Gloves - Orloi modesty

It is a well established custom in House Orloi that it is considered indecent for a high born lady to expose her forearms, wrists or hands in public. It is therefore expected that they wear gloves whenever in company. Naturally this has led to a wide variety of fashionable styles of gloves, made of the finest materials and beautifully decorated, being worn - made to match or contrast artfully with the rest of the wardrobe. Flirtatious ladies may wear gloves with transparent sheer panels or artfully cut-away sections. Some cynical commentators have suggested that the whole tradition has arisen simply to allow the ladies of House Orloi to have more scope for scandalous flirtation, and to allow them to play social games with the men of other Houses who don't really know whether they should find wrists a source of erotic fascination or not.

History

The practise began around two hundred years ago, circa 825, and was not recorded before then. Opponents of the Orloi suggest it arose because of a wealthy lady of Orloi with a disfiguring skin disease on her arms who covered them for that reason and started the trend. Proponents of the custom suggest either that House Orloi are simply more refined than the indecent members of other noble families, or that the instigator of the custom had such alluring and beautiful wrists that she had to cover them to stop men duelling each other to the death for the right to merely hold her hand.