Visual Influences and Research

Some of the many rabbit holes I've been down whilst researching dress / clothing / costume / tradition  (especially those related to the weather) when trying to design the characters for my stories:


Felt Kepenek  - Turkey

Traditional outer garment worn by Turkish shepherds. (rarely worn nowadays)
Large felted woollen cloak. Waterproof and warm, it can be used as a blanket / tent at night.
The variation in design is regional, and there are a lot of similar coats in Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Today, Kepenk have decorative ornaments. In the past, felt-makers marked the quality of the material or their guild










Croça de juncos - Portugal

Cape made of treated reed fibers - was traditionally worn by shepherds to protect them from the elements










Mino - Japan

Traditional rain cape made from straw. Similar were used in China and Vietnam.

"Rice straw has water repellent properties. Raindrops striking a mat of straw will tend to flow along the fibers of the mat, rather than penetrate underneath it. For this reason, early Japanese rain gear was often made of straw, which has the added benefits of being cheap to acquire, easy to weave and fasten, and light in weight. It is, however, bulky in size, and highly flammable. In earlier eras, straw clothing had an additional advantage: it afforded a significant degree of camouflage in certain terrain[1], including forests and wetlands, similar to modern ghillie suits.

As synthetic fibers and later plastics were introduced to Japan, mino lost much of their practicality and fell out of use. Today, however, they are still worn as costumes in various traditional folk traditions and festivals, such as the new year celebrations of the Oga Peninsula, where men dress as ogre-like namahage wearing masks and mino."