Hopefully this is the right spot, but feel free to move it. Well, not that you need my permission anyway :P

How in the world am I supposed to describe clothing? My stories are usually set in a medieval sort of place, and I wasn't really sure what was typical of clothes back then or what words could be used to describe the clothing.

Just look on Wikipedia or something. That's where I look if I don't know something I need to for my story

hehe, that makes sense... :P

I usually look on wikipedia or google "medieval clothing" or something like that.

I think the library has some awesome resources, as well. If you search for "medieval clothing" - the amount of books they have varies depending on the time period.

You could also read other fantasy books set in the same time, to see how other authors dealt with it. However, I would recommend caution, because if you get too in depth with description, it can really slow the story down. It's hard to find a good balance!

It is very very hard to go too much in depth with description. It is easy to do bad description, though. Watership Down is one of my absolute favorite books: amazingly compelling, exciting, powerful, vivid, and all around really good. It will spend whole pages of simply description with absolutely nothing actually happening. But it is masterfully done and irresistible (unless you hate books ). The same thing with any other really good writer.

The thing is not about rules of how to do good writing: it is about how to write good. Make sense?

Sorry, got on my soap-box there. (To borrow the colloquialism.)

I would suggest making up your own clothes and then introducing them into the descriptions and story carefully so that your readers do not get confused. That is what I do a lot.

lol. I must be crazy, but I hate Watership Down.)

For me, I tend to go into far too much detail when it comes to clothing. I love describing the beautiful dresses that my heroines live, and their hairstyle, etc...etc...

It annoys my poor sisters to death.

so now, I try to stick to description like, "he garb was well-made and durable" or I'll stick something in about 'long flowy skirts'.

Here is a site I use all the time for reference pictures.

http://armstreet.com/home.html

I'm going to move this topic to the archives, since I seem to have gotten the answers I needed.