Eccentricities Make the Steampunk - Escaping Tropes for an Authentic Impression

I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day.

"I wish I had something STEAMY to wear," she said. Never mind that she makes fabulous and authentic 1890's skin-out outfits. They're too authentic.

I recommended dress accessories. 

"If I want to look steamy," she said, "all I need is a mini top hat, goggles, a gun, and a leather corset. Poof. Steampunk. But I am just allergic to looking like everyone else."

I've thought on this for a couple of days, and looked in my own closet, and then I thought, "time to write a blog." Besides, I run dress accessories panels at local conventions, and it's always nice to be able to distill philosophy down into something that's instantly understandable for interested folks. What it comes down to is:

Think Eccentric. 

There are a lot of tropes in steampunk dressing. Tropes aren't necessarily bad. In many ways, they're necessary to define any genre, and for the beginner on a sartorial journey, they're a useful shortcut to getting the look whilst researching, making, and developing a more unique impression. 

However, sartorial tropes are the thing that everyone wears. Not only does this mean that one gads about looking like everyone else, but tropes detract from the authenticity [1] of your outfit, reducing what might be a unique impression to a "costume." 

If we look at the typical tropes, we can start to see them as defining particular dress accessories, and deconstruct - and re-construct - atypical accessories that parallel the tropes without copying them. Let's look at some examples.  

Goggles - perhaps the archetypal Steampunk accessory, goggles are indeed necessary when one is requiring eye protection from flying bugs or sparks. However, there are many other eyewear options in Neo-Victorian or Steampunk stylings. I've recently picked up a pair of sunglasses  that look fab, for instance. Consider a lorgnette, or even getting your own prescription in a pair of Victorian-looking frames. How about opera glasses? 

Mini top hats - so ubiquitous as to have passed over into popular culture, women are wearing white ones for their weddings. I'm a hat girl, so perhaps I overstate the issue somewhat, but to some observers, hats of virtually any sort communicate "vintage". A standard top hat is a perfectly good accessory and has large flat areas for displaying embellishment like fascinators and mini "utility belts" masquerading as hat bands. I've even seen working clocks on top hats. Let's just add that a top hat, being a Victorian men's accessory, is positively progressive on a lady's head. (Progressive Victorianism is a topic for another blog post, but I see it as pretty Steampunk.)

Other steamy hat possibilities abound, such as pith helmets and bowlers for the gents, and fancy ladies hats just begging for some metal bits to be tucked in amongst the feathers and bows. Ladies can also find beautiful Steampunk barrettes on Etsy to tame tresses, and then there are always the glorious hat pins for an extra splash of metal. Speaking of tresses, Victorian women didn't have more hair than most of us have, but they did use false hair pieces. 

Corsets - my authenticity bias is going to show here, but - ladies, corsets are not appropriate for wear on the outside of your clothing unless you're communicating something, well, risqué. Let's re-frame the corset into other-things-that-go-about-one's-waist, but are more eccentric. I am fond of leather belts from the thrift store. I've found some lovely pierced leather belts or belts with studs, and belts with huge eyelets which are bonzer for hooking in pouches and chains. (I like buying used, partly because it comes with the patina of age.) A wide bright sash, bound with an interesting belt is a good waist cincher. I wear several belts high about my waist instead of the belt that is intended for the 1890's Sporting Costume basque. And if you want to go with the corset look, a corselet is a very good - and more authentic - option. The possibilities for steamy embellishment are endless. 

Brown - it's said that Steampunk is what happened when Goths discovered brown. The facts are disputable, but it's hard to ignore that both genres use Victorian clothing as a foundation. This trope arises from all the cabinet cards that resulted from an intersection of Victorians' passion for portraiture and the the development of photography. Although our mind's eye sees Victorians in sepia tones, any perusal of extant garments makes it very clear that clothing was virtually every color imaginable - including brown. A look at the dye samples at the South Park History Museum recently, further confirms that color was everywhere in the Victorian closet.

If you're making your own clothing, I recommend looking for interesting textile patterns; Victorian woven textiles featured paisley patterns, stripes, and Asian-themed brocades. Stripes have been claimed by the Steampunk community as our own. Thankfully, many of the gent's trousers in the thrift stores that are otherwise suitable mods are lovely pinstripes.

I've listed only four of the most common tropes. There are many more tropes that could bear some re-examining, from cephalopods to weaponry. Perhaps an alternate way of looking at sartorial tropes are as if they define parts of the body that would have been - in the Victorian era - embellished in some fashion. The challenge is to devise other ways in which headwear and eyewear and color can be used to communicate Steampunk. I encourage you to consider that non-vertebrates are not the only fish in the sea. Think eccentrically about your Steampunk impression and create something unique and authentic.

[1] See my blog on authenticity to read more about how I define "authenticity" in a fantasy genre.