#witcher shit

Some of his nonverbal performances in S1 were legit very good -- I've talked about it before, but I really really liked his feral-animal vibes in the first episode with Renfri:

For all that he's supposedly the big bad witcher here, he's got this fascinating wariness around people, like he feels threatened by them. (And this is before Blaviken, even.) His face in that episode is very expressive, showing-not-telling us how profoundly uncomfortable he is with humans, and how he feels himself as something very apart from them.

The other moment from S1 that I particularly liked was when Foltest is blathering on about how lucky Geralt is that witchers can't feel, so lucky to have no emotions, that he doesn't understand this AGONY -- and Geralt doesn't reply to that, but ugh, his nonverbal performance is off the charts. You can tell that he is dying by slow degrees at having to stand there and listen to someone deny his humanity to his face, but so resigned --from bitter past experience -- to the fact that no one will ever believe otherwise that he doesn't even try to argue.

So @grison-in-space got a follow-up comment to that viral post...

...and then she tagged me in, so OH BOY, here we go!!

(Here’s the photo set so you can follow along at home.)

I didn't weigh in on the last round of the joey vs. hcav costuming-optical-illusions debate, because I know nuffink about theatre stuff, but now we're talking about SUITS and gremble can talk about suits. :D

Okay, so—there were two things that IMMEDIATELY jumped out at me:

#1: GORGE, a.k.a. how low is the V down the front of your chest? One of these creates the impression of less chest, and one of them gives the impression of MOAR CHEST!!!

Joey is wearing a waistcoat (fashion-forward choice, I dig it 👌), which gives him a very high gorge. Meanwhile, hcav's two-button suit creates a substantially lower gorge, maximizing the amount of chest he has on display. It is, for anyone who knows about men's fashion, a mildly conspicuous choice here, because the two-button suit is generally the province of younger men. It reads as more fashion-conscious, and hcav is admittedly a movie star, but I daresay the default choice for someone of his age and height/build would be a three-button suit—

🚨🚨 KILL BILL SIRENS 🚨🚨

OH. OH. OHHHHH.

So I went back and double-checked that photoset to make sure I was counting his buttons correctly (because the watermark was making it hard to see in that pic), and it turns I wasn't—

—because hcav isn't wearing a two-button suit, he is wearing a goddamned ONE-BUTTON SUIT, which.

What the FUCK. What EVEN.

You can no longer pretend this was an accident.

Deep breaths.

Okay, so:

Three-button suits are the standard, the default, the thoroughly unremarkable option. You can wear them open, or you can do up the top two buttons. When wearing a suit jacket, the lowest button is always left unbuttoned, full stop; it is purely decorative. (You’ll notice that Joey is wearing his waistcoat correctly by leaving the bottom button undone.)

I'm not sure when two-button suits went mainstream, but they definitely enjoyed a renaissance with the “metrosexual” trend of the late 90's/early 2000s. They can be part of a full suit, or just tossed on over a t-shirt and jeans. By virtue of the lower gorge, they look less stuffy than a three-button suit—more casual and lived-in, perhaps more athletic. Even people who aren’t consciously aware of the two-button/three-button distinction can nonetheless feel the vibe difference between them.

Meanwhile, one-button suits are.

Uhm.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but—

For women.

Women's white-collar wear, hampered as it is by the conflicting directives of “do all the same power-signaling stuff that menswear does, but do it suited to a female body, and also be sexy~~!!” results in... norms that are far less standardized than white-collar menswear.

Womenswear invented one-button suits, because they are power-signaling while fitting better to female curves. One-button suits, on women, will give the same LIKE A BOSS profile that two- or three-button suits give men.

But one-button suits on men are so rare that they're practically a mutation that doesn't occur in the wild.

Like, for people who aren't nerds for men's fashion, I'm pretty sure I can't convey to you just how fucking weird it is to see hcav in a one-button suit. Like. This is akin to watching him walk out onto the red carpet in a thong. You’d have to go out of your way to even FIND a one-button suit for men. This was not an accident.

Someone—and I seriously doubt it was hcav himself, considering that his 'brand' is a conservative, conventional sort of masculinity—picked out a one-button suit that lowered his gorge practically to his navel in order to put all that chest on display.

And as I'd pointed out to grison in groupchat—hcav's jacket is too small in the torso. That crease you can see coming off the button, and the way his lapels are spreading across his pecs? Means it's too tight. Which is also contributing to the impression that his manly busom is so huge that it is BURSTING to be free of this cruel prison. If hcav were wearing a suit that actually fit his frame, his physique would be far less noticeable.

(An aside: This is, in fact, the entire point of men's suits. With the right fit, they will make literally any body appear to be the conventional mesomorphic ideal. They are designed to make average dudes look like hcav; when they get an actual hcav, they are playing down his musculature.)

But yeah. Gorge. It's a thing.

#2 thing that jumped out at me was the width of their ties:

And while we're at it, the width of their lapels and collars too, because these elements tend to coordinate across an outfit. Joey's everything is very slim, from his tie and lapels, to the cut of his sleeves and trousers—and what that reads as, very distinctly, is a young man's look.

In fact, everything about Joey's look signals “young man who knows and cares about fashion,” because nothing about his suit is the standard/conventional choice. Super-slim fit. Three-quarter length jacket in contrasting fabric. (With weird buttoning pattern.) Waistcoat. Peak lapels. Clipped collar points. Highwater cuffs. He's wearing a suit, but it's a fashion suit not a corporate suit. Every element of that outfit is a marked deviation from the default.

(And as @redhorsedawn pointed out in the original costuming post, the open jacket also serves to obscure the shape of Joey's torso, by suggesting that the width of his hips goes straight up.)

Meanwhile, hcav's dressed like he's auditioning for a Mitt Romney biopic. Everything about his suit is subtly (or not-so-subtly) cut to emphasize width. The tie. The lapels. That collar that's spreading so fucking wide it's taking up three seats on the bus. And while his suit is tight around the torso, it is cut very loose in the sleeves and mirrored in the loose cut of his trousers (I jacked the contrast down to make it easier to see):

(Incidentally, both of their jackets are too wide at the shoulder, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Except for that weird one-button, hcav's suit is very much that of a businessman/politician—conventional design, with nothing that pushes the envelope like Joey’s outfit, and cut to enhance the impression of breadth and age.

If you still don't believe me, here, have hcav vs. hcav-in-a-suit-that-fits-him:

Higher gorge, slimmer tie and collar, looser torso, closer fit in the sleeves and trousers. Bam.

In conclusion, whoever picked out their red-carpet looks for this event was deliberately doing everything in their power to make Joey look young and skinny and metrosexual, and hcav look broad and powerful and mature. (lol, sound familiar?) But it is, in fact, more lies and trickery and optical illusions, just like in the show.

(For people who would like further resources on how to become a nerd for men’s fashion, I recommend Alan Flusser’s Dressing the Man.)

lol you mean this one?

It's lazy and cheap-looking, but it could be worse, I suppose. The bar is kind of on the ground for costuming in this show. 😂

I am just baffled that Netflix keeps flogging this franchise instead of putting it out of its misery (while cancelling far better shows), but then also doesn't bother invest in even marginally competent writing or costuming? Like, BY GOD, they will force this show to exist, but they won't put any effort into making it good.