Dress Journal #1: Steampunk. Steampunk? Steampunk.

After an extended hiatus, I'm preparing to drag the sewing machine out and build myself some new clothes. Not clothes that I would normally wear to work--clothes that I wear to play, since my idea of "play" still includes a good amount of "dress up." This summer I am doing some serious costume-building.

If one were to diagram my friends and my play, it would be a Venn diagram with three very overlapping circles. Some of my fiber friends are also fans of the British TV show Doctor Who; others are in the historical reenacting and fiber circles; a few are in all three. Now there's a fourth circle: steampunk.

Steampunk--as a literary form--is a subgenre of science fiction extrapolating the idea that Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (now considered to be the world's first computer) was built and the design improved upon in the 19th Century. It's a world populated with technology that operates with steam and gears, and a rather Victorian sense of geopolitics: the United States is split into several different countries, depending on the author, and the sun has not set on the British empire. An excellent description of the origins of steampunk can be found in Jess Nevin's essay, "The 19th Century Roots of Steampunk," in Steampunk. Steampunk has taken the historical costuming world by storm.

Steampunk as a venue for costuming is fun, because it draws heavily on 19th and early 20th Century clothing (approximately 1850-1910). It gives me a reason to revamp my wardrobe after a long break from this period, with clothes I can wear for action-shooting, historical reenactments, the odd science fiction convention, and of course steampunk events. As an early 20th Century technical exposition--The Great Pan-kinetic Exposition--is tentatively scheduled to be held sometime in 2011, I have no excuse to not start building clothes appropriate for it and other events.

So this is the start of an actual dress journal. Stay tuned, and follow how I go about refurbishing my wardrobe.