sweater in the closet even after she’s married to someone else may have some interesting thoughts to share. A woman who wears her daughter’s sweater when that daughter is away at college has very different thoughts.
What condition are her clothes in? Are they ironed? By your character, or by someone else? Does she wear her clothes ripped or stained? If she wears armor, is it shiny and new, or dented and old? Did your character receive the blows that made those dents, or did someone else wear the armor first? Are those dents badges of pride, or signs of shame?
I’m not asking for pages and pages of description here, unless you are writing a fashion biopic. But carefully considering what your character wears, and how she wears it, will make her unique and lend readers insight into her psyche and the circumstances that surround her.
Liz Michalski’s (she/her) second novel, Darling Girl, was published in 2022 by Dutton. Her first novel, Evenfall, was published by Berkley Books (Penguin). Liz has been a reporter, an editor, and a freelance writer. In her previous life, she wrangled with ill-tempered horses and oversized show dogs. These days she’s downsized to one husband, two children and a medium-sized mutt.
It’s so true! It’s a great way to give insight about a character.
Thanks, Southpaw, and thanks for reading!
Funny you should mention armor. Since I write historical fantasy based on Fourth Century Germanic Tribes, I didn’t have much source material on which to base my wardrobe decisions. But in the case of my sect of warrior women, I did try to reveal some things about them through dress. Generally, they dress for freedom of movement and comfort. Since their culture is deeply rooted in horses, for battle I have them wearing breastplates made of row-sewn horse hooves. And they purposefully (defiantly) refrain from armoring their backs. Indeed, they consider those who do armor their backs (Romans) to be cowardly.
I really love the post, Liz, but I’m wondering what it says about me that I haven’t had on anything but shorts and tee shirts (and socks) in about a month.
I may or may not have been thinking of your characters when I mentioned armor, Vaughn. And I’d never heard that before about the horse’s hooves — was that based on historical fact?
(And I may or may not be living in bathing suits and running gear this summer myself…)
Clothing considerations are important in my writing. In fact, one of my favorite characters has a fashion quirk which (hopefully) hints at the ultimate wound she must overcome for the story to have a happy ending.
That sounds quite intriguing, Jan!
Definitely an important thing to consider. Clothing is a huge part of a person’s character, just as it is in real life. Thanks so much for this insightful and fun post. Glad to see you’ll be here with us more often, Liz!
Thanks, Lydia!
I totally forgot about using fashion for Character Delineation. I need to put that on my list of do’s. I want to be as aware as possible when I create my stories. Thank you Fashion Faux Pas Godess (FFPG or “Double F.P.G.”)
Glad to help, Brian. (So long as you aren’t looking to me for fashion tips…)
Oooh, a nice reminder to always do double and triple duty with our prose.
Making words work that hard can be tough, Vijaya, but I think it is worth it. Thanks for reading!
Oh my word I love this!! In the book I just finished I think I conciously used this to talk about my main characters sister more than my main character herself, but it really can say so much. Great post!
Sarah Allen
(From Sarah, with Joy)
That sounds like a great way for your main character to analyze her sister, Sarah. (I’m sure my own fashion-conscious sister looks at what I’m wearing sometimes and just shakes her head…)
Clothing is one of the many things I investigate for my characters. I’ve written about women in 1860 and 1907 and their clothing styles will interpret how they walk, interact and feel about themselves. Their corsets are different and how they use petticoats or not. My 1907 character likes to tramp and climb mountains. Knickerbockers or bloomers with hob nail boots are on her list. A spy in 1944 Norway posing as a fisherman has another set of issues. Fun stuff.
Sounds as if you cover a wide range, JL. When I was researching a topic, I found it fascinating how corsets actually physically changed a woman’s rib cage — gives new meaning to the term suffering for fashion.
Love your style of writing to the point with a humorous lead-in. (Think my own closet shares a kindred soul with yours.)
My favorite point was “What condition are her clothes in?”. I think that, plus the add or lack of “accessories” (and the accessory types), convey personality more than anything.
Thanks, Denise! (And anytime you want to swap stuff, just holler!)
Lol!
A topic dear to my heart, Liz. Once upon a time, I worked in the fashion industry in NYC. These days, I am a stay-at-home, sweat-pant-wearing editor/author in the fashionless, birkenstock infested suburbs of Denver.
But I miss fashion dearly.
Perhaps I can use my characters to play out my own thwarted desires, lol. The Editor Wears Prada?
At least I know who to go to for advice next time I have a fashion dilemma, Leslie. : ) Thanks for reading!
Welcome aboard! I wonder what the red heels say about you? :)
Denise Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth
I was wondering that too.
Thanks, Denise. (And I do confess to a slight shoe obsession, although these days I mostly get to indulge in flip-flops.)
I always have “clothes” on my mind when thinking about characters. Writing sci-fi means the clothes/fashion are just as much an important part of the setting as the jet packs and ray guns. How do the clothes help emphasize or highlight the whole environment and culture? It’s a similar but different problem from those who are investigating historical fashion in order to clothe their characters ‘properly.’ So yes, I certainly agree that the clothes are an important facet of world building.
Fictional Planet
Great post, Liz! My next project is an historical, so I look forward to delving into the fashion of the era. Fun!
[…] Clothing your characters. Confession time: I am a fashion faux pas . . . […]
This is timely for me because clothing is my protagonist’s unspoken barometer. Can’t really say much more than that. Still, you’re right, clothing choices say a lot without having to say much at all.
Great post! Clothing for my characters has always been a bit of a sticky point for me. I’m not much for fashion–I’m happiest in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt–so thinking up outfits can be a challenge.
Recently I realized that most of my characters seemed to be dressing the same (basically, like me) so I’ve started looking around more in stores and scrolling through online catalogs. I’ll definitely start paying more attention not only to what my characters are wearing, but what it says about them.
I’ve never given clothes much thought, but I guess I need to. In my 2nd novel, the hero and his mentor like to wear suits, but I did not go into a lot of detail for either one of them except why they wore them.
Clothing is something that I have thought very little about. Going to have to pay a bit more attention to this!