Dressed for the pier
"Can we get a pimp cane and hat for the gull?" That was the whole request, from a player looking at the Trident Exchange. Four items went in today, because once the hat existed the rest of the outfit was hard to leave alone.
The feathered fedora costs 35 tridents: wide brim, dark band, a red plume tucked into the band on the left. The gentleman's cane costs 30 and is worn diagonally across the bird's back, gold knob up by the shoulder, two straps holding it flat. The velvet coat costs 35 and wraps the body, gold at the collar, down the front and around the hem. The dollar medallion costs 45 and hangs on the chest.
Every one of them sits in its own slot, so the full outfit is worn at once rather than one piece at a time. That is the whole reason the coat is not simply another back item.
Why there are no sleeves and no brocade
A gull's wings are rigged as arms. Each one runs clavicle, upper arm, forearm, hand, then twelve feather bones, and across a single flap those bones swing through 90 to 100 degrees. Anything parented to a wing goes around with it, so a sleeve would tear through the bird on every downstroke. The spine is the opposite: its rotation in the flying clip matches the folded-wing pose to the last decimal place, so a prop mounted there does not move at all. Cane and coat both live on that bone.
The reference photo the request came with has crushed velvet, gold brocade and a leopard shirt. All three are textures, and this bird cannot take one: its two wings share a single patch of texture byte for byte, and the patches for head, body and legs overlap, so anything painted into that atlas bleeds onto parts of the bird it was never meant to touch. That is the same limit that keeps plumage a tint rather than a pattern.
So the gold is geometry instead of pattern. The collar, the placket down the front, the hem and the medallion are all real shapes, and at the distance you actually see another pilot they read the way the brocade does in the photo.
Fit
The coat is cut a little narrower than the folded wing. Standing on a post the bird's wing lies over it; in the air the coat is out in the open. The tail and the legs stay clear of it, which is what a coat does anyway.
The classic box gull wears a squared-off version of the same coat. A rounded one either cuts a lens through the corners of a body made of boxes or swallows the bird entirely, and neither is worth shipping.
A word on the prices. Tridents are slow to earn and the largest balance on the site today is 36, so the full outfit is a few weeks of catches rather than an afternoon. Each piece stands on its own until then.
All four are under Wardrobe at /my/exchange. Hover a row and the portrait puts the item on your bird before you spend anything.