Take wing, and dance upon the sky

for Edelgard, i wanted a stately but simple and martial look. her cuirass-over-gown look is somewhat inspired by state portraits of various european kings, and she is Shouting her wealth with the yards and yards of dark red silks and gold-thread embroidery. her hair is held in place and protected by a beaded caul that fastens to the circlet of her crown.

her battle armour has Lost Its Skirt Privileges. how on sothis' green earth are you supposed to fight with a massive tangle hazard around your thighs. Girl.

for Hubert my priority was to pull his look away from the modern while keeping his snappy, professional vibe, which ended up being Very evil chancellor. his buttons are replaced with fancy clasps, his silhouette is slightly changed to emphasize his waist and voluminous sleeves (good for daggers) and i lengthened his gloves to add fancy detailing. his halo-brim hat is trimmed with ostrich-feather tips and has a fancy feather! the seal hung from his belt is a boast and a dare.

he also has a cane sword, because truly. who in this game deserves it more.

with Ferdinand i also really wanted to de-modernize the cut of his outfit. he's still adorned in high style, but with slightly faded colours. his sleeves are Big but unadorned, and his doublet is a fairly simple cut. i have made the executive decision to put his hair in a ponytail (with bonus massive bow) to keep it out of his business. doesn't look very noble to be dragging the ends of your hair in ink and tea.

with Linhardt it was once again mostly just a matter of fixing his silhouette. he looks very chic in canon but also extremely modern. he gets a cane because he deserves to have one, and the glass pen tucked behind his ear is a very new-tech invention for the time period i'm aiming them at.

for Petra . well. whole overhaul. i did de-saturate her clothes' palette to emphasize the natural dyes, all except for the super braggy, super fashionable statement piece that is her purple wrap. purple has symbolized royalty for millennia thanks to the murderously difficult process of extracting the dye from rare molluscs, and then the difficulty of maintaining the colour. Petra, with her purple wrap and gold torc jewelry, is here to remind everyone that she *is* going to be Queen.

her headdress from three hopes is so cool i couldn't resist including it. in brigid she wouldn't be wearing pants or shoes at all but fódlan is far colder than brigid so she has leathers.

Caspar is the first of my Landsknecht-inspired designs. his main palette is still within the pink-browns of canon, but boy did i have fun redoing him to show off.

i've also revoked his side-shave privileges, because there's no way this boy is maintaining that when he could be doing push-ups. likewise he has some scruff along his jaw because i fully and truly don't believe he shaves every day.

admittedly with Bernadetta i did lose myself a little in the delight of "futch bernie....." but it came out so cutely i can't be mad. her hair fluff is restored and i've done her up in soft muted colours. most of the detail work is lifted straight from canon, just changed from her dress into a doublet and big ol' pants.

finally we have Dorothea representing the high femmes of adrestia. she makes up for her lack of embroidery with sheer volume of fabric, about a million silver beads, and a fillet of pearls. her hair is still mostly down in a maidenly style, but it is covered with a veil and a net caul to protect it from day-to-day dust and dirt.

i designed Dimitri first, with an eye to establishing the patterns of Faerghus fashion. this outfit would appear after the battle at Gronder Field, when he can be convinced to put on the fancy kingly outfit Rodrigue brought for him. the shades of blue are various saturations of woad dye, which is a plant that thrives in cold and cloudy environments.

Dedue's outfit is largely inspired by historical Scandinavian looks. i wanted him to appear somber but practical, in natural-dye shades and a mostly wool fabric composition.

in my academy-era designs i noted that i really, really wanted to make his design less "palette-swapped white guy" and i am keeping that up with his new hairdo.

with Felix, the real challenge was keeping his most recognizable design elements while keeping him away from the extremely modern textile design of three houses. since these are meant to be "hanging around base" designs, i had to remove his armour, but he gets to keep the profusion of belts since it really can't be felix fraldarius without them. his slit mantle is thrown over his shoulder on one side to make it easier to fence - you know, just in case he has to duel someone for an insult - but also to show off the extremely rich blue lining.

Mercedes was a fun challenge, in which i got to design a much more middle-class outfit with fewer bells and whistles than the extravagant gowns many other girls in this game wear. the hat was ironically the most difficult part to design and went through about twelve iterations before i landed on the sort of french-hood-adjacent veil and cap she has now.

Sylvain is admittedly bragging with this look. while the colours are reasonably cheap to make and maintain, he has so so much cloth and fine fur for the lining of his mantle (worn in the same style as felix's). he has a sword at his waist as a status symbol, but also an emergency dagger stashed up his sleeve just in case. in case of what? he'll never tell.

i opted to make his hair curlier partially because of fashion reasons, and partially because claude in three hopes notes that his own hair is "naturally curly" and his hair is drawn with far straighter lines than sylvain's own. he also gets what my dear friend rk refers to as the "fuckass goatee" because. um. well it's because he reminds me of flynn rider from tangled.

for Ingrid, i wanted to make her outfit practical for message running in cold Faerghus skies. the look i landed on is what i've decided is a variant of the Galatea Pegasus Knight uniform, with a few personal touches to allow for her status. the cloak is a combination of sheepskin leather (wool turned out for warmth) with a weatherproof wool outer layer (the green part) embroidered with the corps' sigil.

i did remove the bows and braids from her hair since right now she's prioritizing practicality, and take away her makeup. i've always been angry that most if not all of the tomboy characters got makeup after the timeskip.

my boy Ashe! his outfit is fun colours, but heavy emphasis on practicality again. i really wanted him to be able to move freely as a skirmisher, hence the shortened coat and small hooded cape. the oak-leaves on his cape clasps are a nod to their meaning in heraldry, which is strength and endurance.

More Freckles For Our Boy.