In King Ludwig II’s defense, if I had basically infinite discretionary funds, was accountable to absolutely no one, and was king of a country full of picturesque landscapes, you couldn’t stop me from building myself a big gay fairytale castle on a mountaintop either.
This post is spreading and I feel bad about it because it contains misinformation, so for the record: Ludwig II did not in fact have infinite discretionary funds. He only acted as if he did. He never dipped into the public coffers for his building projects, but he spent his own fortune extravagantly and borrowed heavily from everyone he could think of. By 1885, the year before his death, he was 14 million marks in debt.
~ ✨✨ 14 million marks in debt ✨✨~
I always find this inspiring because try to name another prince of a German state. What did the rulers of Hamberg do? The Grand Duchy of Hesse? Gone with the wind, no one knows them anymore. But Mad Lad Ludwig built a top 5 most famous castle in the entire world. Money is fake, castles are real. Go broke and die like a winner.
EXCUSE ME, this is still wrong. He built 3.
Neuschwanstein, literally the inspo for the castles in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella
Hohenschwangau, the practical castle
Linderhof, the final, the smallest, and the MOST fab.
Every room is incredible and the park is beautiful, but shoutout to The Bedroom, the biggest room
The Hall of Mirrors, which he probably wandered by candle light because he was a serious night owl
The Dining Room, with a wishing table that lowers to the kitchen, and rises with a crank, returning magically full of food
The Venus Grotto, constructed for the sole use of Ludwig to larp to his heart’s content
A full artificial cave, it features a waterfall, fake stalactites, and a custom-designed swan boat floating on an artificial lake. The first electricity in Bavaria was generated here, to change the colors of the stage lights and to power Ludwig’s fountain and wave machine.
The older I get the more I admire people who are earnestly, genuinely into whatever their thing is. I know it sounds like an annoying cliche but unless you’re being cruel or hurtful there is really no need to be normal about things. The dude with the bad fake accent at the renaissance faire is having the time of his life. The people having photoshoots with their fashion dolls are loving it. The old lady with a yard unreasonably full of tacky ass lawn ornaments is having a blast, HOA be damned.
Don’t waste your time being too cool to have fun, y'know?
I swear to god one of these days were going to see a video of Amaury Guichon and he’s going to be making some wings and they are going to look dope as hell, the detail of each feather will be breathtaking, he’ll spray paint them to perfection, but as the video goes on, he’s not building any sort of winged creature, just the wings. And then there’s a human-sized harness (also made of chocolate, somehow, he can do it). And he’s attaching the wings to the harness. And he’s putting the harness on and he demonstrates how he can flap the wings. And then he’ll be off. Out the window and up and up and up. And we’ll be looking at the livestream (it’s a livestream now) and we’ll scream “No, Amaury, the sun! It’s going to melt the wings!”. But he knows this already. And he is free.
Meiji period fashion was some of the best in the world, speaking purely from an aesthetic standpoint you can really see the collision of European and Japanese standards of beauty and how their broad agreement even in particulars (the similarity between Japanese and Gibson girl bouffants, the obi vs the corset, the obi knot vs the bustle, the mutual covetousness for exotic textiles, the feverish swapping of both art styles and subjects) combined and produced some of the most interesting cultural exchange we have this level of documentation for. Europeans were wearing kimono or adapting them into tea gowns, japanese were pairing lacy Edwardian blouses with skirt hakama and little button up boots. haori jackets with bowler hats and European style lapels. if steampunk was any good as an aesthetic it would steal wholesale from the copious records we have in both graphic arts and photography of how people were dressing in this milieu.
«The botany professor,» from Kkokei Shimbun, October 20, 1908. she’s wearing a kimono blouse or haori, edwardian skirt or hakama, gibson girl bouffant, a lacy high-collar blouse with cravat and brooch, and a pocket watch with chain
1910-1930 (Taishō era, right after Meiji, which I should have included in my OP) men’s haori with western lapels
I have a love for both kimonos and bustle dresses, so I love seeing how the two fashions influenced each other over this period. And thanks to Pinterest, I have pictures!
Victorian tea gown that clearly started as a kimono. It still has the long furisode sleeves, but now they’re gathered at the shoulder and turned around so that the long open side is facing the front instead of the back. Similarly the back is taken in with curved seams to fit the torso and pleated below that for the skirt.
Woodblock of a woman in a a bustle dress made with colorful patterned fabrics and examples of how a woman could style her hair with it.
More prints to showcase hairstyles, two women wearing western wear and two women wearing kimonos.
This next one’s modern, but it involves hoopskirts so I’ll add it in because it makes me so happy. There’s been different styles of wedding fashion that take kimonos and give them a more modern look. Often this involves taking a kimono and then cutting and resewing it into a new dress. Very pretty, but it can’t ever be worn like a traditional kimono again. But now there’s another trend where the bride wears a hoopskirt with a white skirt, then you take the kimono and drape it on. The back of the kimono covers the front of the dress, the long sleeves fall across the sides or the back, and you still wear an obi with it. The result is pretty and the kimono itself doesn’t have to be altered at all.
And because you mentioned steampunk, I have to add in these two:
Personally I’m a big fan of Taisho Meisen kimono, which are what happen when the Japanese textile industry abruptly gets access to aniline dyes, new spinning and weaving technology, and the concept of Art Deco:
Before special effects went digital with CGI, part of the magic of movie making included artists laboring over tiny scaled-down sets, creating little worlds that look totally real until a normal-sized human hand appears in the scene. One museum in France lets visitors explore over 100 such sets, each standing out for its incredible realism. At Musée Miniature & Cinéma in Lyon, you can gaze upon these miniatures as well as a collection of over 300 full-scale movie props.
