How Video Game Characters Inspire Real-Life Fashion

Gaming and fashion—here are two words you don’t often think of together. Well, time to think again: the gamer profile is no longer associated with a nerdy kid, obsessed about IT stuff and in love with comfy hoodies and indie T-shirts. Instead, nowadays, gamers encompass a much wider and much more diverse group of people across many platforms. From classic console games to multiplayer games and online slots, games have evolved into a cultural movement that has broken the narrow borders of technological marvel and is now influencing other major sectors—fashion included.

fashion turns to gaming for inspiration. The fashion industry does draw inspiration from all sorts of places and there is an added bonus in having an already established pool of consumers who are extremely excited for the opportunity to wear clothing tailored after their favourite video and slot game characters. Sounds like a win-win for everyone involved, and this is why fashion designers have for years now turned to partnering up with game developers to launch dedicated clothing lines. Australian company Living Dead has recently developed a female clothing line based on the popular video game Bioshock.

Other, not so futuristic yet incredibly iconic video games like Lord of the Rings and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, titles that have expanded beyond their humble beginnings to have dedicated slot themes on the best mobile slot sites—which only serves to prove their immense popularity across different types of gamers—have served as a source of inspiration for fashion advice. This hardly comes as a surprise: LOTR is set in places that differ widely in their clothing style, ranging from the playful, laidback, 18th-century English countryside look of the Shire to the awe-inspiring, elegant, Art Nouveau dressing habits of the Elves. As for Lara Croft, after going from video game icon to feature on mobile and slot games, she has recently seen a reboot of her film series, starring Alicia Vikander and set to premiere in 2018; her revisited clothing style in the film landed her an article on Vogue, discussing her outfit choices and analysing the underlying theme.

celebrities’ clothing choices mirror beloved video game characters. Meanwhile, fashion icons turn to the looks highlighted in popular video games to make a statement—like Zayn Malik, who managed to become the focus of a Vogue editorial alongside Gigi Hadid and also made it to the cover of the New York Post for his black Versace suit adorned with bionic chrome arms he designed himself. The former One Direction signer, who wore the suit to the 2016 Met Gala, the annual—and tremendously elite—fashion industry pilgrimage organised by Vogue’s Anna Wintour, said that Donatella Versace let him design his outfit and that he actually based it on Jax, a character from the Mortal Kombat video game series that has also inspired arcade games, slot machines, and a movie.

Celebrities in general seem to be intuitively drawn to fashion inspired by gaming icons—including Kim Kardashian donning a Star Wars-y silver dress (the multi-billion franchise that features the hit film series and an array of video games, from first-person shooter to online slots), Emma Stone channelling Soul Calibur’s Sophitia and Nikki Minaj mirroring Lulu from Final Fantasy X. Cosplayers and avid gamers obviously captivated by fashion pointed out these probably inadvertent tributes to the gaming world also took place during last year’s Met Gala—but whether intentional or not, these outfit choices highlight the influence of the gaming industry on contemporary fashion designers.

After all, fashion design and game developing are both forms of art highly invested in their esthetics; as such, they might make somewhat surprising, but not that strange bedfellows. It seems that there is more to this partnership than meets the eye.