The standard critique of steampunk fashion is that it takes 19th century style and just slaps gratuitous gears on it.
\nBut the interesting thing is that 19th century styles were spangled with gratuitous cutting-edge industrial products! European mechanization first took off with the (important!) textile industry, and fashion of the age took clothes and just slapped newly accessible lace, ribbons, and ruffles everywhere.
\nIronically given all the shit they catch for pushing a purely bourgeois vision of the Industrial Age, the rivets-and-goggles set verge on Soviet in fetishizing industrialization in terms of \u201chard\u201d heavy industry to the exclusion of \u201csoft\u201d consumer goods.
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