From a LJ discussion
What makes someone attractive? Biologically, there are obvious imperatives that favor the healthy, strong, fertile, young, able. But sexual selection often goes beyond this - countless species have evolved mate-attraction behaviour that's actually counterproductive from a survival point of view - bright coloration, gigantic horns, extra long tailfeathers, and so forth. In a post-biological world, where physical survival pressures are essentially nil, it's pretty much all out the window. Unless you're in a subculture of body-traditionalists.
There must be societies in the Mess or beyond who have developed the post-everything equivalents of powdered wigs, blackened teeth, eyebrow shaving, foot-binding, lip-stretching - the Bonobians come to mind, obviously. (I suddenly have terrible visions of a society of ocular fetishists who make anime girls look like Popeye by comparison...)
Fashion adds another spin to this - the continual, relentless turnover of styles. Not to mention anti-style, when the edgy kids break the rules, turn down their stockings, wear safety pins in their noses, tattoo their faces, pierce their wings, have dangerous reptiles grafted to their heads, anything that says "fuck you" to the establishment. But what's shocking when anything goes? Or is shock itself passe this year?
Perhaps, egads, it becomes all about the mind, personality or exploits of a person. Who makes you laugh? wonder? think? Who's most influential? Do you like people with an air of danger about them? Self-confidence? Arrogance, even? Do certain languages (or certain language) turn you on? Whose recent artwork was most brilliant? Crossing a couple wires here - what if anti-style extends to the personality? What if people underwent neurosurgery in order to become impaired in interesting ways?
Some societies might come to value age and experience, and signs of 'weathering' would be highly attractive to them, the way we regard antiques and old buildings:
It seems to be a natural tendency to conceive of the Warps as fairly narrow references to Terran culture, and embellish them into something original from there. This isn't bad at all, since it's given the Warps considerable focus and vividness. But characters, places, and plot elements certainly don't have to conform to the dominant aesthetics of their home Warps.
[Contributions to this section are warmly encouraged...]
Up's predominant aesthetic is 1970's futurism -- the clean white hallways, analog hardware, and faintly psychedelic modernism seen in films like Logan's Run, the Andromeda Strain, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange. Up could also draw from any other civilization's imaginings for the future, though, from the hyperrational equine Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels, to the sky-high towers in early industrial sci-fi like Metropolis and Aelita: Queen of Mars. And the Jetsons look -- hoverskirts, friendly atoms, and gratitutious radio antennae, with everything ending in "-orama" or "-omat" -- is always in fashion.
Down is usually conceived of as cyberpunkish, in the style of Neuromancer and Blade Runner, full of neon, rust, smog, dirty concrete, and the occasional flash of sleek chrome. Maybe a little German rivethead culture thrown in for good measure. Any bustling, polyglot, slightly run-down urban culture could be an inspiration for Down -- Jamaican rude boys, for instance, or a Bombay market. The world of Bruce Sterling, especially, is effective at imagining vivid Third-World technocultures and "adhocracies" that would fit very well in Down.
Top seems to have settled largely into neo-Victorianism: stately palaces with courtyards and spires, bowler hats and canes, petticoats and gowns, high teas and pocketwatches. But any aristocratic, rigid, or courtly society might have an analogue in Top. Consider Central American cultures, for instance -- they might mix well with the Chitin Queens or the Neo-Boreals, especially given William S. Burroughs's use of insectoid imagery as a metaphor for Mayan priestly violence. The Genroku era of Japan, with its thriving art and literature, and increasingly urbane samurai, might also be inspirational. Maybe even a little bit of post-war Rome, that of Fellini and the oh-so-stylish Mods... C'mon, Top needs Vespas!
Bottom often gets written off with a "bad porn film" aesthetic -- oily, naked bodies throbbing en masse. But really, with its tent cities and communalistic ethics, isn't Bottom really more like Woodstock? A little Mardi Gras, a little Kama Sutra, and maybe a little hippie mysticism for good measure.
Charm has been indelibly marked with the look and feel of their Bubble Doll ruler. Really, any colorfully surreal children's fantasy world would work: Narnia, Yellow Submarine, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, even the Care Bears...
Strange seems to get the most variety of all the Warps, ranging from White-Wolf influenced sociable young monsters, to anthromorphic lumps of infected smartliquid. The decor of the Warp itself could be described as "mutant Venetian," a kind of Renaissance elegance reflected in a perverse, sickly mirror.