Parasite Eve‘s piercing winter setting begged me for a holiday playthrough last year. My creativity forge is kindled by JRPG femme fatales, so post-playthrough, I tinkered and eventually forgot about this PlayStation cover art mock-up I cobbled together. Taking inspiration from the savvy commerciality of Victoria Beckham’s Fall 2021 Ready-to-Wear collection, protagonist Aya Brea received a luxury makeover.

Fashion makeovers for videogame characters is a particular blogging niche, an idea copied and repurposed from John Jannuzzi’s Textbook Tumblr blog; Jannuzzi’s highbrow interpolations of fashion concepts was a personal North Star. Now, I am no wizard with digital paintbrushes, nor a warlock of layers, and vectors, and software of all types, but my criticizing eye can see that basics have done me fine. Last year’s unnecessary insecurities are a figment of the recent past, so here I share a visual take on Aya Brea.

The intersection of videogames and fashion is a quiet spellcraft, unsullied by the bombast of the toxicity of videogame journalism and fandom rhetoric. It’s a stylish road to take, traversed mostly by videogame girls and gays looking to dream up their favourite characters like dolls. Yoshitaka Amano, a forefather of the Final Fantasy lore, draws much of inspiration from fashion magazines and runway, as explored in previous musings on Amano’s Vogue collaboration.

In the game, Aya Brea is blonde and nubile, lacking in the impractical adornments and accessories in Tetsuya Nomura’s signature anime cyberpunk art style. Sporting an unassuming wardrobe of denim and blacks, it’s no stretch that Aya shops from the cool, understated cuts of the Victoria Beckham brand – the black and navy look is a modern interpolation of her opera incident dress, shifting the suggestive thigh slit to a flirty decolletage. Antagonist Eve dons a floral jacket, subtle reminiscences of Alexander McQueen and Christopher Kane, and a beautiful arrow pointing at to her biochemical abilities. It’s a pharmacological horror story, apparently worth over $200 in lightly used paperback format.

For the fellow creatives and artisans searching for mood music, check out and create to an extended version of Yoko Shimomura’s “Out Of Phase”. It soundtracks the story’s Manhattan police department, and is a moody, R&B jingle, encapsulating the bio-mystery of Parasite Eve.

Additional reading:

“How Parasite Eve Was A Step In (Social) Evolution” by Shanna Wynn-Sheriffs, for Sprites and Dices

“20 Years Later, I’m Still Thinking About The Bouncer” by Chingy Nea, for Kotaku.com

“Victoria Beckham Fall 2021 Ready-to-Wear” by Andres Christian Manders, for Vogue.com