In World 215, the evolutionary path of humans leads to them being much smaller, averaging 1ft in height. The differing ecosystem largely affected the styles and materials used in their clothing, as well as the amount of material that can be harvested.
Humans this small use animals like rodents, frogs, birds, fish, and insects to make their clothing. Materials like cotton and wool can be too heavyweight or inaccessible, so instead materials like silk are much more popular, as well as domesticated spider’s silk.
Lower classes wear clothing made mostly from plants and sometimes prey animals, including smaller insects, as they are less expensive to harvest. Decomposing hides are also sought after as they provide lots of materials without having to hunt the animal. Higher classes will sometimes wear clothing/accessories made from large, harder to kill animals as a show of wealth, such as large bird feathers, rabbits fur, fish scales, and colorful wings from moths/butterflies.
What if …
humans’ evolutionary path alternated and we were on average 1ft tall?
Issue targeted:
How would our materials differ? How would our size affect the accessibility of materials? How would styles in fashion change with the differing materials?
Inspiration:
The Secret World of Arrietty – Ghibli, Tinker Bell, Strange magic
This World was contributed by Cailyn Macveigh (located in Massachusetts, USA) using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence which allows others to share and adapt the work in any medium and for any purpose, providing that they credit the author and share their material using the same Creative Commons licence.
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