One reason I wanted to start taking requests from Patrons was to broaden my glamour horizons, since (and anyone who reads the site regularly will know this) I tend to focus on a familiar range of styles and types of gear. Glamour is naturally a very subjective activity: what looks good to one person may not look good to me. But even so, I try to keep my eyes open for new ideas and challenge myself to think outside my normal boxes, something requests can often require directly, as was the case with one of the requests from last month (for a Shrine Maiden look).

I got another request in that same vein this month, to create a shinobi glamour for Samurai, which was bound to be tricky since Samurai and Ninja have very little overlap in gear. The idea seemed workable enough, though, and it got the gears churning in my head pretty quickly. I made note of a few things I would need to include, like lots of black (naturally), some sort of mask, mostly cloth gear, and ideally something at least kind of like waraji. None of the items I marked mentally in the process ended up making the cut, but I did manage to find a combination of pieces that I think works fairly well.

Glamour Components (Required Level: MNK/SAM 68)
Weapon: Mythrite Uchigatana
Head: Scion Rogue Bandana
Body: Ruby Cotton Gilet of Striking
Hands: Molybdenum Armguards of Striking (Jet Black)
Legs: Ivalician Samurai’s Tsutsu-Hakama
Feet: Gazelleskin Open-toe Boots of Striking (Jet Black)

Using the scarf on the Iga Ningi as a point of inspiration, I started out with the Gazelleskin Corselet of Striking, which has something similar going on. That naturally led me to the corresponding Molybdenum Armguards. After that, I started looking for masks, with the Titanium Mask of Striking and the Mythril Mesail being the first things I thought of. I figured the Mesail would be necessary in the end (and I saw it often back in the days of A Realm Reborn for Ninja-themed looks even before we had Ninja). I narrowed down options for pants to the Arachne Gaskins of Striking pretty early as well, since I normally don’t care much for stuff that’s too baggy, and the only option for feet I could find that had the right height were the Gazelleskin Open-toe Boots (which did make the final cut).

But after I gathered all of these to try them on, I wasn’t happy with the end result. The Mesail looked pretty strange from the side and behind, since it doesn’t encircle the entire head, and the Corselet seemed to overall be too long for what I had in mind. The Arachne Breeches had too much grey as well, and things just didn’t look right. At that point, I did start to wonder if I shouldn’t give the look a little “Alahra flair” and stick to the Expeditioner’s Thighboots, but that kind of felt like cheating (since it’d make choosing pants that much easier). So, I went at least partially back to the drawing board, keeping only the Armguards and the Boots.

For the mask, the Titanium Mask had to be thrown out as an option (since it has gold accents that seemed really out of place), and the next best thing I could think of was the Scion Rogue Bandana. While there are some lower level scarfs that work as bandit masks, they don’t really fit a shinobi vibe to me. Thancred’s bandana isn’t perfect by any means, but was the most fitting thematically that I could think of.

From there I moved on to the Ruby Cotton Gilet, which I had noted as a backup plan if I couldn’t make the Corselt work. While it doesn’t work as well as something like the Rainbow Shirt of Scouting (which unfortunately has no analogue for Striking classes), it’s got a similar vibe, and with the Armguards being as long as they are, the lack of sleeves doesn’t greatly take away from the end goal.

With everything else settled, all I had to do was find a solid pair of loose-fitting pants for the Legs slot. I stumbled onto the Tsutsu-Hakama quite by accident after glamouring all of the other pieces so that I didn’t have to keep re-equipping things. I had them naturally equipped (and un-glamoured) since updating my Monk gear to include all of the job-specific Anemos pieces, and as it turns out, they fit in really well! There are a number of other pieces that could probably work (like the various Sarouel models), but since the Tsutsu-Hakama already worked, I didn’t see any reason to dwell!

My next glamour project is also shinobi-themed, of course, since I want to figure out a solid way to use the Anemos Kage-kakushi Chainmail in Pure White, but that’ll mean it ends up looking much, much different from this one! I think we’re getting to that point in the Patch Cycle where I start looking forward to the future, though. I have most all of the various Anemos pieces I want (though that’s not going to stop me from collecting stuff for potential glamours, of course), and I’m definitely itching for some new gear to work with!

This post comes by request of one of Fashion Ninjutsu’s patrons on Patreon, Curious Usagi, who wanted to see a shinobi-themed Samurai glamour. If you’d like to make requests yourself, either by voting for the monthly Patron Only Glamour Spotlight or for the site in general, you can contribute to Fashion Ninjutsu’s Patreon.