Cuvienen Elves

Some attempts at the Elves' earliest ventures into clothing. The necessity in the first place of clothing for the eldar, for protection or insulation, is to me a debatable point; Dior's young sons, driven out into the wild, perish (seems a surprising end for two of their kind lost out in the fair elven woods they've known all their lives) and elves may be drowned or crushed or frozen to death, but opposing this we know, being told at many points, that they are creatures - especially when compared to men - of remarkable physical resilience. Maedhros is hanged naked by one wrist out in the elements with presumably no food or water for an indeterminate amount of time and survives the ordeal, Legolas is able to travel hundreds of miles at great speed with almost nothing that a human would recognize as either adequate food or rest, and with both him and Voronwe, conditions of cold and fatigue shown to be near life-threatening to humans are to their elven companions little more than uncomfortable and trying. It seems to me therefore that, for creatures to whom the natural world under normal conditions should be more or less survivable in a naked state (which is the case for very nearly all other living creatures except humans) and who's natural clarity of understanding would likely rule out the festering of religious or society-based bodily shame, the development of clothing for elves would, I believe, have to be birthed largely out of other initiatives; the desire perhaps to enact their natural artistry, weaving and braiding, felting and matting the varied fibrous substances of plant and animal as they do their own hair, the desire to adorn themselves with the riches of the natural world, emulating and honoring the endless beauty and diversity of Yavanna's kingdom. In some cases, I expect (the eldar being, ultimately not all that unlike us) the desire to explore and dare and advance beyond their natural station would be a driving force in their early material culture, cloaking and shoeing themselves with light, masterful works of ergonomic art, expanding their already superhuman capacities manyfold (like Legolas' light footwear that sees him in good stead over all terrains and against mountain blizzards, or the cloaks or way-bread granted to the fellowship which keep them warm, hidden, and fed for months at minimal added weight to their baggage). Perhaps the concept of harnesses, packs, ect - ways to store tools or food or raw materials culled from the natural world for later use - was an early and important part of their getting into the practice of "wearing" things. Likely certain methods of garbing become canonized overtime - belting/tieing around the narrow waist, hanging and cloaking over the shoulders - with every elf their own textile artist of surpassing skill and originality (they do have forever to get good at things, after all) experimenting with all materials and methods, leaves and mosses and dazzling flowers, the hair and fur from all creatures (including their own, as we see with legolas' bow string or luthien's cloak) the silks of worms, spiders, shellfish, woven upon looms of all shapes and designs.

Integral to my understanding of Tolkien's elves (and influential in my conceptual opinions for their material culture) is the idea that, for beings of such inherent skill and vision, driven in all their choices not by limitation or incompetence or pressing necessity as men so often are but by curiosity and creativity, what would drive and imbue and come visibly to the front in all the material works of the eldar would be their individual personalities, with each elf, whatever their craft or love, doing it in such a way that is classically "them", and the gifted among them functioning as practically their own "school" of a discipline (Anglachel is remarked to have the spirit of Eol in it, and I imagine this is likely true to one degree or another of all his works; Angruiel, his galvorn armor, his hidden home in Nan Elmoth, even his clothing and methods of control of his environment might be said to be "his school" of creating such things, lost forever (if imitated with some success by his son and possibly others) after his death) Also key, I believe, in any consideration of Tolkien is the bond (not insurmountable but certainly present and important) between character and race. Above we have, as they must have been of old in Cuvienen, a woman of the Minyar and Tatyar strains (two of the three proto-racial groups of the eldar, of whom the later Vanar and Noldor of aman are comprised/decended) Their names translate very literally to the "firsts" and the "seconds" and this, cross referenced with what else we know about the two tribes, goes a long way to forming a picture of their people. the Vanyar are the first, the elder brother, and throughout tolkien's histories they act like it. tall and golden blonde, wise and mighty, they have nothing to prove. they came into the world and see it as a wondrous place little requiring their imposition or improvement, they are kind of "zen" if you will, and not surprisingly their footprint in the history of middle-earth is comparatively shallow, their only real significant acts being usually to step in on the behalf of others. the Noldor are different. they are the second, the younger brother and middle-child of the Quendi, industrious, creative, ambitious, competitive, ego-driven, it's easy to imagine they are on the whole more guarded and prone to jealousy than the minyar (tolkien writes them this way) concerned with their place in the pecking order and contemptuous of the perceived inferiority of the teleri, and later men. In his dealings with feanor Morgoth plays on all these dispositions, but the dispositions themselves were already present in feanor and it seems to a certain extent in all his people (certainly Eol, one of the few remarked-upon Tatyar elves who never made it to aman, fits the mold) I imagine this was true even in the beginning, and wanted to convey it with little cues in these two; with the minyar woman essentially this goddess, gleaming, full-bodied, baring herself in an open and unashamed way, her hair splayed out, adorned only the tendrilling beauty of nature for no purpose other than it's own sake, wise and confident, while the Tatyar woman is slighter, darker, sharper in features and build, more focused and aggressive, armed and proud, her hair pulled tight, her breasts pinned close against her body for better mobility and use of her bow, her privates hidden, guarded, chaste. they could almost be galadriel and aredhel, or indis and miriel, or earlier iterations of the same types.