LAI/MAI Fashion and Its Historical Roots

Among the many joys of life that LAI and MAI tend to share with their human peers, adorning oneself with flashy fabrics and patterns is universal – and in just the same way, a lot of the styles that dominate the scene have rich historical origins that brought them about.

Postwar Emergent Expression

The immediate time after the end of the third world war was a new era of stress, uncertainty, and instability for just about everyone involved. Peace talks and climate talks concerned for the future seemed to go hand in hand, soldiers returned home to a society vastly different than what they’d left behind, and MAI didn’t even have the option to go home for years since they were still under the ownership of their respective governments. Regardless, however, they still had few new freedoms that they did their best to make the most of. For starters, the regulations around standard paint scheme requirements lessened after the war’s end – in the scope of this article, this is where things start to get interesting.

Historically Iconic Paints: Liberation Era, Trench Rose

In direct response to the end of the war, two fairly prominent styles burst onto the fashion scene from MAI just learning to stretch their newfound liberties in a world without combat. Liberation era, which even to this day remains an iconic style of paint scheme, is loosely defined as “jarringly bright colors in patterns that often imitate life.” While in the beginning, it was common for adoptees of this style to have little regard for color theory and cohesive patterning – ‘We can do whatever we want with our bodies now! Who cares?’ - the style refined itself over time into something that more lent its vibrant colors and patterns from natural occurrences, perhaps considered more like a specific vein of biomimicry. Brightly colored birds and insects are a strong contender for the most common inspirations for modern liberation era style, while a classic looks would perhaps be best compared to something like… a bowling alley carpet, or garish hawaiian shirt button-up patterns. Not knocking on bowling alley carpet though, gotta love that pattern.

For the MAI that weren’t so strongly inclined to style themselves like they just majorly lost a paintball tournament, Trench Rose was considered to be a much more tasteful route. At the time, however, it was quite provocative in its own way. After the war and into the years following the 2011 Loophole act, MAI were often seen as inherently lesser by parts of the civilian population. Those who didn’t understand or often encounter MAI could be quick to diminish their intelligence, their true contributions toward the war, and the pain they faced as a result. In a display of strength and defiance toward these sentiments, some units began to accentuate the wounds they had sustained from their active service years with Trench Rose. This is a style strongly defined by the painting of flowers – often roses or lilies – around but not over top of scars on the hull/frame sustained by combat or other transgressions. Pockmarks from AA fire immersed in a garden of roses, shear marks from flak and the glances of enemy cannons adorned with white lilies – to show that this pain was not only real, but to show the growth of the unit and their ability to heal from it along with the world around them.
While extremely popular during the time post war, this style saw a strong resurgence in the 2020s during the Steelcut Era. When humans went out of their way to harm MAI, victimized units strongly adopted Trench Rose for similar reasons as its first wearers. Sometimes, MAI would act in solidarity with their attacked peers by copying their paint and bearing the same scars and flowers – to show they weren’t alone in their fight for an end to the aggression. Today, Trench Rose is seldom utilized as a modern style, but it has stuck around over the decades from units that painted it when the movements that conceived it were still active.

Modern and long-lived Styles: Merle and Striping, Engravement, Nose Art

In the years since MAI have been treated more equitably, there’s been plenty of other styles that have cropped up over the years, as well. Merle, for example, is a popular minimalist style that’s inspired by the spotty patterns on certain dog breeds with the same name. While not straying from color, it tends to be more pastel or mute in its palette, and is most commonly a simple two-tone design. It’s defined by a solid base of one color that gets painted over with simplistic spotting of a second color – it’s most popular to position spots most densely around the flank, wingtips if applicable, and the face. Striping is similar in that it also tends to be a simple two-tone style, but its title makes its differences self explanatory.
Engravement, just like the name suggests, is arguably more permanent than any paint or livery, given the fact that it involves shaving away parts of the hull. In a way, engravement can be equated to a human getting a tattoo. It’s extremely rare to see this on any type of MAI without conventionally thick armor, but in certain rare cases, such as if an aircraft MAI is permanently grounded for any reason, they may pursue engraving. While engraving can be an umbrella term for a pretty wide range of designs, it most commonly refers to an intricate, classical style of floral embellishment most commonly associated with firearms - consider something like the kind of revolver you might encounter in a western movie or show. While on tanks that may be normally relegated to the turret or gun, there isn’t exactly anyone stopping anyone from going farther with it – it’s just considered, quite frankly, a little gaudy if you overdo this one. Applause for the effort that’d need to be put in, though.
Nose art is likely iconic enough in history that it needs no detailed introduction. Popularized during World War II when soldiers were looking to make their aircraft stand out from the crowd - or have a painting of a scantily clad woman to stare at – it’s already quite solidly cemented itself in cultural relevancy. While the military industrial complex of the final war was too boring most of the time to allow individuality as intricate as nose art, it has seen a steady resurgence in popularity over the years. Rather than the women of yore, however, the new most popular subject of nose art is often animals – whether real or fantastical. For example, one might still find the echoes of a fad in the 2050s, when it was all the rage to get nose art of medieval or folklore mythological creatures – the wulpertinger was a surprisingly popular candidate. Although not necessarily tipped to by the name, this style also encompasses any complex art on the wings and other flight surfaces.

Birth of a Scene – MAI Clothing Fashion, its History, and its Functionality

For a newly produced clade of hyperintelligent AI that love to mimic aspects of human behavior, it was really only a matter of time before they wanted to wear their own outfits, come on, now. While MAI-specific clothing didn’t truly take flight until a decade or so after the war’s end, it still found its roots not far from the frontlines.

Inspiration, Origin

For a genre of fashion that’s so entrenched in the pursuit of pure cosmetic value, stylized clothing still started from a place of practicality. The shaggy fake foliage of camouflage, the optic-blinders to protect the eyes, closely fitted anti-IR fabrics, protective covers for the weather – really, humans had been playing some elaborate dress-up with them the entire time. It wasn’t difficult to predict that some might have liked the idea of wearing an of it for show. After the war, some units even did just that! While it wasn’t exactly possible to take many of these garbs home, it wasn’t long before units were simply learning how to make them from scratch, and even adding their own custom flairs if they had the resources. Thus, there was born a brand new scene of post-war military hardware with too much newfound time on their hands, learning how to make their own covers and tarps and cloaks. It’s only uphill from here!

A Fashion Breakthrough, and Refinement of the Craft

While there’s no way to discern the singular event or article of complex clothing that made the new cultural practice explode, there’s definitely a few that directly catalyzed it. The earliest of these examples comes from the year 2012, a tank named Whatchamacallit “Wendy" Covenstead, and her sister/gunner Ivy Covenstead. For a local dinner party in their small town of Isanti Minnesota, the two came up with the funniest idea to make matching outfits to wear to the function. Ivy bought herself a costume ball-gown complete with a corset and layers of frills - while she and Wendy worked together to make a tank-sized fluffy skirt, and to match, a few yards of fabric laid over her upper glacis plate to look like a densely frilled bodice. …Wait a minute, this outfit looks kind of good, actually. Wendy and Ivy shared their finished handiwork with social media, when their post exploded in popularity, they were cemented as iconic members of the newly budding fashion renaissance.

It wasn’t just MAI paving the way in their own fashion scene, either! Among the first trailblazers in MAI clothing design was actually a human, Mhina Freling - at the time, she was still only engaged to Aristophanes Unit TG1-0001-0, and was an unlikely workhorse in the realm of clothing pattern developments. With her prior expertise in fashion design in the realm of human applications, after she became involved with her eventual husband, she shifted her sights to the newly developing scene of MAI with a great interest. She’s credited with helping cement the longevity of the Liberation Era style with her bold, bright, and thick-ruffled designs of side skirts, blouses, and shawls – and she’s additionally known for having invented the concept of padding for tanks to wear on the glacis plate to even out the lay of their shirt-analogs.
Over the years, “MAI clothing” went from makeshift cloaks made from tarps and amateur covers, to essentially being able o effectively emulate any style that humans could wear – along with their own signature styles and flairs.

How do Modern Outfits Function, Anyways?

To put it concisely, normally a lot of buttons, magnets, and elastic to hold everything on. Given the fact that MAI don’t tend to really… line up with human proportions, the shape of their clothes usually doesn’t either.

In terms of ease and popularity, it’d damn difficult to go hard with sleeves and scarves! Scarves work exactly as you’d expect, just scaled up for whoever happens to be wearing it - and sleeves tend to just be fabric tubes either made from a stretchy material, or another type of fabric cinched at either end with elastic. Given the fact that the only work required to put either of these articles on is to just slip them over the hands or around the turret/fuselage, and that sizing doesn’t have to be so specifically tailored to the unit, scarves and sleeves are probably the most common and casual clothing pieces to encounter in a day. Because of this, they’re probably the main kind of merch you’re going to find at shops and events alongside human t-shirts and hats!
Speaking of hats – yeah, MAI tend to wear those too, and there’s a pretty diverse range of way they can be designed for wear by different units. While it’s a surprisingly popular method to just stick a human-style hat somewhere on top of their turret or cockpit, that doesn’t work every time. One popular style of hat design is to just scale up a human style one, but not every hat is good for this – trucker caps and baseball caps, those usually remain on the smaller side. Wide brim hats, however, tend to scale up quite agreeably. Popular with aircraft are styles of hat that can be closely fitted to the cockpit glass – ushankas and beanies, for example are pretty common.

Going beyond just the basics that can be thrown on with short notice, we get into the proper garments that can range from casual to formal. For the units that have magnetic frames, accordingly magnetic articles of clothing can be sourced – those without, however, tend to have to install snaps in order to make most of this wearable. For heavier fabrics, snaps are often required for weight bearing. Undershirts, shirts, and coats, all tend to be less fully enveloping garments, and more flat spans of fabric that are secured overtop the hull or fuselage – this means if you want your coat to be able to open up, it has to be in two pieces! Dresses and skirts are similar in the fact that they’re also often multiple pieces, and in terms of tanks, they often only start and end on the vertical sides of the unit, since making them span over the back could cover up important engine and cooling system ventilation.