I saw the piece above entitled Pauldrons and Arm Braces by deviant artist vofffka and wondered to my self why there wasn’t a subculture of people who dressed up like knights? The concept of chivalry and honor are quite big in some geek sub circles, George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones series is hitting it off big time both in the bookstore and on the small screen and it involves wearing armour!
Why is this not a thing? I’m not talking about LARP (Live Action Role Play) style costumes, dressing up in full plate would make day to day tasks completely impractical, I’m talking about incorporating things that look like armor into everyday outfits, a little like this Hoodie by Etsy seller SOFworks which was so successful it got the poor guys shop shut down…
We have Steam punk, that’s a thing that’s been a geek subculture for quite some time, arguably for some people it just involves wearing brown goth clothes and gluing on some gears, but it’s a vibrant subculture.
Likewise there is cyber punk, cyber goth, and hundreds of other subcultures consisting of people who want to for one reason or another dress like they come from another time period be it the past or the future, people even dress up as anthropomorphised animals and believe that that is their true form (Weirder still there are double furries who believe that they are animals dressed up as humans…)
Why don’t we have Steel Punk?
Like I said I’m not talking about people wearing full suits of armor, that’s impractical unless you are LARPing or Cosplaying.
So wondering about with swords is probably out of the question because you will probably get stopped by the police pretty sharpish, but accessorizing normal clothing with pauldrons, bracers, maybe a knitted medieval helm or a knitted chain mail jumper (There is a pattern for this here)?
Or knitted armor:
I have found a few projects scattered about the web The following are undergrad projects:
pauldron, and vambrace entirely of hardened leather.
They are all leather and maybe steel would be a little but less practical, but I still find it strange that there aren’t more people wondering about with bits of armor accentuating their outfits.
As I said actual metal would be preferable, and it’s not like modern fashion designers haven’t tried this like these costumes by designer Naty Chabanenko which are supposed to be android like but lets face it look like stylized armour:
Or this design from Alexander McQueen’s 2007 collection which has a lot of armor inspired designs but this is really the only one that fits what I’d call steel punk:
Or even these armored jeans by Acne Jeans:
Or these plate high heels by Nigel carren? He does armor fashion!
Maybe not this plate bra though…
All I’m saying is it seems really weird to me that despite there being a niche for this subculture and there being people who would fit into that niche the subculture doesn’t exist.
And no wearing articulated claw rings does not count, that’s just lame…
