Tetsuya Nomura’s designs embraced Y2K fashion and never let go

polygon.com:

Over the past three decades, Tetsuya Nomura has become an immediately recognizable name thanks, in part, to his contributions to the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series. Nomura isn’t just known as a game designer and director — he’s also famous, and sometimes infamous, for his fashion designs. His works have given the gaming scene standout protagonists and ensemble casts wearing a plethora of belts and zippers. These outlandish outfits tend to have something in common: They’re inspired by real-life street fashion trends.

In 1997, with Final Fantasy VII, Tetsuya Nomura created some of his most famous character designs to date. But it wasn’t until Final Fantasy VIII and The Bouncer, released in 1999 and 2000 respectively, that the influence of real-life trends became undeniable in Nomura’s work. One of Square’s lesser-known titles, The Bouncer was chock-full of eclectic character designs; the PlayStation 2 beat-’em-up remains one of Nomura’s standout projects, at least from a fashion point of view. It propelled players into the modern city of Edge, populated by people dressed in some of the strangest and most popular fashion trends of the early 2000s: high-waisted camo pants, cropped leather jackets, and oversized yellow jumpers scrawled over with “gothic” text.

In a 2000 interview with IGN about The Bouncer, Nomura disclosed his inspiration for the game’s character designs, and the answer was surprisingly simple: “Basically, most of my ideas come from movies and magazines, or I just create them in my head.” Nomura’s mix of real-life trends and his own imagination in The Bouncer results in some of his most visually striking work, like Volt Krueger’s infamous denim jeans and Kou Leifoh’s faux tribal tattoos and