I’ve been carefully eyeing the price of the new Hraesvelgr Attire added with Patch 5.31’s update to Restoration of the Holy See, while also being mindful of the fact that I want a comfortable amount of gil stowed for the upcoming addition of new housing plots. A week or so ago, the price of the coffer and my gil hoard converged on the point where I felt safe buying it finally. It’s a lovely set (and I’ll probably see about doing a Set Gallery for it next, since you can’t easily try on the set via the Market Board), but I was mostly after the jacket (as I usually am).
Given her love of Ishgard and her love of fancy attire, the jacket in particular is right up Alahra’s alley, and it’s the sort of thing that could easily work for her default Scion outfit (though maybe not with her main being Dark Knight right now, I suppose!). For the time being, I decided I’d put it to use first for casters, though. I’d not actually had a new glamour for them for months, with the last one that wasn’t job-specific dating all the way back to February when I was leveling one of my casters!
Glamour Components (Requirements: BLM/RDM/SMN 60, Female)
Weapon: Augmented Scaeven Magitek Hanger (Metallic Silver)
Head: Shaded Spectacles (Metallic Silver)
Body: Hraesvelgr Jacket (Jet Black)
Hands: Aurum Dress Gloves
Legs: Makai Priestess’s Skirt
Feet: Crystarium Greaves (Jet Black)
In particular, the top feels like a natural fit for a fencing or dueling look, so I largely picked pieces with Red Mage in mind even if my end goal was to avoid job-specific pieces. The jacket (and the whole set) dye very well, and red would have been a great fit, but I ultimately settled on a black base since that’s been Alahra’s usual color palette for much of Shadowbringers.
From there, I went looking for skirts or other leg pieces, and even thought about using an old favorite in the Star Velvet Bottoms of Casting (which have still not been re-purposed for other roles!). While I might have used any number of suitable pieces, I settled on the Makai shorts for their “general utility” feel, as well as a bit of color contrast with the jacket.
I moved onto boots next, which actually gave me far more trouble than I expected when I picked up the Attire Coffer. With the Makai shorts and the tone of the jacket, I definitely needed a pair of boots with a decent shine to them to suit everything else, and there actually aren’t many that work! My first thought were the new-ish Scion Sorceress’s High Boots (which I’ve surprisingly struggled to put to use), but they didn’t line up in terms of color tone. Most other staples were too flat when dyed, and the Ishgardian Thighboots have the wrong color buttons! The Crystarium Greaves were far from my first choice but they were the best texture fit (and not such a bad fit for Red Mage’s melee elements).
Since I had one of my sort of “core” looks going on, I wanted to mix things up a bit for gloves and glasses, though. The jacket is one of those rare pieces in FFXIV where I don’t actually mind the fit of the sleeves, so I knew I wanted something smaller pretty early on. That proved tricky, if only because the one thing I don’t care for on the jacket is the fur on the wrists, and most dress gloves in the game don’t cover wrists on body pieces. The new Aurum Dress Gloves actually do, though, in addition to having some silver accents to pair with the rest of the set.
With the overall looking coming together with a bit of a “cool” (or even edgy) vibe, I thought Alahra’s usual glasses weren’t quite the fit needed. Instead, I brought back a pair of glasses I don’t think I’ve used actively since the days of A Realm Reborn: the Shaded Spectacles. It’s actually been ages since I pulled them from storage, since they never really looked right with the Minfilia hair that I used for so very long starting in Heavensward. I’ve tried using them a couple times since, but this is the first time I’ve actually liked them in ages, largely due to Alahra’s new hairstyle. Since finalizing the look, I’ve been thinking a lot about playing Red Mage more often, so I’d say it’s a success!
Fashion Ninjutsu 