Filonyn Wardrobe Rundown
One of the most fun things (for me, as the person who draws them) about Filonyn as a character is their wardrobe. Because they're a seamster by trade, a hoarder by nature, and 1200 years old, I get to design so many fun outfits from different time periods! I actually put quite a bit of thought and research into most of these, so this post will go into that.
Filonyn still has almost every outfit they've ever worn. They've had to convert an entire full-sized room of their house into a spare closet. There's only one garment they've ever gotten rid of - a perfectly preserved 7th century gown that they sold for a significant price to the history museum in Newhaven in order to finance the purchase of their house. This was over a hundred years ago now, but nonetheless they remain upset about it, partly because they were unhappy to give up the gown and partly because the museum mislabeled it. Unable to correct the museum because "I was there, in the 7th century, I made it myself" is not the kind of source you can get away with providing for detailed claims about the provenance and use of a historic item, they've instead remained quietly furious at the museum ever since, and refuse to go in there or sell them anything else. They keep their own collection in good condition through a combination of enchantment and mundane archival care, and although it's rare for them to wear their older clothes, they occasionally will bring out old favorites for special occasions or if they really feel like showing off at the Renaissance Faire.
Generally speaking, for most of their life Filonyn has been careful to cover their face and wear clothes with full coverage in order to prevent anyone from noticing their obviously inhuman appearance. They've had to get stricter about this in modern times than they were centuries ago since the existence of fae is a better kept secret now than it used to be. Everything they wear, they've made by hand - in most cases, right down to the fabric itself. The only time they'll use a textile they haven't personally created is if it's the sort of thing that isn't made so much as it is acquired, like furs, and they try to stay away from these as much as possible since it feels like cutting corners to them. They do sometimes buy shoes, since shoemaking is a separate skillset from sewing and weaving - but usually only from specialty vendors, as they're very picky with the quality. In addition to making their own clothing, they sell clothing and fabric to make a living. Historically, they made most of their money selling to both fae and human nobility, but it's far harder to find wealthy clients nowadays and their work takes far too much time and meticulous effort to ever be priced affordably, so nowadays they mostly sell textiles to the historical recreation hobbyists, with commissions for actual garments few and far between.
So, now for the breakdown of individual outfits!
In modern times, Filonyn's usual outfits are usually somewhat understated, aside from their fancy veiled hats. They actually do keep up closely with trends, but they aren't fond of a lot of modern trends and don't engage in them as a result. Plus, they're trying to keep their head down and avoid unwelcome attention, so the outfits being relatively nondescript helps with that. The usual structure of these outfits is hat + turtleneck sweater + gloves + either pants or overalls + boots, but they will change it up occasionally. The most common gloves to see them in are their elbow-length gardening gloves, but they do have many other pairs of gloves, too. Their usual style of hat is a wide-brimmed sunhat with the band decorated with ribbons and/or fresh-cut flowers, with a heavy dark veil attached to it to hide their face. Even though most pieces of these outfits are the type of thing one feasibly could purchase at a department store, Filonyn will not buy any clothing as a matter of principle - all theirs are handmade.
Filonyn's hunting outfit is a set of clothes they made specifically for hunts when it became clear that they'd have to be involved with the business long-term. The entire outfit, except for the shoes and part of the hat, is made of wool brocade. They spent a long time on the design, since they wanted it to be functional but were not willing to sacrifice elegance. What they eventually settled on is a jumpsuit design that essentially combines a Victorian-style bodice with cargo pants, allowing them to carry around supplies without looking undignified. It's also got large loops on the belt for hooking weapons and tools to, although they haven't gotten much use out of those yet. The outfit is made of heavy fabric, so it's actually quite comfortable during the colder months, although it is less ideal in Summer. They try to wear this for hunts whenever possible, but sometimes need to wear a different outfit due to being in a hurry or due to circumstances of the hunt requiring something specific other than the hunting outfit.
This is one of Filonyn's few modern pieces of formalwear - as they leave the house so rarely and the parties they go to lately are relatively casual, they haven't got much need for these things. Nonetheless, it's important to have at least a couple on hand in case you do have to go to a fancy event. This suit is made entirely out of velvet, with a silk blouse under it. The shoes, gloves, and hat are designed to match both this outfit and the 17th century baroque outfit you'll see later in the post - they were going to a multi-day formal event and needed to pack strategically.
This outfit is a personal favorite of mine, but it is one of Filonyn's least favorites. For a while in the 1970s, it was frequent for other fae they know to throw parties where colorful, shiny outfits were a must, and so they begrudgingly put this look together for that. They really hated those parties - even compared to the parties they must suffer through nowadays and the parties they had to suffer through in years past, these were extremely loud and bright, a sensory nightmare. Therefore, they designed this outfit with personal space in mind. The unusually wide-brimmed hat and unusually long, heavy veil are meant to enforce their personal space and block out as much light as possible while still allowing them to see. The sequins used to decorate the outfit are handmade, but not by Filonyn - they can't work directly with metal since most any half-decent smithing setup requires the use of iron in some capacity, so they commissioned another Renaissance Faire vendor to make hundreds of tiny electrum sequins by hand. This was, of course, extremely expensive, as were the real feathers for the capelet and hat. There's a reason that they barely ever use sequins and that they minimize the use of feathers and fur. Underneath the brim of the hat is lined with sequins, as are parts of the pants and shirt. The outfit is based off of both mens' and womens' disco-wear, I used multiple real outfits as reference for the structure and winged it on the color palette. Filonyn did bring this outfit out of the closet once recently, for a disastrous trip to a nightclub with several other party members.
Another 1970s outfit, this one is more casual and the sort of thing they'd have been wearing on a day-to-day basis during that time period. Even though it's more cheerful and youthful than the type of outfit they usually prefer, they decided to wear this sort of thing anyway while it was in fashion since it was frequently gender-neutral (the outfits I referenced for this were, for example) and it was pretty easy to put something together that had full coverage.
From the 1910s, this outfit combines a long skirt and blouse with a more menswear-inspired coat design. Once again, I referenced several different historic outfits for this. The gloves are leather and the main outfit is heavy wool. The hat is especially noteworthy - since they use fresh flowers, they had to set up a new pile of roses on this thing almost every day. They considered wearing this outfit to Roseward's party when we went to that, and although they decided against it on the basis of it not being fancy enough, it would have been really funny if they did. Unbeknownst to us or our characters at the time when we were deciding what everyone would wear, Roseward's weakness turned out to be roses. I do wish they'd showed up at his mansion in the pile of roses hat so we could have seen his reaction.
Filonyn actually has a lot of full Victorian mourning garb. The reason for this is simple - while they were in vogue, widow's weeds were a genre of outfit that allowed the wearer to cover their face without drawing questions and ALSO discouraged conversation. Therefore, as a recluse who also must hide their face to avoid being clocked as fae, Filonyn wore mourning garb at every opportunity even if they weren't mourning anything. This particular dress is a deep mourning dress - all black with no real adornment. The triple layered lace veil makes it even harder to see their face than it is in their usual hats, and even dampens the glow of their eyes somewhat. In addition to wearing it during the Victorian period, though, Filonyn has brought this out once more recently - following Dendra's death, they went into public and obvious mourning out of a combined desire to display their distress at how the situation was handled to the rest of the party and also to display their grief to other local fae - since they were present at Dendra's death, looking appropriately sad about it is an important strategy for making sure everyone does not immediately assume they killed her. They refused to change out of the mourning outfit even when we had to infiltrate a fraternity party.
Another Victorian mourning outfit, this one from the hunt after the fraternity party. This one is notably different from the first one in that it is actually a half-mourning outfit - the inclusion of midnight blue silk and some ornamentation, like ruffles, would not be appropriate for deep mourning. Therefore, even though it doesn't look much less dramatic to modern viewers, this outfit is actually a sign that they are getting ready to move on from their mourning period. The hat is a poke bonnet with two different veils (a short one in front and a longer one in the back) and a decorative piece of silk draped over it.
From the 1600s, Filonyn wore this and similar outfits while they were living in Milan. Like the Victorian mourning outfits, Filonyn has a surprisingly large number of these plague doctor outfits, because they were something that one could wear to fully hide their face and also stop people from talking to them. These are consistently made entirely of leather and include significantly more adornment than was generally considered appropriate for plague doctor outfits because Filonyn can't bear to wear an ugly outfit. Many people likely found the fanciness disrespectful, but they cut such an intimidating figure in it that no one would've dared to tell them so. Filonyn was not officially employed by the city and had no real interest in actually providing medical care despite their talent for healing magic, especially since they'd just finished hiding from the witch trials and were concerned about being seen using magic, but would occasionally heal people who were particularly persistent about demanding help in exchange for a promise to never talk to or about them again.
This is one of my personal favorite outfit designs, and it's also one of Filonyn's favorites, although they rarely wear it nowadays. It's from the same time period as the plague doctor outfits, and is something they'd bring out for fae parties and commission meetings when they did need to engage in social interaction. It's referenced from, if I recall directly, four different historic Baroque outfits, both menswear and womenswear. Even though they wore the plague doctor outfits for most of it, the Baroque period was one of Filonyn's favorite periods for fashion, a close second to their time in the Cordoban Caliphate, which I haven't been able to design outfits for because I couldn't find any good references of clothing from the period despite many hours of research and the great fame of the textile industry at that time. Filonyn wore this again more recently as their first-day look at Roseward's party, although with gloves and a different hat.
This here is an outfit Filonyn actively hates but keeps anyway because they don't like throwing anything away. It's from a period in Venice when it was common practice to wear these identical bauta mask and robe outfits to hide one's identity at events including both Carnivale and political meetings, and even though it provided an excellent way to disguise their face, Filonyn couldn't stand the thing because it was too ugly and only wore it once - until recently, when they grudgingly brought it back out of their closet to make a deal with the devil himself. Since even their closest fae acquaintances had never seen them in this outfit on account of how much they hated wearing it, they figured it was their best bet at going entirely unrecognized by anyone. Being seen with the actual devil would have been a catastrophe for their social status, even though they did manage to absolutely fuck him over in that deal. It isn't even in their gallery because I felt bad putting an outfit they hated so much on there, so this is your one chance to see it.
Last but not least, this is the oldest outfit I have drawn for Filonyn - they'd have still been within their first human lifetime when wearing this, and it was before they left their position at the court to live among humans. This was in the 800s AD, and they were living in the Carolingian Empire at the time - or, more accurately, they were living mostly in Faerie in an area that had some crossover with the part of Earth in the main dimension that contained the Carolingian Empire. Because they weren't living among humans yet, there was no need for them to hide their face. Although it doesn't read that way to modern audiences very clearly, this is actually one of their most masc outfits - the only parts of it that are based on womenswear are the jewelry and the upper part of the sleeves.