Quote Originally Posted by reivaxe View Post
This is factually wrong.
I'm by no means a lore expert but for the time I was a Highlander I did learn a thing or two about them and "With a spiritual tradition dating back to times of yore, Highlanders are known to sport wood-carved talismans woven into their underclothes". This is reflected in them legit having a wooden talisman in their hempen top for both genders.
This means that the talismans are lore appropriate, not the clothes themselves. Based off of this statement, could put them on the Miqo’te hempen top and it would make no difference. Remove the talisman from the Highlander hempen garb, and it’s just garb. If it cannot sustain its cultural significance when you remove the talisman, then the clothes themselves are not culturally significant.

Now, is that true for every other group? IDK, don't know their lore and never looked into it. To me it's likely partly an aesthetics choice to enhance and promote the traits they based the races upon ... like them thinking that FemRoe underwear should look like a wrestle's could be because they're the biggest, buffest race/ Elezen having the classy, elegent underwear cause they're the elegant ones/ Lala having modest, cute underwear cause they're the lil cute people or Draggo girls having a teddy nightwear to play up and enhance or push the fact that they're based on succubus and Jpop idols.
These are all valid reasons to do this seeing as, again, the concept is to play up the themes and aesthetics unique to them. But at the VERY least Highlander underwear is based on their cultural lore.
Miqo’te hempen clothes have no cultural significance to them. Lore-wise, Seekers and Keepers are very different in terms of their history and traditions, but both are considered to be hunters. A halter top and panties doesn’t do anything to enhance either of the clans’ cultural traits. The lore book only makes mention of starting race gear with regards to all races—for Miqo’te, it cites how they are loose fitting and not bulky to allow for free range of movement—and it does make mention that holes are cut out of the bottoms to accommodate their tails, something their hempen gear doesn’t have. For Au Ra, the lorebook directly contradicts the idea of them being cute J-pop girls, as it cites that their racial starting gear is supposed to represent “rugged strength” (more specifically referencing how the gear is ripped and torn—something that applies to both male and female garb).

On the topic of aesthetic choices to enhance/promote traits of the race, this argument falls flat when none of the tailed races have hempen clothes that do anything to enhance one of the prominent physical features that makes them very different from other races in the game. As for elegance, elegance is independent of race, in my opinion. I believe the lore book describes Elezens as pretentious instead of elegant. I suppose if you wanted to stretch with the whole “elf” lore that exists in other fandoms—but I cannot say for certain if that was the developers’ mindset with regards to Elezens as they are in the XIV universe. I don’t find anything particularly elegant enough about their hempen gear to advocate for it to being racially locked.