Capitol Couture in The Hunger Games.

It's a little late for a review of the Hunger Games movie itself, so in summary: I thought it was an excellent adaptation, and the few things I did have a problem with (too much exposition from the Games commentators; too many important and/or traumatising details cut from the book) were understandable for reasons of making the film accessible to a wider audience. I've had a few people ask me if I'm going to write about the costumes, and yes, I'm finally getting round to it, although you may not all agree with the result. For a film adaptation of a book that has so much to say about fashion, vanity, and the immediate visual differences between social classes, the costumes in The Hunger Games could've been a lot better.

I'm not suggesting moment that the Capitol costumes didn't look fantastic. It's the background concept I have a problem with. Effie Trinket, the first person we see from the Capitol, was perfect. Her purpose is to illustrate the huge chasm between Katniss' life in the impoverished District 12, and the thoughtlessly cruel frivolity enjoyed by the people who dwell in the Capitol. Even though Effie has more contact with people from the worker districts than most Capitol citizens do, she still has very little understanding of how they live or the fact that the Capitol is so widely loathed and resented. There's no possibility of any common ground between her and a girl who has to illegally hunt with a bow and arrow in order to save her family from starvation.

Katniss has higher priorities than caring about the way she looks. (One thing I would've appreciated in this film would've been if Katniss had actually had leg hair prior to her Capitol makeover.) She's a very angry person, raging against the Capitol and the way her friends and family are forced to live, but quiet about it because stoicism and practicality are the only way for her to survive. Effie is the polar opposite of this: superficial, thoughtless, and impractical to the degree that she can barely walk in her tight skirts and heels.

Elizabeth Banks and her costume/makeup people created a wonderfully faithful version of this character. Both visually and in terms of her performance, she embodies everything Katniss hates about the Capitol: the frothyness, the frivolity, the conspicious consumption and wastefulness. She also has a very distinctive personal style: the puffy hair, sleeves and accessories, the narrow waists of her jackets and the excessive colour-coordination. Unlike in many futuristic/sci-fi movies where people wear improbably costumes with no thought for budget or practicality, we know that Effie has a team of consultants and makeup artists to help her look that way.

For me, the problem with the Hunger Games' costumes begins once we move past Effie Trinket and into the Capitol itself. Effie is a perfect example both of a character whose costumes fit perfectly with their personality  and lifestyle, and of a character who is image-obsessed to the detriment of everything else. Now, both from descriptions in the novels and the impression we get of the Capital in general, the appearance of other Capitol citizens should run along those lines as well: strong personal styles, coupled with extremely high-impact, high-budget clothes. The problem is that the background characters look too much like Effie Trinket.

When Katniss and Peeta first enter the Capitol they experience severe culture shock, partially thanks to the outlandish appearance of its citizens. In the film, this works fairly well but only because the clothes worn by the extras and secondary characters are so colourful when compared to the muted greys and browns of District 12. However, the fundamental reason why the Capitol citizens look the way they do is because they're part of a society where people are rich, have too much time on their hands, and hugely overvalue personal appearance. Even taking into account the fact that many people are followers rather than trendsetters, the overall effect of the Capitol costumes is the assumption that colour-matching, dyed hair, puffy sleeves and narrow waists are the Capitol equivalent of jeans-and-a-t-shirt. It removes Effie Trinket's impact because it characterises her as just another slavish follower of a universal trend.

Fashion is self-expression. It may be molded by trends and designers, but in a culture where everyone has a huge amount of disposable income to spend on self-augmentation and bespoke clothes, everyone should look far more different from one another than they did here. The girl pictured above could easily be Effie Trinket 20 years ago. The woman in the picture below, with her curled and coloured hair and elaborate fascinator, could be Effie in 20 years time. Excluding the possibility that these women are both Effie Trinket fangirls, we shouldn't be seeing this type of uniformity. Take a look at any busy urban street in real life. Is every person wearing the same fashion trends? No. A hundred years they might have been, but only because clothes were far slower and more difficult to make.

In the Capitol, outrageousness is praised and admired. This isn't a world of high-end couture fans whose style is dictated by Fashion Week; a far better analogy would be the urban tribes of the Harajuku district in Tokyo. The Harajuku kids dressing in Lolita, Visual Kei and Club Kid styles identify with those subcultures and put a lot of time and effort into the way they look, as should the people of the Capitol. The Capitol may be isolated from the outside influences that inspire new social/fashion trends in real-life cities, but the Capitol's constant obsession with public image, stylists and reality TV should outweigh that purely because there would be so many competing designers. But despite the extravagance of what we see in the Capitol scenes, there's very little sense that these people are setting out to express their own individuality.

Several reviews namechecked Lady Gaga because she's the current buzzword for over-the-top dressing, but Capitol fashions only reach the level Gaga maintains for a casual trip to the airport or a baseball game, not the full-on meat dress extravaganza she puts on for major events. In the third Hunger Games book, there's a shop that caters to people who take on animal characteristics, the owner herself having had her body augmented to look like a tiger. This is a weird example even by Capitol standards, but when do we see anything even approaching this in the movie? Where's the extreme plastic surgery? Where are the facial tattoos and metal flesh inlays described in the book? Why are all the women so feminine, and the men dressed in some version of a suit? Where are the goths? Where are the people whose fashion identity is tied up in some other subculture, like medical fetishism, or sportswear, or plant-matter, or faux poverty? Because you know that in a priveleged yet socially ignorant culture like this, there will be people who ape the poorer the Districts by doing something like dressing in stylised rags.

When choosing extras for the background scenes in the Capitol, they might have been better off doing an open casting call for fans wearing what they thought of as Capitol fashions. Or giving a bunch of money to some of the more out-there Etsy designers or Camden Market/Harajuku clothing companies, so as to come up with a more disparate selection of "weird" styles. Hopefully in the later movies we'll see a wider variety of extremes instead of this single overarching theme of brightly-coloured formalwear.

Links

Hunger Games Fashion -- Various behind-the-scenes articles from the Hunger Games movie's costume and makeup team.

Capitol Couture -- Viral marketing site set up before the film's release, showcasing various Capitol fashions and characters.

Grey, by Jon Armstrong -- Like The Hunger Games, this novel takes place in a very priveleged and image-obsessed city, although this time round the protagonist is from the Capitol. It's a great portrayal of extreme subcultures and reality TV/internet fandom, the main character being an obsessive fan of grey suits, intense minimalism, and a "competitive ironer" who is famous for ironing shirts in a particularly sharp manner.

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Disturbing viral marketing for Prometheus: Happy birthday David, from Weyland Industries.

Previously: The Costumes of Alien, Part 2: Space suits, retrofuturism, and Prometheus.

I'm not having the vapours over Prometheus the way I currently am about The Avengers' pre-movie shenanigans, which is probably just as well as Prometheus doesn't come out until June. I am, however, quietly impressed by the direction their viral marketing is taking. These days most sci-fi/geek-oriented movies use viral videos and ARG sites alongside traditional marketing, but quality varies.

In the case of Prometheus, Guy Pearce's 2023 TED Talk (in character as the CEO of Weyland Industries, an early precurser to the Weyland-Yutani corporation of the Alien Quadrilogy) was an intriguing turn, especially since Prometheus takes place decades after 2023. Likewise, the new David8 robot ad from Weyland Industries features one of Prometheus' main stars, but doesn't seem like it's going to appear in the movie itself.

Not gonna lie: I'm kind of fixating on this video. Watch it and you may understand why. Michael Fassbender is just so creepy.

Like most people watching viral videos several months before a film's release date I'm enough of a fanperson that my future film ticket is metaphorically booked already, so I can't really guage its usefulness as a marketing tool (although I guess I am currently perpetuating its ploy by writing about it here...). But at face-value, as an advertisement for a robot as opposed to a film that contains a robot character? WORST. AD. EVER. Let's break it down.

1. David8 (lovingly played by Michael Fassbender's smooth, skull-like face and vast array of teeth) is supposedly a master of human emotion, yet his dead-eyed expression and Swarovski crystal tears are so far down the Uncanny Valley that I'd rate this video at least a PG for pure inhuman disturbia value. He also has the soft, calm voice of Hal 9000 or Hannibal Lecter.
2. He manages to enhale the perfume of a lily (FUNERAL IMAGERY, I see what you did there) in such a way that he somehow resembles a lizard about to kill and eat a small defenseless animal.
3. "I understand human emotions... although I do not feel them myself." SCREAM. Look, I know this ad is aimed at CEOs looking to hire someone with no ethical qualms about doing their dirty work, but David8's demeanour is so disquieting I can't imagine buying him for that exact reason. 
4. When he cries, not only are the tears fake in the sense that he's a robot and therefore has no autonomic function, they're false because he freely admits that he doesn't feel any emotion.

I'm convinced this is all on purpose. The David8 commercial is a masterpiece of subtle horror. Take, for example, his immediate appearance. Even discounting the fact that his facial expressions are seriously off and that Fassbender takes great trouble to move with the calculated smoothness of a machine (there's actually a fake David8 promotional website where you can examine his full range of emotional expression), he looks like... a Nazi. I've been wondering for a while now why Fassbender dyed his hair blond in order to play a robot, and I guess we have our answer now. What with the trim figure, masculine facial features and that blond side-parting he genuinely looks like the Aryan ideal -- plus the uniform shirt buttoned up to the neck.

Screencaps from here.

Oh, and in the background of that scene? Robot skulls.

The chess shot is really an extension of the Uncanny Valley thing as a whole. On top of David8's subtly non-human appearance, here we see two Davids performing what is supposedly a human leisure activity. Except they're doing it in a sterile room, with uncomfortably perfect posture, and expressing none of the body-language of either a person who is having fun, or a person interacting with another person. "THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT ACTUALLY PEOPLE," it screams, and I have to wonder if this is a purposeful marketing choice on the part of Weyland Industries because if a robot was exactly the same as a human, then what's the point in paying for a robot at all?

Another unnecessarily disturbing moment: the filmmaker chops footage of David8 up into little sections and spreads them out across the screen. The right hand side is particularly disturbing, since for a moment it gives the impression of a single, cyclops-like eye above a normal mouth. Also, the supposedly casual poses of the Davids labeled C, D and E are not remotely casual at all. My favourite detail is probably the sandals, which are probably intended to imply relaxation and comfort but in fact are very jarring when compared to David's pressed, buttoned-up clothes and flawless hair and skin.

What's that? David8 enjoys poking at tiny model people with sharp impliments? How delightful and artistic! I must buy one at once! Particularly in order to perform tasks that "humans might find... [ominous pause]... distressing, or unethical". What could possibly go wrong.

In conclusion, David8 is what you buy when you want a really efficient, emotionless version of Patrick Batemen in American Psycho, except he bleeds white blood, never dies, and has a metal skeleton like Wolverine. What appealing employee characteristics. Luckily he's totally obedient and able to work for 24 hours per day. You know... unless he malfunctions. Which never happens to humanoid robots on isolated space missions in sci-fi movies.

I assume it's no accident that David shares a name with the young protagonist of AI: Artificial Intelligence, a role for which Haley Joel Osment trained himself not to blink for long stretches of time in order to seem less human. But if David8 is the eighth iteration of the David series, I hate to think what their developmental process entails because David8 has all the human comfort and appeal of a switchblade.

Not disturbing at all.

Weyland Industries' homepage for David8 provides various ominous details about the robot's basic functions, such as his "Fear center safety program (can be disabled)". David8's marketing seems so skewed towards him being a soulless denizen of the Uncanny Valley that I'm very much hoping he turns out to be the opposite. Not that I want Fassbender's character to evolve into a warm and cuddly romantic hero like Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man, but what with Blade Runner and the original Alien movie, Ridley Scott does have a good track record for creating layered non-human characters.

Links

The timeline for Weyland Industries from Peter Weyland's birth to the "present" day is well worth checking out. This is the kind of constructed reality I appreciate: lots of believable detail, but very little solid information relating to what will take place in the movie itself.

This Twitter feed is an astonishingly well-devised piece of viral marketing. In character as David8, @david8weyland answers questions from fans with tweets like, "Spiders are a most fascinating breed of insect. Arachnids have superior strength, reflex and survivability." and "What fascinates me about humans is their individual interpretation of beauty. I can interpret positive visuals from objects."

There's also a David8 Tumblr, although I'm not sure if it's official or a fan-page and it doesn't seem as interesting as David's personal Twitter.

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Sheguang Hu, and why The Hunger Games' Capitol should've looked more like Beijing Fashion Week.

Beijing Fashion Week rarely makes it to mainstream American/British fashion magazines and blogs, and coverage outside of highlight galleries seems to be nigh-on impossible to find. Which is too bad, because if you enjoy truly out-there couture (which I do) then Beijing is streets ahead of Paris at the moment. Although designers like McQueen are still regularly turning out excellent couture shows, I've found that many of the major fashion houses on the London/Paris/Milan/NYC circuit have been noticeably lacklustre over the last few years.

photos from here.

Autumn/Winter 2012/13
Last month's Sheguang Hu show in Beijing was gothic and alarming, and filled with expressive and over-the-top millinary.

I loved the fabric used for this dress. Hundreds of tiny, mournful faces printed onto the fabric, acting as a counterpoint to the aggressive metal spikes on the belt and shoulder-straps. This entire collection was about combining conservative, relatively simple silhouettes with extravagant detail work. Although a few elements of fetishwear and classic goth/punk looks were included, they were far more subtle and less cliched than those found in most "dark" collections.

One of the reasons why I took such a shine to Sheguang Hu is that he shares my love of upholstery fabrics. In general I think florals are vastly overused in almost every area of fashion design, but when they're a) used in the context of an aggressively structured outfit like the one pictured below, or b) printed or embroidered in the style of pre-1900s fabric designs, then I approve. Another thing I've noticed about Huang's designs is that although he's very fond of the ever-favoured super-slim fitted dress, he does include quite a few more forgiving cuts -- something that's doubly unusual in couture shows, because couture is so obviously not created to appeal to general audiences. But the suit below would work on a variety of women's body shapes.

Spring/Summer 2012
For contrast, I'm including some of my favourites from last season's collection as well. A lot of designers don't vary much from season to season (not necessarily a bad thing -- for example, Gareth Pugh makes clothes exclusively for fetish robots who never go outside or, indeed, breathe, eat or walk anywhere, so "seasons" are completely arbitrary) but Sheguang Hu's Spring and Fall 2012 collections were very different.

Spring/Summer photos from here.

Sheguang Hu moved to Amsterdam as a teenager, studied design there, and now owns a store in the city. I think there are definite European influences in his work, but those influences seem to stem from the fashions of three or four hundred years ago. It reminds me a little of Vivienne Westwood, in fact -- pastiches on the theme of neck-ruffs, Tudor corsets and heavily embroidered fabrics, but never anything that actually resembles period costume.

This candy-pink dress is strictly fairytale, but manages to avoid venturing into Harajuku territory thanks to the huge, robe-like sleeves and simple silhouette.

One of my favourite outfits of the entire collection. It combines the full sleeves of a 16th century gentleman's padded cloth "armour" doublet with a more feminine bodice and modern trousers, creating a shape and aesthetic that overall fails to identify with any era. This look reminded me very much of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, although perhaps that's partially down to the slightly Tilda Swintonish redhaired model.

Looking at many of the highlights from Beijing Fashion Week I not only mourn the comparative tameness of recent Paris/London/etc Couture shows, I find myself getting slightly annoyed at the Hunger Games movie. I haven't posted about it here on Hello, Tailor (yet) but I must admit I found the supposedly-extravagant costumes of the Capitol unexpectedly disappointing. There was a fair amount of pre-movie viral marketing centred around the Capitol fashions, but when it came to the film itself I realised that many of the most prominent costumes had already been revealed, and the bar for outlandishness was nowhere near as high as I'd expected. I'm not saying I disliked the costumes, but I am hoping they edge more towards the Nicki Minaj/Sheguang Hu/Alexander McQueen end of the scale in the sequels as opposed to the brightly coloured but ultimately uninspiring looks we saw this time round.

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Pre-Movie Avengers post: Loki's costumes, armour, and image-consciousness.

Related: Movie Costumes I Have Loved: Thor.

I suppose I could apologise for making another Avengers-related post, but I ain't sorry. Nope. I need to get rid of all my Avengers excitement somehow, otherwise I'll just run around in little circles waving my hands in the air until the top of my head comes off and steam comes out of the hole. (<--- actual example.)

So here we go: Hello, Tailor's first ever pre-movie costume review, brought to you by the many clips and trailers Marvel has helpfully provided in order to whip fans into the maximum possibly frenzy prior to the movie's release. Thankfully none of these trailers contain any information about what actually happens in the film itself, so this blog (and my brain) will remain gloriously spoiler free until April 26.

Picture of Loki and Thor grinding Get Low by Lil Jon, from The Art Of Thor.

Thanks to my recent introduction to Game Of Thrones, I had armour on my mind as I perused the various Marvel teasers. For the most part, the battle costumes in Game of Thrones are quite closely modeled on the kind of medieval armour we expect to be worn by jousting knights, and is reasonably practical. The armour we saw in Thor is pretty much the opposite -- showy, sparkly, and inspired by comicbook illustrations drawn by people who were making it up as they went along. Which is totally fine! The fact that the costume designers for Thor managed to make the Asgardian clothes look even remotely like something worn by actual people in real life is enough for me. Thor and Loki are both alien princes. For all we know, the non-metallic bits of their armour are laser-proof and knitted from meteor rocks, as opposed to being the slightly cheap-looking pleather they appear to be. Haters to the left.

Loki's ceremonial armour from Thor.

The Asgardian armour in Thor was very clean and polished, fitting in with a rather over-the-top, cartoonish aesthetic that worked in the context of the film but looks pretty cheesy in pictures. From what I've seen of Loki's Avengers costumes they're similar on what he wore in Thor, but are a lot more lived-in and have better detailing. The Avengers is altogether a bigger movie with high production values, plus the costumes from each of the individual Avengers' own prequel movies presumably had to be tweaked a little in order to mesh the different looks. Also, since one of the Loki's outfits from the Avengers trailers seems almost identical to the one he was wearing at the end of Thor, I think it's meant to be that one, just looking a bit the worse for wear after a few days/months/untold millennia floating through Yggdrasil's Space-Vortex (or whatever it is he was doing while he decided to take over Midgard and stop washing his hair).

screenshot from The Avengers promo material.

The main difference I've noticed is that Loki's armour in The Avengers gives the appearance of being more battle-ready. There's more wear-and-tear as if he's actually encountered some fighting and dirt (which Magical L'Oreal Prince Thor never seems to, even after he launched himself directly through the skull of a giant monster in the Thor movie), and at least one set of his gauntlets have been replaced by something a little more practical and less like an Asgardian Prince party costume.

screenshot from The Avengers promo material.

The addition of a single shoulder-piece (that's called a pauldron, armour-enthusiasts!) suggests duelling, as there's generally more armour on a person's exposed side -- ie, the side that's presented towards the enemy. However, in the case of Loki this is kind of tricky because a) his main weapon isn't his spear, it's his ability to make you so annoyed you chop your own head off in frustration, and b) he's a master of illusion. So he can basically look like whatever the hell he wants. This makes Loki's costume and appearance the most interesting of any character in The Avengers, because you know that the way he looks is always going to be a conscious choice. I'll be on the lookout to see how Loki presents himself to different characters over the course of the movie, since the trailer already shows several costume variations. For example, the impressive gold armour and helmet (as pictured below) is from a scene where Loki addresses a crowd of fearful civilians, whereas when Loki visits Tony Stark he tones it down to a more sedate black get-up, possibly because he knows Tony would laugh at him if he showed up wearing eighteen-inch gold goat horns on his head.

screenshot from The Avengers promo material.

The real question, though, is if he's ever actually wearing any of this stuff. Most of the time when he's in armour it's not because he thinks someone's going to come at him with a halberd, it's for performative reasons. And when we see him in Midgardian clothes (ie, a suit and tie) the implication is that that's an illusion, so... what is real? Will he turn out to have been wearing pyjamas throughout the entire movie, just using his magic to throw on a few dramatic Emo God outfits from time to time to remind everyone that there's an evil overlord in town? I hope so.

Links

This gifset is handy for comparisons between Loki's (similar) costumes in Thor and The Avengers. He definitely looks broader and tougher in the new movie, mostly due to the widened shoulders. In Thor his costumes tended to emphasise how slight he was in comparison to Thor, but in The Avengers he needs to present a more aggressive image because he's the primary antagonist rather than the hero's misunderstood little brother. While in Thor Loki often looked vulnerable and delicate, the costumes and visuals in The Avengers need to emphasise the more angular aspects of Tom Hiddleston's features.

This is another good look at how Loki's Thor costume is a lot more cartoony than the scraped and dented metal we see in The Avengers.

The Mary Sue: For anyone still wondering, yes, women can wear full armour too. Although not directly related to Thor or The Avengers, this article has a lot to say about body-shape, practicality and aesthetic, and how they relate to the type of body armour we see worn by sci-fi/fantasy characters.

Finally: The best Tony Stark/Loki costume commentary you're ever likely to find.

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Game Of Thrones: Unwashed Northerners, royal conspiracies, and decapitations all round.

This post contains no plot spoilers.

I began watching Game Of Thrones recently -- mostly because I was promised cute baby dragons, and I love cute baby dragons -- and I think this poster more or less sums it up:

No one is safe. This show has the highest body-count I've ever encountered. Luckily I didn't get very attached to any of the characters until several episodes in, thus saving myself a lot of decapitation-based heartache. Because the folks of Westeros really like their decapitations. It's like head-severing is their national sport or something (their second-favourite activity being incest).

The costume design in Game Of Thrones doesn't blow my mind, but it definitely fulfills my criteria of costuming following characterisation. The source material itself is a real gift: a combination of historical and fantasy-based costumes, the two main costume design crowd-pleasers both in terms of awards and audience recognition. I haven't read the books so I can't speak to the authenticity of the show's visuals, but my guess is that the show differs significantly from George R. R. Martin's original vision. There isn't a great deal of overlap between costume/fashion experts and revered High Fantasy greybeards.

Jaime and Cersei Lannister.

This isn't going to be a review of Game of Thrones, or even a rundown of the costumes therein. That would probably require an entire new blog all to itself. Suffice it to say that there are several kingdoms, and each has its own style. Pictured above are Cersei and Jaime Lannister, aristocrats from King's Landing where people tend towards the fairytale-Medieval/Mediterrannean Europe end of the spectrum.

Daenerys Targaryen, the Khaleesi.

Khal Drogo and his wife the Khaleesi are their counterparts in the Dothraki kingdom, which culturally seems to be based on the Mongol Empire but costume-wise bears no resemblance to it whatsoever. A lot of their costumes share more with the mixing-pot of modern urban "tribal" (ugh) styles than anything else, and seem very impractical for people who spend their lives trekking across the steppes in the blazing sun. My discomfort with this cultural/racial confusion is exacerbated by the fact that for the first couple of episodes the Dothraki characters are portrayed in a way that comes across as rather racist considering the fact that they're the only society in Westeros that isn't closely inspired by Medieval (white) Europe.

The constantly-shirtless Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo.

There are no heroes in Game of Thrones, which is just as well since I'm fairly sure the final episode will end with the last surviving character beheading themselves, thus allowing the dragons to take their rightful place as apex predators of Westeros. However, the Stark family (headed by Eddard Stark, AKA Boromir, AKA Sean Bean) are as close are we're likely to get, although my loyalties may have been influenced by the fact that they're the underdogs, they have super adorable pet wolves, and they're from The North. As a Scottish person I'm practically obliged to side with impoverished people who live in an ice-bound hellhole and are constantly oppressed and belittled by their despicably clean-haired, well-spoken rulers. Oh, and the Starks are also my favourites in terms of costuming, although for a very specific -- some might say, idiotic -- reason.

Eddard Stark.

Eddard Stark looks almost indistinguishable from Boromir in Lord of the Rings. His role and character, too, are not dissimilar, although Sean Bean really only has one setting and that setting is "angry Northern man who can't wait to get into a fight about something". Like the rest of the Stark men and Northern lords, he wears a lot of armour and fur and leather in colours that won't show the decapitation stains, and generally gives off the aura of a person whom you wouldn't want to stand too close to because they haven't washed in six months. Actually, one of the pleasantly surprising details in Game of Thrones, for me, was the fact that people really are Medieval levels of dirty, at least in the North and among the peasantry. Except for a couple of the noblewomen, everyone from Winterfell (Stark's kingdom) has genuinely revolting hair, and although this doesn't pass my ultimate benchmark of historical filmmaking, Lots Of Rotten Teeth, I certainly appreciate it.

Catelyn Stark, wife of Eddard Stark.

But my love for the Winterfell aesthetic stems not from the realistically unwashed hair but from the bizarre drawstring collars sported by many of the Northern characters. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this in a historical TV show or movie, or indeed in real life, but it's incredibly practical for people who live in a very cold climate. Although most of the men wear too much leather and armour for us to tell what's underneath, I think this is a unisex item worn by most people in Winterfell. One baggy linen undershirt drawn tight around the neck, then either another similar shirt over the top, or a more formal/fitted jacket or dress over the top. My favourite example for this is Catelyn Stark, because like her husband her costumes are fairly uniform. Her children dress up for feasts and formal events, and her daughter Sansa's style changes quite drastically when she travels to the far more refined (and warm) King's Landing and is exposed to Southern fashions, but Catelyn is unchanging.

Catelyn Stark and Cersei Lannister.

Catelyn herself isn't from the North by birth -- she married into it -- and her slightly neater style reflects both that and well-organised personality. But even though she's high-born and is the matriarch of a great dynasty, she appears relentlessly practical compared to the glamourous Cersei and the courtiers of King's Landing. Her wardrobe is all subtle, worn greys, greens and blues in tough fabrics, and no matter where she travels she's always wearing the un-dyed Northern undershirt.

Sansa Stark, eldest daughter of Catelyn and Boromir Eddard.

The undershirt is evidently a traditional item as well as a practical one, because when Sansa, Catelyn's oldest daughter, goes to meet the Queen at a feast, her formal dress includes a silkier version of the high-collared undershirts peeking out from under the neckline. I'd be interested to see where this style comes from, although my best guess would be Inuit sealskin undershirts and parkas, which are usually tightened with drawstrings to keep out the elements.

Arya Stark, younger daughter of Catelyn and Eddard.

I couldn't finish this post without a mention of Arya Stark, one of my favourite characters from season 1. Although her older sister Sansa developes into be a fascinating character in later episodes, Arya is awesome from day one, albeit in a slightly cheesy fantasy-hero kind of way. She's a tomboy! She wants to learn how to use a sword and never wash her hair, just like her brothers! I'm a sucker for all that stuff. Plus, she's a major proponent of the Northern undershirt, wearing them almost all the time. People make her wear dresses on a couple of occasions, but it doesn't seem to be a high priority for the Starks to dress her "like a girl", thus proving them to be some of the least-awful parents in Westeros. And, in the end, some of the least politically sound. While Sansa quickly learns to fit in amongst the Southern gentry, Arya, Eddard and Catelyn are all far too straightforward and practical to bother about appearances, and are further disrespected as a result.

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If there's no such thing as a vintage Captain America venereal disease PSA then I'm going to be so disappointed.

One of my favourite parts of Captain America: The First Avenger is when Steve Rogers, clad in a delightfully low-budget proto-version of the "real" Captain America costume, goes on tour with a chorus of USO girls and stars in public service films urging all patriotic Americans to invest in War Bonds. Not only is Steve Rogers unendingly adorable in the role of bashful-yet-enthusiastic wartime mascot, but this one small montage leaves room for all sorts of great backstory elements: The urban legend of Captain America having punched Hitler in the face (he did, multiple times -- onstage), the idea of the comedically naiive Steve Rogers going on tour with a bunch of chorus girls in sexy outfits (it'd be like Some Like It Hot, except with superhero outfits!), the development of Steve's own ideas about the press and what it means to be a public icon... There are just so many possibilities! Actually, I think you should just watch the "Star Spangled Man" sequence, which caused me to grin so widely when I saw it in the cinema that I thought the top of my head was going to come off.

I only saw the movie once, but rewatching that clip I noticed something that for the 1940s, is pretty damn awesome: Cap's backing guys -- his unit, I guess -- is desegrated. I don't know enough about Captain America in general to comment on how that relates to comicbook canon, but I find it pretty unlikely that WWII propaganda films would be that liberal. Integrated units were still illegal in those days and I don't think I've ever seen a British or American military information poster featuring a non-white soldier. So I'm just going to go ahead and assume that Steve Rogers specifically asked for there to be some non-white guys marching alongside him in those PSA movies because he loves freedom and hates racism. (Seriously, I can't help but be fascinated with the idea of how Steve Rogers is going to react society -- and politics -- in 21st century America, and hope that the Avengers movie at least touches on this.)

From The Art of Captain America: The First Avenger.

I already predict that one of my favourite things about the Avengers movie is going to be the fact that they're really public superheroes. They have government backing via SHIELD (the somewhat-shadowy agency run by Nick Fury -- AKA Samuel L. Jackson in, well, all the individual Avenger movies), but more importantly they're pretty much destined to be celebrities. None of them even have secret identities! And as team leader, it's a good thing that Steve Rogers already has some PR experience because aside from Tony Stark, who is probably a tabloid disaster in multiple countries, none of the other Avengers have ever really been on camera. Bruce Banner would be a terrible interviewee because there's the constant danger of him hulking out under the pressure and trashing the Daily Show studio, and I suspect that Black Widow would shiv any journalist who tried to press her about her personal life.

All thoughts of Avengers aside, there's one single Captain America item that I am desperately hoping exists: A venereal disease PSA. Because seriously, STDs were a big problem during Wartime! And Captain America's job was to support and educate the troops! This whole concept is so beautiful to me because a) the addition of cheesy sexual innuendo to the now-retro wonders of WWII propaganda art can only be a good thing, b) in the movie, Steve Rogers is so unsure around women that he often just blushes and stammers at them, so god only knows how he'd cope with having to sing some cheery jingle with a title like "We Can't Defeat The Axis/Without Prophylaxis", and c) you just know that Tony Stark would track that ad down and post it on Youtube.

1940s VD posters. 

So I ask you, comicbook fans: has this ever happened in Avengers or Captain America canon, and if not, why not? If fanartists can produce beautiful poster art such as this, then I hope to goodness that someone somewhere has devoted such attention to a similar one in which Cap urges Our Boys to avoid the dangers of syphilis. Or that there's some fanfic out there, at the very least.

Postcript: Fun fact I learned while googling 1940s venereal disease posters: Stan Lee, one of the original creaters of The Avengers comics, was employed to draw one during WWII.

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