kelkyag asked: “You have existing clothing words — are they all gathered up somewhere? Are there gaps in that to fill? Words for underwear and buttons and hats along with tunics and stuff?”

Some!

Quoting myself:

The basic unit of Calenyen clothing is the kiparrie. This, like “kimono”, is a generic term, with any number of specific terms depending on shape, length of hem and sleeve, purpose, cut of collar, etc…

It is worn down to the knees over full pants (tozhyu) or a full skirt (kanzhyu).

The kiparri is worn in layers, starting, usually, with what I commonly translate as “linens.”

The word in Calenyena doesn’t actually come from their word for linen, betbet or even their word for flax, betyier.

(Betbet itself is sometimes said to come from the word betyier and sometimes from the sound the wet stalks make when, after retting, the stalks were beaten against rocks to reveal the fibers).

No, the word for under-clothes comes from the word lur, meaning smooth, easy: from kiprat-lur to kiplur and eventually down to kur.

Under-clothes are fastened by ties or laces, from geg, rope, gegyup.

They are usually heavily decorated with bentyek, art-with-a-needle, embroidery, around the hems and cuffs, and sometimes along the seams as well.

The outermost layer is usually a vest, kiprat, which you might recognize from above. The modern vests are long, reaching to mid-hip, unlike their namesakes, which often fell only to the bottom of the ribs; the modern vest is made of woven wool, linen, or some combination, where the original kiprat were made of felted wool.

This is held closed with fancy buttons, reddakak, from kak, push (non-fancy buttons, purely for function, are dakak. A person who makes buttons is a Diedreddakak, and is considered a skilled craftsperson.

And if we have left our model in only their linens and vest, well, at least their linens are soft, and we can put in the middle layers on another day.

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