#ingary

I think there are two factors to consider. Number one is, “If Ingary is set in an era based on one from our world, what are the clues in the text we can use to help narrow down which era(s) it could be?”

The second factor is, “Ingary is a fantasy land, so does it mirror an era from our world at all? And in what part of our world?”

However, regardless of which “factor” you ascribe to regarding Ingary, it’s helpful to have as much textual evidence on hand about clothing in Ingary as possible when forming an idea of it overall. I skimmed through my copy of HMC and tried to find as many notable descriptions of clothes as possible (which was not as labor-intensive as it sounds, I promise!! By now I know the story very well so I already knew roughly where to find everything.) Here is what I found:

- The hat shop!! Right off the bat, we learn that there are hats made of straw, felt, velvet, and silk; they can be decorated with veiling and ‘hidden twinkles’, feathers, flowers and fruit made from wax and silk, and that they can be wide-brimmed, or bonnets, or ‘smart’.

- Clothing items mentioned in the Mayday scene: “Trailing silk sleeves”, “trailing cloaks and long sleeves and stamping buckled boots they would never have dreamed of wearing on a working day”

- The iconic blue-and-silver suit, of course, is on separate occasions described as “fantastical” and “flamboyant”; on Mayday Sophie observes that “His [Howl’s] sleeves trailed longer than any in the Square, all scalloped edges and silver insets.” When Sophie is mending it after the Green Slime Incident, she cuts it into triangles. It is unclear to me whether the suit actually consists of triangles of fabric, or if Sophie is just cutting triangles out of it: “She hobbled up and fetched the blue-and-silver suit, which she spent the rest of the day cutting little blue triangles out of in order to make a patchwork sort of skirt.” (p. 107) “Poor Lettie! Sophie thought, putting brisk, tiny stitches round her fifty-seventh blue triangle. Only another forty or so to go.” (p. 168) When Sophie and Michael accidentally gigantify it, we learn that it has “a frill of collar” as well as silver buttons. (p. 183-184)

- The grey-and-scarlet suit — Presumably similar in style to the blue-and-silver one?

- The Witch of the Waste is described as wearing: “A sable wrap drooping from her elbows and diamonds winking all over her dense black dress... the lady’s wide hat [had] real ostrich plume dyed to reflect the pinks and greens and blues winking in the diamonds and yet still look black.” Interestingly, while I guess I could picture this ensemble in a 19th or 18th-century style, the first thing this description made me think of was actually more like a 1940’s prima donna/movie star look lol. (perhaps even a bit like Lady Dimitrescu😳)

- p.101 “[Lettie] was wearing a dress of the same kind of pinks and white as the crowded apple blossom overhead. Her dark hair trailed in glossy curls over one shoulder,”

- p.6 “There was one deep rose outfit [Sophie] made for Lettie… which Fanny said looked as if it had come from the most expensive shop in Kingsbury.”

- In another appearance (p.157) she is described thus: “Her hair, instead of being orderly chestnut curls, was a rippling mass of red, hanging almost to her waist, and she was dressed in floating flutters of auburn and pale yellow.”

- p. 151: The soldiers at the palace are “splendidly dressed” in red and wear white gloves (the ones upstairs wear blue instead of red)

- p.51: “Outside stood a personage wearing a stiff white wig and a wide hat on top of that. He was clothed in scarlet and purple and gold, and he held up a little staff decorated with ribbons like an infant maypole... Scents of clove and orange blossom blew into the room.” (Michael also mentions that he thinks this person is the Chancellor’s clerk)

- Michael wears “his best plum velvet suit” to see the king (p. 68)

- The clothes Howl buys Sophie and Michael: “Several pairs of silk stockings; two parcels of the finest cambric petticoats, with flounces, lace, and satin insets; a pair of elastic-sided boots in dove-grey suede; a lace shawl; and a dress of grey watered silk trimmed with lace that matched the shawl... the lace alone was worth a fortune.” “Michael unwrapped a handsome new velvet suit.” (p. 122)

- Mrs. Pentstemmon’s estate: The trio are greeted by “an elderly footman in black velvet”; Mrs. P herself wears “a gold-mesh mitten, on a gold-topped cane. She wore old-gold silk, in a very stiff and old-fashioned style, finished off with an old-gold headdress not unlike a crown, which tied in a large old-gold bow beneath her gaunt eagle face.” (p. 143)

- Howl’s black ensemble includes “a long jet pendant” as his earring (his single earring?? king) on p.184

…Ah fuck I bet there’s more but that’s enough for now. I think I would want to make a separate post talking about the hints we get about the world *itself*… But one that pops out to me is actually that Howl having an indoor toilet is described as a kingly luxury, lol. That definitely helps us narrow down the time frame. We know that indoor toilets of some kind do exist, but having one is very rare. (I kind of don’t like to treat this as canon lmao… somehow I can’t picture the streets of Market Chipping flooded with chamber pot contents, as realistic as it may be) That puts it probably a little before the 1700’s or earlier, if we are comparing it to our world’s timeline. Interestingly:

“In the 18th century, the first public water supply networks (examples of old water supply piping pictured above) were installed in London by private companies. They served limited areas of the city, allowing the wealthy to access fresh water on tap.” According to the same article, “The S-bend was introduced to the design of flush toilets by Scottish inventor Alexander Cumming in 1775. This modification allows for fresh water to sit in the toilet bowl, at the same time as preventing sewage water and fumes from rising into it, generally improving hygiene. The basic technology has been in use ever since.” (Wild I never knew this lol… trivia night here I come!!)

…So that seems to put us roughly around the 1700s?

That mostly checks out with the descriptions of the clothes, I think! Both of these slides seem to at least somewhat match the descriptions of big/trailing sleeves, boots, the “suits”, and general elaborateness:

And these fantastic timelines are certainly compatible with the descriptions of dresses and hats that we get!

Additionally, although the heyday of European fairytales was a bit earlier (1500’s-late 1600’s), lot of fairytales were still written roughly around this time — Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve published the first official version of La Belle et la Bête (Beauty & the Beast) as we know it today in 1740, Johann Karl August Musäus published the Volksmärchen der Deutschen between 1782 and 1787; and Grimm’s Fairy Tales, or Kinder- und Hausmärchen, was first published in 1813. So this would absolutely work as a time period around which to base a fractured fairytale such as HMC, although the 1500’s and 1600’s would also work… If I weren’t deciding to base this entire argument around ONE mention of a toilet………. but anyways. That’s Option One. (Cannot believe I’m basing all this off a toilet…)

But anyway. Option Two — ignoring *our* world’s timeline entirely— is… me doing whatever the hell I want. And that is, essentially, one big historical mishmash! CHAOS!! A Frankenstein-ed together Victorian, Georgian, Elizabethan, and Edwardian tilt-a-whirl of frocks and finery, along with a dash of style that has no equivalent in our world at all!

I must admit, the Ghibli movie has a bit of influence over my idea of Ingary — I absolutely love the post-Industrial Revolution, quasi-steampunk aesthetics of Ghibli’s Market Chipping, and the mid/late 1800’s fashions that the characters wear! I could easily see the Hatter sisters wearing those lovely side-buttoning Victorian boots, and my god, that film did hats SO much justice. I also adore Markl’s little waistcoat+bow tie+trousers combo in the movie and usually mentally give Michael something similar to that, just in different colors. But overall, I don’t see Book!Ingary being steampunk or post-Industrial, as much as I love it in the film. Perhaps little elements of that here and there, but again, I see it as a big mishmash of multiple eras. I love picturing the King’s guards with frilly Elizabethan collars, pageboy/squire haircuts (even though the King’s chancellor has a white wig, suggesting a more Georgian aesthetic) and puffy little breeches. Lol. I think of Lettie’s pink dress in the orchard as very mid-late 1700’s, perhaps similar in design to the 1763, 1785 or 1790 dresses in the dress timelines above. Mrs. Pentstemmon I imagine in full, damely Victorian splendor. Somehow, as I mentioned before, the Witch of the Waste seems almost outside of this timeline entirely, like a grand 1930’s movie star.

And as for for Howl and Sophie… Well, I actually have a project pending this May Day for my official headcanon of Howl’s blue/silver suit and Sophie’s gray dress;) So perhaps you will see that then! But for now, I will say that Sophie’s grey dress has a fairly consistent design in my mind, but Howl’s suit changes a LOT. Sometimes I imagine him in these very crisp 1700’s clothes, almost like Lestat, but sometimes it’s more of a costumey, wizardly, elegant-but-slapdash getup. Like, the blue and silver patches on his suit are all made from different fabrics, almost like a quilt. And rather than the prim silver-buckle shoes of the Lestatcore version, he wears taller, pirate-y boots — elegant and very well-made, of course, very debonair, but much better for dirty work and running around. That’s how I imagine it anyway.