Royal clothing reveals cultural valuesfrom @sakata.ken

Transcript

Right, so these are three different royal families with three wildly different dress codes and those differences reveal what they consider to be rare, beautiful and important. So first up we've got the British. The king or queen is coronated in a specific outfit. The first layer is called a colobium sindonis and that's just plain linen. Best, they wear a gold flowing robe called a super tunica and it's decorated with the national symbols of the home nations. And on top of the super tunica is the robe royal, which is a flowing long gold robe. And then the king or queen is crowned of the imperial state crown. So what is the point of this? What are the messages that they're trying to get across? No Britain, out of its own natural resources, have very little supply. But by demonstrating these layers of luxurious clothes, very precious gemstones, these diamonds are from South Africa, these rubies are from Burma and the fur is from Canada. They are painting a picture that they are the head of a global empire with inbound roads of wealth. The visual vocabulary speaks to one of reach. The second culture are the Japanese. When the emperor is enthroned, they have to wear something called a sokutai. That's made out of a raw silk gauze. But I think what's really interesting in this example is that none of these things are rare in Japan. A domestic silk supply is available and so are domestic natural dyes that create this color. So what makes this valuable? What makes this scarce? The fabric is handwoven and to get these subtle patterns you need a very high level of skill. But most importantly is the colour of this garment. It is sumac dye and the scarcity is a creation of a social construct of forbidden colours. Certain colours are reserved for certain social hierarchies, like deep scarlet is reserved for high ranking officials, the colour blue is linked to commoners or common people and sumac dye, this colour was used only for the outerwear of the emperor of Japan. And the messaging of this particular outfit is that this is a nation of craftspeople and this is a nation that still has a lot of value in social hierarchy and within that there is tremendous value in the obedience and compliance. Thirdly we have the Asante kingdom from Central Ghana. This is a kingdom of rich natural resources, gold, diamonds and natural timber. The king of the Asante Kingdom, the Asante Heni drapes a single strip sewn better cloth over one shoulder. The entire body, the ankles, wrists, elbows carry these massive cast gold jewelry. This is a display of this particular region's natural resources. True authentic better cloth is handwoven. Each color has a specific meaning. Gold means royalty, wealth or spiritual purity. Blue means peace, harmony and love. White is purity and healing. And by weaving this cloth, this is like putting phrases together in a sentence. You are constructing a narrative of this person. And the ideas transmitted from the close is that this is a nation that is blessed with resources. The thing that is prized is cultural narrative and the history of its people. And I suppose the cultural weight of royalty has waned over tier, all over the worse. But the outward expression of what we find important about ourselves is still a very contemporary concept. What are our clothes saying about it? Are they doing a good job of condensing your positions about the world?