Style and dress (Sicinia Salis)
The styles of clothing and dress, like most of Sicinia, have very clear delineations between north and south, rich and poor, and city and country.
Sicinians take great pride in their clothes and their appearance. It is not a boast when I say that Sicinians are best-dressed people in Namura. You will see peasant hovels with twenty people living inside, yet while their lives are squalid their clothes are always beautiful and immaculate. Great tenements with human waste running down the flights of stairs, yet the men's boots will be shined and the woman's white linens and silks will be spotless.
Southern Clothing
Most aristocrats and others of privilege enjoy showing off their wealth by wearing voluminous gowns and priceless embroidery. However, the intense heat and humidity of Sicinia in the summer wins out over hot and confining fashion, and Sicinians, rich and poor alike, take to wearing light, simple clothes, at least during the day. Summer nights, when it's cooler, is when all the parties and balls take place. During the dry season, when the air is cooler and less humid, is when such elegant and expensive fashions are worn all the time.
Original Sicinii dress for men was that of areas in southern Borrados: loose, flowing, comfortable for horseback and for cold nights. However, when the Sicinii settled in the much hotter Sicinia and gave up their nomadic ways for farming, the flowing robes that went with the wandering of a horse were no longer practical in the heat of a farm field. Sicinian men now wear linen shirts, light coats (heavier ones for balls or the dry season), and breeches or trousers that are more suited for toil or a jaunt around the estate than the old dress.
Northern clothing
Due to the different climate and an Akae-Laatzen background, Northern Sicinians adopted a more rugged and Northern influenced dress. While the southern patterns draw much influence from Akaeia, the northern designs are taken from Laatzenian ideas and patterns. Clothes are much bulkier and made out of sturdier materials such as wool and canvas. It is this last that northerners derive one their nicknames:"sail-shanks". The Northerners favor practicality over beauty, and any fashionable clothes in the North will either be last season's Southern styles or inferior quality copies.
Hair
For men, of both privilege and poverty, short hair is considered to be the appropiate cut. Since is baldness is looked upon with scorn, wigs are quite common, though they only mimic short hair, not long. Long hair is considered suitable only for mourning and for warriors. It for this last reason that Sicinian soldiers wear their hair pulled back in queues.
It is considered disgusting for a woman to have short hair, and long hair is universal among Sicinian women. However, while unmarried girls wear their hair loose, married women are expected to pull it back in some kind of bun or braid.
