I don’t even know where to begin with this one! Usually, as I’m putting together a glamour, there’s stuff running through my head, and I can figure out how to open the blog portion of each Spotlight that way. For this one, though, it was all pretty simple! I had enough Crystals for another piece of Anemos gear (but only one), and the piece that looked the most fun to design around by itself was the Anemos Storyteller’s Coat, so I got it! And then I made a glamour around it, obviously, because why wouldn’t I?

Glamour Components (Required Level: BRD 70)
Weapon: Yoichi Bow (Replica) (Wine Red)
Head: Augmented Choral Chapeau (Wine Red)
Body: Anemos Storyteller’s Coat (Pure White)
Hands: Foestriker’s Mitts
Legs: Light Steel Subligar (Wine Red)
Feet: Eikon Leather Thighboots of Aiming (Wine Red)

I’m being somewhat facetious, of course. The Storyteller’s Coat is the sort of body piece that I used to use a lot, especially during A Realm Reborn. Tabards and long coats have been pretty common for Bard for a long time, but more recently I’ve been moving away from them in favor of jackets and such instead. I haven’t done a “long” Bard glamour for several months now, with the last one featuring the Skallic Jacket of Aiming, and the one before that was from last July, just a bit after Stormblood launched. But even though it’s been awhile, I didn’t forget the basics of Alahra’s Bard style, and this one mostly came down to matching accent colors.

Since my last glamour for Bard featured the Chapeau in red, I noticed right away that it lined up pretty well with the red-orange smack dab in the middle of the Storyteller’s Coat, and that ended up guiding the rest of the glamour, after waffling between Rust Red and Wine Red for a little while. Once the general color scheme was settled, I knew I was probably going to wind up using the Light Steel Subligar (which, obviously, I did), so I spent most of my time for this one working out which boots and gloves to use.

For gloves, I was pretty sure that I wanted to use something long: the sleeves of the Storyteller’s Coat have a really prominent flare, and I almost never like that for a final look. With the bits of red-orange on the Aoidos’ set that stick around with dyes, my first inclination was to use the Aoidos’ Shoulder Gloves, but I didn’t really care for the way they blended with the fabric on the Coat. I felt the same way about the Augmented Torrent Armguards of Aiming, which left me considering various leather options. My first thought was to use the Saurian Gloves of Aiming, but then I remembered that the Foestriker’s Mitts would probably work well alongside the Chapeau in Wine Red. I tried both, but ultimately preferred the mostly solid color on the Foestriker’s to the red, white, and grey on the Saurian ones.

As with the gloves, I started out working with the Aoidos’ Thighboots for the Feet slot. They made the cut through several iterations of the look, all the way up until I settled on the Foestriker’s Mitts for the gloves and realized that I couldn’t go with black boots, even if they did have a small amount of red on them. It mainly came down to the Expeditioner’s Thighboots or the Eikon Leather ones (both in Wine Red, obviously), and I felt the gold studs on the Eikon Leather boots fit in best with the rest of the look, which is, like a lot of Bard glamours, full of baubles and bits.

I’m not sure how long this one’s going to last just yet, though. I’ve had my eye on the dyeable Anemos Storyteller’s Boots for a long time, and I’m guessing they’ll be my next piece of Eureka gear. Since they’re shorter, they’ll likely demand a much different look overall, and I can’t see myself using them with the Storyteller’s Coat. I may wait to play around with them until I have the accompanying gloves, though, since they’ll undoubtedly pair well together. In any case, I definitely do feel a bit more of an itch to play Bard since putting this one together, so I’d say it classifies as a success!