Claris- A Lady's Progress

EDIT: OMG, a DD!! I never expected that! Thank you so much to *NadezhdaVasile for suggesting, and to $Moonbeam13 for featuring!! I wish I could answer everything right away, but I promise I'll do it as soon as possible when I get back from my vacation. Thank you so much!!

Edit 2: Oh hey look, a companion piece with Leland!

OH WOW, I AM FINALLY FINISHED WITH THIS. Those of you who were following the progress of these drawings on my Tumblr are fully aware that this was almost a whole month in the making! So now, finally, the fruit of all that ceaseless labor.

I love historical costumes. Love love love. For me, part of the fun of designing and playing a vampire character, especially one that manages to live for a very long time through many eras of human history, is designing their clothing. It's like an entity unto itself- costume tells you about the character's personality, their income level, their profession; it's no secret that visual design affects a TON about an audience's perception of a character. In Claris's case, her whole personal storyline affected a lot about her visually- her hairstyles, her outfits, her accessories. Exploring this in the context of "what outfit was she wearing during..." was SO much fun, and apart from being a cool timeline exercise, it was a fun character-related one too.

This isn't a complete cross-section of EVERY outfit she ever wore, but in the interest of keeping my sanity, I limited it to 20, and as such I excised some rather large swathes of time (for instance, everything between the 1330s and 1570, during which time she was inactive in a nunnery, or the late Victorian and Edwardian eras between 1865 and 1910). This is unfortunate because those time periods had some wonderful clothes, but I didn't really have a specific event or series of events to tie them to, so it became harder to visualize. Hopefully, these 20 will suffice. I've given all of them "names" of a sort, since it's easiest for me to associate them with a scene or a word- calling them the outfits from "the Carpathian Mountains scene" or "the reunion scene" becomes much easier than "russet gown with lace collar" or "pink early Georgian with amethyst stomacher".

The dA page view of this had to be a little small, simply because this is a really big file, but you can probably see enough to make out the text and the silhouettes. If you're interested in finer details, by all means download the full view!

Now, I'm going to ramble a bit. More than I already have. I'll try to keep each individual blurb short, but it's a lot to go through- I want to talk a little about each outfit (especially the ones that were significant for whatever reason) and the historical context, and a little about what was happening in the story at the time. Don't feel obligated to read it if you're not interested! If you are interested, go right ahead! _{In the words of Ron Swanson from Parks & Recreation: "Put ketchup on it if you want. I couldn't care less."}

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I - Servant Alive!Claris, wearing the shift she wore as a servant. This is basically her standard attire before being Embraced. Simple, boring, brown, covered hair. Largely, she is a nonentity.
II - Court After her Embrace, with her new "title" name Claris of Reidona, this was the first "lady's" dress she ever wore. She spent quite some time being rather uncomfortable with the idea of wearing a gown that was clearly above what she still thought of as her station, but being presented at the vampire court in London forced her to get over it. Her hair is somewhat anachronistic for pretty much all of the medieval drawings; no respectable lady at the time would go around with it all loose and free-flowing like she wears, but Leland likes it this way, and as far as she's concerned at this point, whatever he says goes.
III - Magna Carta Not from a specific scene per se, but this is one I designed for her and Leland going around London. At one point there was an in-game adventure during the reign of King John that also involved William Hardel, the Lord Mayor of London and one of the enforcers of the Magna Carta. At this time, Claris is Leland's "bride" (though he won't consider their relationship to be one of an actual husband and wife for a very, very long time) and travels with him pretty much all the time.
IV - Faerie Not a dress made by the faeries; the dress Claris wears while she and Leland are trapped in the actual land of Faerie. In the White Wolf continuity, this is an actual "place" of sorts, called the Dreaming by the fae. Vampires who've been there are very few and far between- it was pretty much a total stroke of (un)luck that brought them there in the first place. That crown thing, by the way, is made of really starched linen.
V - Leaving The dress from when Leland leaves her, hence the sadface. The start of a very difficult time for her. Dress looks awfully comfortable, though.
VI - Order of the Holy Chalice In 1332, Claris started her own order of nuns called the Order of the Holy Chalice, based out of Abingdon. Open only to vampires, she sought to provide shelter and education to those who needed a break from the immortality thing. Calling herself Sister Saint Clair, she was abbess for over two centuries and saw the Order through the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII by relocating them to France. In the 1550s, she left the abbey in the charge of Sister Agnes, her Nosferatu second-in-command, who still presides over the Normandy abbey in the present day, even though the Order itself has since spread to many countries. She keeps her hair covered and modest at this point, because her natural inclination is to cover herself up.
VII - Angel The dress she wore for her more significant encounters with the entirely-doomed Brother Simon DuMont, who would become her vampire childe after being fatally wounded by the Swiss Guard during the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Since leaving the Order, she's taken the name Clara de Roydon, and her clothing tastes have gotten significantly more extravagant, mysteriously correlating with her degrading morality. At this time, she's bitter over the loss of Leland and then Rose and she's selfish and possessive of Saffron and Blanche (including keeping the latter in the dark about the possibility of ever getting physically older than 12). Simon VERY mistakenly assumed she was an angel the first time he saw her, and only after she Embraced him for a completely selfish reason did she start to notice this gradually mounting issue.
VIII - Venice Absolutely one of the most decadent dresses she ever wears. Gold embroidery, jewel-encrusted, miles of fabric and tulle. Fittingly, worn during an adventure set during the Venetian Carnivale.
IX - Carpathian She's still on the bejeweled, richly-embroidered thing. During this time, Simon just Embraced a traumatized Blanche (who aged up about 10 years) and called Claris out on her total monsteryness, and in case things weren't going well for her already, she finally sees Leland again after hundreds of years. Acting contrite is totally not enough to undo all the pain it's caused her and all the irreparable damage she's done to herself and her other relationships because of it... so she blows him off. Buuut, symbolically, she takes her hair down out of the tight close-to-the-head curls again, because she totally misses him. DRAMAHAIR. :3
X - Great Fire Having parted from Blanche and Simon, and having "finished" her business with Leland, Claris visits Gregory and Rose in London with her newly simplified wardrobe. Fire breaks out, there's much panic, and she ends up crossing paths with Leland again, who's a total wreck. They end up banned from London under the prince's assumption that they started the fire, which they totally didn't.
XI - Reunion This is her "getting back together" dress. Anyone who saw the last picture I did of these two guys will remember the context- Leland, being pretty much totally broken, shows up and begs her to forgive him, which (because she's spent almost 100 years getting herself morally decent again after a long stretch of letting herself go) she totally can now. I didn't do a drawing of her wearing panniers, because 1) it's a little early for those at this stage, and 2) I think they look stupid.
XII - Midnight Ride American Revolution! After leaving France in 1720, she and Leland (still on less-than-perfect terms with each other) set out for Louisiana, then a French colony on the American mainland. Gradually, over the course of 30 or 40 years, they made their way northward to the Massachusetts colony, and during this time, they started over fresh in their relationship and he courted her as if they'd never been together before. They "married" in 1752, this time with no reservations on his part about referring to her as his wife, and she officially became Mrs. Clara Roydon Rochester. She's wearing a wedding band, and does all the time from here on out. This dress is from the events preceding the battle of Lexington and Concord; she and Leland were among the (many, easily forgotten by history) riders on the first leg of Paul Revere's ride. I love those white mob caps.
XIII - Bastille Day French Revolution! They're just popping up all over the place this century. The vampire princess in Paris was assassinated on the night before the storming of the Bastille. Claris tried to protect her but just ended up horribly injured (but morally improved by heroism!). The dress is a fairly simple robe à l'anglaise, but man that hair. O_o
XIV - Great Exhibition The 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London was the first international exhibition of culture, technology and industry, and as a bit of a gadget maven, Leland insisted they go- luckily for both of them, the vampire prince who wants them both dead is asleep, so people are less willing to try and take them out without guarantee of reward. I imagine there's at least one very, very old photograph of her and Leland taken at the exhibition, and she's probably wearing this dress.
XV - Civil War Shortly after the Exhibition, they hightailed it back to the States to avoid drawing unnecessary attention. The Civil War broke out in 1860, and the two of them were long since settled in North Carolina as an established safehouse on the Underground Railroad funneling escaped slaves to points north. Leland spent a fair amount of time as both an open soldier for the Union army and a spy infiltrating the ranks of the Confederacy.
XVI - Great War During World War I, they resettled back in a very out-of-the-way corner of England in secret, and Leland went to fight for the French army in the trenches. Claris stayed at home with Saffron, and ended up getting rather used to an empty house. I have a strange fondness for this dress- usually the time period isn't my favorite, but I really like the overall look.
XVII - Metropolitan Dealing with increasingly shorter skirts and sleeves has been something of a problem for Claris. For one thing, she's white as a sheet, and for another, if she should accidentally touch someone they'll be a little grossed out by how cool she is to the touch. Plus, she just doesn't like showing off much arm or leg. She will confess to preferring bras over corsets, though, even if she never had a problem with the latter. At this time, she and Leland and Saffron have been living near New York City (close enough for a short drive).
XVIII - Blitz At the breakout of World War II, Claris and Leland relocated to France for the sole purpose of helping political refugees. They ended up working in conjunction with the Order of the Holy Chalice under Sister Agnes, who sent refugees to them, at which point they got them out to a boat bound across the English Channel. News of an impending attack on London brought them across with the refugees, and they landed in the city just in time for the worst attack during the bombings of London. On an unrelated note, this is probably the shortest dress she'll ever wear. It's very in-period, but to be frank I think she feels a bit exposed with that much leg showing. XD
XIX - Transfusion Ohhhh the '80s. Very bad fashion decade for... almost everyone. Not so bad for her, though, because her taste is so toned-down by now that she ends up looking tasteful even with those silly lace gloves. At this time, she and Leland are living in New York again, and she's teaching history electives for very motivated college students, so she gets to be Professor Rochester. The "scene name" of this outfit comes from Saffron's none-too-pleasant cure for the preternatural infection she, Claris and Leland are carriers for, contracted by Leland when he was tortured in Romania hundreds of years back. Fortunately, being a vampire sets one up to be uniquely equipped for being totally drained of infected blood and then reinfused.
XX - Awakening This is an outfit I designed way back at the beginning of the game, with the intent of having her wear it at the end. And so she did. It's rather easy, I think, to see how this look grew out of the one from the '80s. As an odd side note, I rather like how this outfit mirrors the things that men were wearing when she was first Embraced. It's like she came around all over again to being the same person she always was, but is dressed to be more well-equipped and capable instead of hindered by societal expectation. Or maybe I just liked the look of it. Either way, it's been a long strange trip for her.
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PHEW, so that's that! If you actually read that whole thing and didn't get bored, you get one of these: Thanks for bearing with me! These were every bit as fun to research as they were to draw, and I want to give a shout-out to some GREAT sources for designing outfits that look in-period:
The Chronicle of Western Fashion by John Peacock [link]
What People Wore by Douglas Gorsline [link]
English Costume History 1066-1830 by Dion Clayton Calthrop [link] as cited on Fashion-Era
La Couturière Parisienne
The Costumer's Guide to Movie Costumes

_{Claris and all outfit designs © *temiel.}