[M Lankin]

Hello everyone. Lately I've been looking into this game called Bloodborne, and it has some really cool looking outfits in it. What I would like to know is what inspired these outfits. It looks a bit like 17th or 18th century for me. The hat is something I can't pinpoint though. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Houston P.]

My initial impression when I saw that first picture was it looks exceptionally similar to Windlass' French highwayman outfit. http://www.museumreplicas.com/p-362-french-highwayman-coat.aspx The hat looks kind of like they took a tricorn hat and beat it up really bad... Anyway, hope that helps some.

[Jeremy V. Krause]

I wouldn't be so hopeful as to think that video game developers look extensively into historical basis for their accoutrements.

Mostly games seem to draw from movies and a kind of historical-espue direction.

There is a game coming out soon enough called Kingdom Come: Deliverance- that seems to sort of, draw from history- which is neat to see.

[Mikko Kuusirati]

Well, you show two different outfits with two different hats, there.

By and large the style seems to take inspiration from 18th and 19th Century fashion but with a strong modern faux-Victorian, gothic horror twist on everything. Look at, for example, the movie Le Pacte des Loups for a similar aesthetic with less of a fantastic bent.

Both outfits could reasonably be described as greatcoats with tricorne hats. The double-breasted coat is perhaps more Napoleonic, the open coat with the large cape more Victorian in style. One of the hats is a perfectly ordinary tricorne, a style of broad-brimmed hat with the brim folded up and fixed to the crown at three points, very popular all throughout the 18th Century; you've likely seen them in pirate movies if nowhere else. The other looks like a badly beat up tricorne with the back of the brim torn off, possibly in loose imitation of the feathered cap of Errol Flynn's Robin Hood (or Disney's Peter Pan)...

[Lafayette C Curtis]

The greatcoat seems to be a hugely dramatised ripoff of something like this: http://jas-townsend.com/greatcoat-p-747.html

Which is a pity. It's not as if the 18th century lacked really dramatic wardrobe items like the multi-caped coachman's greatcoat. Some of the variatons are shown here: http://www.nwta.com/courier/11-96/watchcoats.html

[Mark Griffin]

My vote goes to Brotherhood of the Wolf, a rather fab film if you like your costume reality a bit augmented. Mentioned above in the original French of course.