I’m so sorry if you’ve already answered this somewhere, but how do you design your characters?
I’ve been trying to make an OC from the prohibition era and it turns out there’s basically nothing to work with for men’s outfits, so I’m curious how you made this many that look unique and fitting to the characters
There is so much to work with, though!
You will tend to find more of a focus on variety in women's fashion, but there is still quite a lot of menswear to ogle too.
I suppose it's just a matter of searching out ideas and inspiration in the rights corners. Here are a few suggestions:
Old Clothing Catalogues -
Collections from Sears-Roebuck and other popular clothing retailers are pretty easy to find compiled into relatively inexpensive books, or just floating online.
A fair bit of it is in the public domain now.
--Here's an entire 1922 catalogue of stuff to flip through.
Some phenomenal illustrators were working in this field amidst the "Golden Age of Illustration" and featured prominently on the covers of magazines and on the ads inside. There was a lot of emphasis on fashion.
Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post are a couple of the more prominent and easily searchable resources. The costuming on the cover art always has a lot of personality.
There's Rockwell, of course, and it's almost impossible to go wrong with J. C. Leyendecker. He's probably best known for his Arrow Collar ad art, but even his sock ads are like…
There were numerous other amazing and influential illustrators working at the time too. Here's a list of some of them.
Here's a bonus Henry Raleigh featuring some of his fabulously-dressed people.
There are so many of them!
If you want historical accuracy, be wary of write-ups pulling all of their references from film and television. There's nothing wrong with using those for inspiration if you aren't too concerned with historicity, but there are some pretty comprehensive and well-researched things out there with more of an eye on actual fashion history too:
--Gentleman's Gazette - What Men Really Wore in the 1920s
--The Fashionisto - 1920s Men's Fashion
There are numerous digital historic image collections stemming from universities, museums, libraries, and the government that are free to peruse too.
--The Metropolitan Museum has a searchable catalog of exhibits that includes fashion and photos
--Here's some things from the New York Public Library
If you aren't sure where to start, image searching for any of Hollywood's early celebrities will typically turn up a bevy of production stills and promotional photography featuring a variety of fashions.
Here's a random Getty images search for Harold Lloyd. A lot of standard 3 piece suits, but a lot of stuff with added character too.
Photography was generally quite accessible by the 1920s, though, and you can find a lot of authentic photos of people from all walks of life, out in the wild wearing all sorts of clothes.
This is by no means the limit to the resources available, but hopefully it'll provide some leaping-off points for designing looks for your characters!
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