Simon and Vya - Traditional Clothes

Have I mentioned yet that I love drawing period/traditional clothing? I think I have. It's awesome and fun. So I wanted to draw my two favorite guys in their cultural costumes.

Vya is Russian (duh), but he's half Mongolian, so I wanted to draw him in Mongolian clothes, because deels are beautiful and LOOK AT THAT HAT, LOOK AT THIS KID WEARING THAT HAT! www.asia-insider-photos.com/im… Anyway, I meant to go back and draw Vya again in Russian clothes to show both parts of his heritage, but he's from Irkutsk which is in Siberia and quite close to the Mongolian border. I tried to look up fashions from the Irkutsk oblast, but it seemed like the traditional clothing from that region was pretty much slightly Russia-fied versions of Mongolian clothes. So I would have ended up with something very similar to this anyway. Anyway, a few notes, I didn't forget to draw his hands, the Mongolian deels, especially the winter ones, have very long sleeves that cover the hands to keep them warm. This kind of deel wouldn't be an everyday one, it would be for much fancier occasions, and would probably cost MUCH more than Vya could afford even if he gave up eating for a month. The everyday deels are much plainer with less saturated colors, stronger fabrics, and usually without patterns. Buuuuuuut that's not as fun to draw.

Speaking of patterns! Look at Simon's outfit! It should have more patterns! Much more! But I got lazy. Hopefully this looks alright anyway. I don't know if I ever said this, but Simon is Polish (at least on his mother's side, I haven't decided if his father should be too) I'm not sure what region his family is from, I haven't done as much research into Simon's ancestry as I should (I'm still working on reading up on Judaism. Did you know that Jews aren't supposed to spend money on the Sabbath? I didn't!) So Simon's costume is a little more general, and that was also partly because I mostly just found articles about women's costumes, and I was researching and drawing this inbetween working on my model for class so eventually I just gave up and pieced together a costume from google images that I hope is fairly accurate.
One of the big differences between Simon and Vya is that Vya is rather proud of his culture and heritage and Simon is rather annoyed by his. I think it's because he resents anything that tries to define him and tell him what he "should be". I don't know if that makes it ironic that he's an archeologist and spends his life knee deep in people's cultures, or if that makes his career choice make more sense (choosing to spend his time in other histories and cultures instead of embracing his own)