Of Houris and Clothes

I was a girl gamer. One of my characters was an Houri, which is probably a Middle Eastern word for prostitute and in DnD it was a magic class with spells like Kiss of Death. 

I played her in some fairly epic campaign and when we got through the dungeon, at the end there was the stereotypical dragon's hoard style pile of wealth.

I took my share of the loot by claiming all the fine china, bolts of silk cloth and similar, opened a brothel and retired the character. She became an NPC -- a non-player character -- in the dungeon master's fictional world and once in while I got to revive the role when adventurers found themselves in this town.

She's probably still a stock character in someone's DnD world.

For some other character, I designed a wardrobe of layers of clothes reasonably consistent with sewing and styling capacity of the middle ages and the dungeon master agreed to count this as plus one defense or something like that. Not as good as leather armor but better than no protection.

I no longer remember the details but I believe there was a loose peasant-style blouse, a fitted vest to give it shape and the option to wear more or fewer skirts and other layers depending on how cold it was.

Like I read once in a book about a real gypsy, there was a heavy shawl or cape that could be used as a blanket or worn as the outermost layer of clothes in cold weather.

I don't recall anymore if I wore shawls, ponchos and capes more than coats and jackets growing up. I probably didn't.

But I remember them more vividly and more fondly and it has always been my desire to eventually design something like that because I don't like jackets and coats.

Jackets and coats tend to hang in a dark closet for months at a time and are frequently not washable. They may be dry clean only and I don't do well with musty coats pulled out of a damp closet or items exposed to dry cleaning chemicals.

Wool coats seem to be the poor man's winter wear. I'm allergic to wool.

Nonetheless, I once owned a lovely shawl collar wool coat which was wonderful in the cold weather of probably Kansas. Then one day I washed it and it never fit right again.

I also at some point owned a leather winter coat. No, not a bomber jacket like people online once likely assumed I meant when talking about it.

It was a three-quarter length coat and for brutal cold weather it was wonderful while looking lovely.

I'm an environmental studies major. I don't believe veganism shall save the world. 

I think restoring our lost wetlands potentially could but probably won't. So without getting too deep into my reasons WHY, I have no qualms about using leather goods and I have firsthand experience with leather being flat out superior for some use cases to other materials. Plus, I'm not allergic.

Other than Kansas and Germany, I've mostly lived in fairly temperate climates or places where heat prostration was vastly more likely than freezing to death. So I haven't yet put much thought into clothes for serious cold weather.

But should this silly website ever turn into a real clothing line and make serious MONEY, I would likely eventually add leather goods, such as shoes, belts, bags and winter wear.

That winter wear might not be confined to coats. In Germany, one of my favorite pieces for not freezing to death in winter was a leather skirt.

Furs? I have no clue. I know furs are worn in seriously cold places like Alaska so I imagine they have a legitimate use for some people and aren't just a winter coat version of blood diamonds to brag about how you spend your money. 

I just haven't lived someplace like that or even visited, so I imagine I would need to research it.