How to pick a cape that suits your skin

Most capes look wrong on most skins, and it is rarely the cape's fault - it is that nothing in it repeats anything in the character. Two colours in common is usually enough to make a cape read as part of the outfit. Here is how to find them deliberately instead of scrolling until something clicks.

5 steps · about 15 minutes

1. Name the three colours your skin actually uses

   Not every colour in the file - the three that carry it. Usually a hair colour, a top colour and one accent. Open your skin in the editor and use the eyedropper if you cannot tell by eye.

2. Choose which one the cape should repeat

   The accent, nearly always. Repeating the top colour makes the cape vanish into the body; repeating the hair pulls attention upward. The accent is the colour with the least surface area on the skin, which is exactly why a large panel of it balances.

3. Search that colour, not that theme

   Search the catalogue for the colour word rather than the subject - "purple" turns up capes you would never have opened by name, and colour is what does the work here.

4. Try it before you commit

   Load your skin into the try-on tool and drop candidates onto it. Turn the model - a cape that reads well from behind can fight the arms from the side.

   Cape pages have a "Try it on your skin" button that opens the tool with that cape already loaded.

5. Check the silhouette, not just the colour

   Stand the model still and squint. If the cape's shape blurs into the body you have a match; if it reads as a rectangle stuck on a person, the values are too far apart - go back and pick the darker of your three colours.