Shienaran and Malkieri "New Spring" Fashion

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Author: Dar'Jen Ab Owain
Published: November 22, 2021

Shienaran and Malkieri “New Spring” Fashion

This post contains spoilers for New Spring.


Malkier lay to the north of Shienar; and when it fell, Shienar truly became part of the Borderlands. “The law in every Borderland forbade hiding your face inside village or town” (p. 216).


Shienar

Very little is mentioned with regards to Shienaran fashion. The only description given was that of a soldier during the Aiel War. He was “stone-faced…with his crested helmet hanging from his saddle and his head shaved except for a topknot” (p. 64).


Malkier

Though the nation of Malkier had fallen, the fashion lived on. Some had adopted the dress of other nations, such as Ryne Venamar appearing to be Arafellin in his attire. Others retained traditional dress.

During the Aiel War, al’Lan Mandragoran and Bukama Marenellin wore unadorned armor, coats, and coats of plain wool. Lan’s helmet was in the Malkieri tradition, “supporting a steel crescent moon above his forehead” (p. 2). After the war, they wore “dark, knee-long coats” (p. 263). When needing to dress for a more formal occasion, Lan wore a white silk shirt, “tight black silk breeches”, and a “good black silk coat embroidered along the sleeves with golden bloodroses among their hooked thorns” (p. 300).

Bukama’s hair was “worn cut at the shoulders as tradition required” (p. 4). It was tradition for Malkieri men to wear the hadori, a “thin braided leather cord” worn across the forehead to hold their hair back (p. 5). Lan wore it as well, and he “would die wearing it, and go into the ground wearing that and nothing else” (p. 5).

Tradition among Malkieri women was to adorn their “foreheads with the ki’sain in pledge that they would swear their sons to oppose the Shadow while they breathed” (p. 220). As an unmarried woman, Iselle Arrel wore “a small blue dot painted on her forehead” (p. 338). Her mother, Edeyn ti Gemallen Arrel, wore a ki’sain, “still the white of a widow” (p. 304).

Iselle Arrel was described as a young woman with “black hair that fell well below her hips” and in a “pale green silk” dress (p. 338). After Iselle died, Edeyn wore a “white gown, her hair cut raggedly short” in mourning (p. 354).