On Final Fantasy X: The Vibrant Fashions of Spira. (Part 1: The People of Spira)
The world of Spira is one of the most memorable and diverse within the Final Fantasy canon due to its fashions and cultures, but what makes them resonate? In this two-part essay, we will explore the cultures of Spira through their fashions, shining a light on the artistic intent that led to one of Final Fantasy’s most memorable worlds.
All of the peoples of Spira, be they human or otherwise, possess unique qualities to their dress that make them identifiable as different cultures. This is something that we note in reality too, with traditional Japanese dress being very clearly different from aboriginal Australian dress which differs again from that of sub-continental India. This of course is harder to achieve in a video game where the amount of assets and polygons is strictly limited and the wide variety of outfits worn by every individual human is much harder to replicate due to memory allocation concerns. That being said, Final Fantasy X, Square Enix’s first entry in the long-running series on the newly minted PS2, excelled at creating a believable fantasy world.
The Guado
The Guado are a race akin to elves, incorporating natural elements into their clothing. Gentle colours one would see in the surrounds of Guadosalam appear in their clothing, emulating the colour schematic of the Moonflow and Farplane with which they are most commonly associated. The Guado expose little skin, with the exception of Maester Seymour, a half-human hybrid.
This heavily clothed aesthetic stands in stark contrast to their highly naturalistic elements such as their hair that appears to be akin to the texture and shape of branches or roots more than regular hair, along with their extremely long hands and arms. These features appear more human when clothed and are perhaps a result of their new association with the church of Yevon, whose assimilation of the Guado is fairly recent in their history. It would have been fascinating to see the dress and aesthetic of the Guado before Yevon’s influence.
The hands of the Guado are exceptionally large, a detail of high significance to their role in the narrative. Large hands are associated with generosity but also with manipulation and control. The Guado are seen as a gracious host in the party’s visit to Guadosalam and also seen as extremely manipulative political figures in their attack on the Al-Bhed’s Home on Bikanel Island, a battle waged exclusively by the Guado and their summoned fiends from the perspective of the player.
The Guado wear earthy tones as previously mentioned but they also commonly wear very dark colours such as the deep nightshade purple worn by their warriors and the dull grey worn by their Blitzball team. Grey is often used to symbolise neutrality but also carries a symbological association with loss, which I believe is highlighting the cultural loss of the Guado at the hands of the Church of Yevon. Seymour’s aide, Tromell Guado, as well as Seymour’s father Jyscal Guado, both wear significantly more vibrant colours than Seymour and the warrior / blitzballer Guado. This suggests that their society is shifting toward a more opaque / less colourful culture. This small detail suggests that the influence of Yevon’s death worship seems to be sapping the life and colour from them and moving them closer toward the colours associated with nihilism, death or the absence of life.
The Al-Bhed
One of the most fascinating factions within Final Fantasy X, the Al-Bhed are a semi-nomadic race whose ancestral home resides within the deserts of Bikanel Island. Most spend their lives scraping together a living primarily from marine salvage and mechanical work. As a reflection of this, we see the Al-Bhed wearing a variety of goggles and gas masks that serve to cover their eyes during these tasks but also to cover their genetic identifier, a spiral pattern in their iris. Due to the prominence of goggles and eye coverings amongst other populations of Spira, the goggles and masks serve as an effective disguise against the Yevonites who persecute them. Yevon’s own warrior monks and crusaders wear eye coverings and utilise similar varieties of forbidden machina, after all.
Their clothing mostly consists of three styles. Loose, baggy coverings & jumpsuits, tight-fitting vests & wetsuits and a host of revealing outfits to keep cool (and if we’re being honest, inject a little fanservice). Though they may share some features with the other factions and peoples of Spira, the Al-Bhed are distinct enough to immediately recognise, if not by their clothing, then most certainly by their language.
The Al-Bhed are in many ways the polar opposite of Yevon, and this is most clear in their clothing. More on this point in the Yevon section below.
The Ronso
A bestial race significantly larger than humans and cloaked in thick fur, the Ronso are the most striking of Spira’s denizens. Their clothing is noticeably sparse, reflecting their hardy natures and pugnacious attitudes. Protruding from the forehead of every male Ronso is a mighty horn, a design element that is stressed as being important to their status within the society, a status that is stripped from our party member Kimahri by rivals Biran and Yenke.
The horn represents strength, resilience, authority and power to the Ronso. It is a source of great pride to have a large horn, serving as a phallic image of masculinity and virility for the males. This point is emphasised between Kimahri’s rivalry with Biran and Yenke, Kimahri having lost a duel with Biran and refusing to admit it, leading to Biran removing Kimahri’s horn, the equivalent of castrating him within Ronso society. When passing through their ancestral home Mount Gagazet they offer to honour Yuna by building a statue of her endowed with a mighty horn you can visit this statue in the sequel X-2, a great honour indeed! (This is also a reference to the earlier designs of the Summoner class in Final Fantasy games that also bear a single horn.)
The clothing that the Ronso do wear is more often than not for cultural or combat significance with various armour pieces around the calf, shoulder and forearm being worn. Their armour is a key part of their aesthetic and highlights their strength and readiness. Many Ronso speak of their reverence for Mt Gagazet as the horn of Spira; located at the north (head) of the continent and the tallest mountain in Spira giving it a religious significance akin to that of the Kami Mount Fuji in Japanese Shintoism. Their scarce dress only serves to highlight their resilience and strength.
An important note is that the most clothed Ronso of all Ronso is Kelk Ronso, their leader and Maester of Yevon. It’s no coincidence that Kelk is the most heavily clothed, mimicking the heavily clothed nature of the followers of Yevon that was passed on to the Guado as well. When we look at the opposition of Yevon, the Al-Bhed, they often wear very little in striking reflection of this. The Ronso, who rebel against Yevon in defence of Yuna and her guardians, are the most exposed of all the Yevon factions, drawing a similar line between the Ronso and Yevon as the Al-Bhed aesthetically speaking. The followers of Yevon are concealed beneath their clothes, hidden like the terrible truth of their death-worshipping cult.
Humans
Each settlement in Spira has its own distinct style. Besaid, Kilika, Luca and Bilkanel all have subtle variations on similar clothing, with Luca using more purples than Besaid who in turn use more yellow and Kilika who use more green. This is best observed by their Blitzball teams who act as representatives or ambassadors of their people.
Each people group has a unique element to their dress that makes them memorable and more importantly identifiable, especially considering the model and asset reuse necessary to fit a game of this scope onto the PlayStation 2. This is all the more impressive given the game’s early release in the console’s life cycle.
Changing the colour of a location or theming a region after a single colour has long been a well-established strategy for marking progress for the player (2018’s Gris & 1998’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time are strong examples). In Final Fantasy X the same effect is used in a more subtle manner, but still very much present.
Yevon
Yevon’s priests and warrior monks are a contradiction in clothing and one of the best design decisions made by the art team of FFX. Let's begin with the priests.
The priests of Yevon are dressed in a similar fashion to that of a catholic priest with full-length robes that cover (conceal) their entire body (the body being the truth of Yevon’s death worship). The body spiritual of Yevon depends on its concealment of the truth of the spiral of death that perpetuates their dominion over Spira, and as such their priests wear heavy robes to mimic that concealment subconsciously. As touched on earlier, Kelk Ronso, whose people usually wear little, is heavily clothed in his service of Yevon. The higher Kelk ascended through the ranks, the heavier the concealment of his body, leading to him becoming the most heavily clothed of all Ronso and closest to the deception of Yevon.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we see the summoner Donna, who wears very little. Donna’s faith is shaken after the events of Bikanel Island and witnessing the atrocities of the Guado in service of Yevon. She and her partner Barthello are two of the most naked and exposed characters in Spira and question their dedication to their pilgrimage and thus their faith aboard the Fahrenheit in an optional dialogue scene. This suggests that those who are exposed or less clothed are able to see more clearly the contradictions and flaws within Yevon’s ideology.
It is at this point that one may question this and think: “Hang on, Yunalesca is strongly associated with Yevon and is entirely naked!” And to that, I counter: Is Yunalesca really associated with Yevon at all anymore? She exists in isolation, within an astral plane beyond the reach of society, within a sort of purgatory. The Ronso of Gagazet are the northernest settlement of Spira and beyond lies the ruins of Zanarkand, filled with some of the most powerful fiends in Spira. There can be no doubt that the clergy of Yevon have no contact whatsoever with Yunalesca, even though they are familiar with her role and presence there.
Yunalesca’s nakedness reflects her innocence in the spiral of death that plagues Spira. Her role is to bestow the final Aeon, something she knows to be wholly good and pure. She is entirely unaware of the cycle of death her actions perpetuate and could be considered a victim of the church of Yevon rather than a perpetrator, her innocence being used to extend their power beyond any normally achievable limits. After all, outside of the salient of Bikanel, Yevon control all of Spira, and even then we see them destroy that lone resistance in an act of what can only be called genocide.
The warrior monks of Yevon stand in glorious contradiction, standing clad in armour over full dress and even using the very same machina that they persecute the Al-Bhed for using. This is not where their parody of the Al-Bhed ends however as previously mentioned the warrior monks use a similar eye-covering as the Al-Bhed as though they are willingly blind to the contradiction Yevon perpetuates. This blindness to corruption is perhaps most obvious in the Warrior Monk enemies within Zanarkand at the end of the game, with these enemies resurrected from death and a fog around their eyes created by the Zombie~ status effect this enemy type bears.
Many of the Crusaders follow this theme of blindness to corruption as well with their eyes covered, even though they are technically excommunicated, their faith in Yevon holds firm despite their knowledge of its failures. The resemblance between the Crusaders and Al-Bhed is most clear at Operation Mi-ihen where the masked crusaders fight alongside the goggled Al-Bhed. It is important to note that the term Al-Bhed comes from the alchemic Albedo, the second stage that represents reflection. The Al-Bhed reflect the blindness of Yevon with their own eye coverings, though they do so for entirely different reasons.
Demi-humans
Officially designated ‘Demi-humans’ in Ultimania Vol 3, this liquorice assortment of friendly shapes screams Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy franchise, who has always been an advocate of the more cartoonish designs in the series’ history. This is most evident in the caricature-esque designs of Final Fantasy IX, a response from Sakaguchi that he felt after VIII the series was becoming ‘too serious’. These designs would feel right at home in IX in fact and may have been unused designs from that project. Their designs appear to be purely for levity’s sake as there is no town, commune or alternative costumed variants of the Demi-humans above we see in the game.
The Hypello are the only variant we spend any amount of time with as they conduct the Shoopuf ferry across the Moonflow. They are known to be lazy by nature with little ambition or desire to integrate with the other races of Spira. Despite being naturally adept swimmers, they display no interest in Blitzball and are the only defined race to not have a team representing them in the game. They all appear to be dressed identically as well, likely due to space concerns and their unimportant role in the game.
The remaining 4 variants of Demi-human are seen only at certain locations around Spira and are never voiced, with all dialogue appearing in text format only. All of the Demi-humans appear to have human-level cognition and cultural roots and all bear animalistic qualities in their designs. Three of the four are seen playing music on instruments that all appear to be part of their costumes. This suggests a certain frivolity and musicality to their culture, though this is mere speculation.
This may also be a possible reference to Xenogears, a previous Square game, that uses Demi-humans with similarly anthropomorphised animal-human hybrids. Although there are no other links between these two games it is somewhat uncanny that both games published by the same company only 3 years apart have an anthropomorphized species called Demi-humans. Despite only serving a minute role in the world of Spira, I find them extremely charming and would be remised not to mention them.
Thus concludes part 1 in our analysis of the clothing of the denizens of Spira. In part 2 we will explore the main characters in greater depth and see how their clothing reflects the themes and narrative ideas at play with Yuna’s party and other prominent figures of Final Fantasy X.
Sincerely,
Blake Walden.
