"I'm thinking bracers instead of gauntlets, and you can try making the belt wider, maybe three inches, under your ribs and over your hips but otherwise pretty broad, hugging your contours. Slowly, pay attention to the effect of each change."

"Right."

Okay, then. Belt moves up and widens, the color pattern and tooling extending with it. It's widest in the front, a gentle curve. Just high enough that it's not blocking the red patterning near her shirt hem. Then, she tightens it to those contours. "Maybe a ruby on the belt?" She doesn't add one immediately, though.

Once she feels out the magic's response to the belt, she tries the bracers in the same style and pattern of leather - on her forearms, giving them a slightly pointed front and some gold fake-fasteners. No lacing or seams - just a solid band of patterned and tooled leather.

The magic is tentatively okay with the belt and likes the bracers. "You could," her stylist says, "if you want to add rubies to all the matching items."

"More rubies on everything helped some with the full ensemble earlier. Belt is only slightly good, bracers are pretty good! So, all the matching items is everything in leather - bracers, boots, belt?"

"That's right. It tightens the theme. You could try to make something into a statement - that's a technical term for a piece that isn't part of a motif - but the belt's the obvious candidate for it and it wasn't enthusiastic about the belt, so maybe not."

"I think the design on the shirt is kind of weak right now. When I first did it, it helped, but just a little bit. If something's gonna be a statement, maybe something around there? What about a sort of short coat, the kind that just does, like, shoulders and upper torso? I don't remember seeing much of anyone with a coat, though, so probably not? I'm going to try rubies on all the leather, anyway..."

She does that, lines of rubies framed in gold on all three items, a large rectangular-cut one on the center of the belt.

That's a slight improvement.

"Bolero jacket?" he says. "You might see more coats in winter. You could add a bolero that didn't cover your bracers; I think you don't wanna cover your bracers."

"I don't know the words for a lot of fashion stuff, you know. This is what I mean-"

What she was picturing is indeed a bolero jacket. Velvety texture, the correct shade of red, short sleeved, only going halfway down her back and not closed in the front. No fancy designs or patterns on her first try of it.

Weak negative. "I'm not sure about the velvet."

"Yeah, it didn't like that. But is it the velvet, or the jacket..."

She tries turning it to the same generic fabric her undershirt is, then shiny silk, to see if either of those work better.

The generic fabric makes it less bad; the silk is worse again, though not as bad as velvet.

She poofs away the jacket. "None of those worked. What kind of things get used as statements?"

"Usually, central things - crowns, belts, necklaces, brooches. Some people do paired things, but it's a little harder."

"I could see a brooch working, maybe. I had a big central gems-and-pearlescence thing on the armor."

She tries creating a brooch, attached to the center of the shirt just above her chest, heavily based on the giant trillion cut ruby and surrounding gold-rubies-diamonds-colored pearlescence that was in the center of her armor.

The magic likes this all right.

"That's alright, not great. Maybe if I shape it like the earrings and tooling. But then it's sorta joining the motif, not a statement, but whatever..."

She tries feather-izing the shape.

It likes that more.

"Yeah, that's better. I guess it wasn't a statement. Oh, I just remembered, this helped before-"

Since she's no longer wearing gloves that cover up her fingernails, she can apply the same glossy red and little yellow feather designs on each of them that gave her a little boost when she tried it at the first club meeting.

"Anything else that sticks out to you?"

The fingernail ornaments are good.

"I'm reluctant to suggest it because of your stardarters, but you're a little ketchup-and-mustard and I'd take them both a shade toward brown if I were you, see if that helps."

"I can get a new 'darter if I really have to, color suggestions are welcome."

...Is it tedious to adjust all the red on her, one thing at a time, or can she sort of mentally grab everything and do it all at once?

She can do it more or less one perspective at a time, then rotate her starscape image to get the other sides.

Pretty convenient. Okay, a few notches towards brown, first on the red, then on the yellow too.

This hurts until she's finished the color, then snaps back up and then some.

"Yeah, the new colors are better. Cool. I'll probably end up playing with shades a lot back home, and then get a new 'darter once I settle on one. I can even add a little feather emblem on the new one, that'll probably help too, motif and all."

"Legit," he says. "Did you invent the emblem from scratch or did you see it somewhere?"