The clothes make the man
As the corona pandemic has made it necessary for those who can to work from home, the internet has been teeming with tips on how to do so while staying sane and productive. One of the most common tips is how it is important to get "dressed for work" even though you're staying at home, and how you really shouldn't stay in your pajamas all day. Not just for being able to do meetings via video calls, but also because being too comfortably dressed usually makes us less productive (as argued in this article).
I myself have noticed that if I wear too comfy, cosy clothes, I become less likely to maintain focus and productivity, and therefore have started to get properly dressed in the mornings. What I find really fascinating, however, is how clothes can have such a strong effect on how we behave, how we feel and even our cognition. A great example of this can be found in an American study on how wearing a lab coat affected problem-solving abilities. Here is an article summarizing the study, and here is the study in its entirety. TL;DR: Participants wearing a white lab coat performed significantly better during tests, than participants not wearing lab coats. It also mattered what they associated the lab coat with; participants told that they were wearing the lab coat of a medical doctor, performed better than participants told that they were wearing protective coats used by artists. Participants who looked at and wrote about a medical doctor's lab coat, but without wearing it, performed better than the ones wearing "artist's coats", but not as well as the ones who had been told they wore a medical doctor's coat.
The conclusion of the study is that a lot of the effect of a garment comes from the symbolical values we ascribe to a garment – if we think of the intellectual rigor and focus that we associate with medical doctors, we are likely to become more focused and attentive ourselves. However, the greatest effect comes from wearing the garment yourself – as if it gives the wearer the abilities that we have symbolically ascribed to it.
At this point, I start to think about good old-fashioned fantasy roleplaying games. In many of these games (here's an example), you can acquire different types of armor and accessories, that improve different attributes of the character. Many of these are fairly logical – like heavy armor giving you more defense, and light armor also giving you some agility. But then there is also intelligence, which seems less logical, unless you're familiar with effects like that of the above mentioned study. In our non-magical world, a piece of clothing or armor might not make you a better spell caster, but it can make you smarter, more charismatic, or lighter on your feet – at least if you see the clothes as symbols for these attributes.
And this brings us, finally, to larp. For me, costuming is a very important part of larping. I love scouring through second hand stores or sewing garments from scratch. I experiment with hairstyles, make-up and find accessories to get the right look and feel. This process is usually accompanied by how I mentally prepare for the larp – I think about the character, create a playlist with songs that fit the headspace I want for them, and play it more and more often as the larp draws closer.
When it is finally time to get into costume, the garments are in a way already imbued with the personality of the character. Getting into costume is what starts the process of getting into character for me, feeling how they change me; how I move about in a different way, and make other kinds of gestures. This is of course doubly true for period costume that feature garments like corsets or voluminous skirts, but even modern clothes can usually make a lot of difference to how I feel and behave. For this reason, I also hate "walk as"-exercises (having the players walk as their characters, first casually, then with different emotions added). These exercises are designed to make the players pretend, to fabricate a way of moving. Participating in these exercises, even if only walking casually and not trying to exaggerate anything, brings me further away from the character, and from how the costume makes me experience my body.
Instead, what I do prefer is being able to get into costume, waiting until the start of the larp, and then simply allowing the clothes to "make me", as it were. That is a certain kind of magic that larp makes available.
I myself have noticed that if I wear too comfy, cosy clothes, I become less likely to maintain focus and productivity, and therefore have started to get properly dressed in the mornings. What I find really fascinating, however, is how clothes can have such a strong effect on how we behave, how we feel and even our cognition. A great example of this can be found in an American study on how wearing a lab coat affected problem-solving abilities. Here is an article summarizing the study, and here is the study in its entirety. TL;DR: Participants wearing a white lab coat performed significantly better during tests, than participants not wearing lab coats. It also mattered what they associated the lab coat with; participants told that they were wearing the lab coat of a medical doctor, performed better than participants told that they were wearing protective coats used by artists. Participants who looked at and wrote about a medical doctor's lab coat, but without wearing it, performed better than the ones wearing "artist's coats", but not as well as the ones who had been told they wore a medical doctor's coat.
The conclusion of the study is that a lot of the effect of a garment comes from the symbolical values we ascribe to a garment – if we think of the intellectual rigor and focus that we associate with medical doctors, we are likely to become more focused and attentive ourselves. However, the greatest effect comes from wearing the garment yourself – as if it gives the wearer the abilities that we have symbolically ascribed to it.
At this point, I start to think about good old-fashioned fantasy roleplaying games. In many of these games (here's an example), you can acquire different types of armor and accessories, that improve different attributes of the character. Many of these are fairly logical – like heavy armor giving you more defense, and light armor also giving you some agility. But then there is also intelligence, which seems less logical, unless you're familiar with effects like that of the above mentioned study. In our non-magical world, a piece of clothing or armor might not make you a better spell caster, but it can make you smarter, more charismatic, or lighter on your feet – at least if you see the clothes as symbols for these attributes.
And this brings us, finally, to larp. For me, costuming is a very important part of larping. I love scouring through second hand stores or sewing garments from scratch. I experiment with hairstyles, make-up and find accessories to get the right look and feel. This process is usually accompanied by how I mentally prepare for the larp – I think about the character, create a playlist with songs that fit the headspace I want for them, and play it more and more often as the larp draws closer.
When it is finally time to get into costume, the garments are in a way already imbued with the personality of the character. Getting into costume is what starts the process of getting into character for me, feeling how they change me; how I move about in a different way, and make other kinds of gestures. This is of course doubly true for period costume that feature garments like corsets or voluminous skirts, but even modern clothes can usually make a lot of difference to how I feel and behave. For this reason, I also hate "walk as"-exercises (having the players walk as their characters, first casually, then with different emotions added). These exercises are designed to make the players pretend, to fabricate a way of moving. Participating in these exercises, even if only walking casually and not trying to exaggerate anything, brings me further away from the character, and from how the costume makes me experience my body.
Instead, what I do prefer is being able to get into costume, waiting until the start of the larp, and then simply allowing the clothes to "make me", as it were. That is a certain kind of magic that larp makes available.
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