The Decade’s Finest RPG Is Now A Fashion House Serving Looks

The world of Disco Elysium is at times an apt satire on our capitalistic times, a punk rendition of a once-obscure Estonian novel, and an amnesiac fever dream of an RPG. At turns, it seems to predict the current games of the year, European in aesthetics, byzantine and wandering in flowy artistic nature. Were it not for its number of controversies and studio troubles over the years, the chorus of people clamoring for more Disco would likely be much louder. Still, one of the things to carry on from the game and remember for years to come is none-other-than game detective Kim Kitsuragi’s iconic orange bomber jacket.

What drew me to Disco Elysium from the start was the fashion, when I went to a journalists’ karaoke and saw a colleague in the industry wearing that very jacket from the game, and thinking it looked superb. I became resolute I had to play the game one day. This garment, as it turns out, was also the start of the game developer ZA/UM’s fashion-forward Atelier, headed by Kristiina Ago.

In her first-ever interview, Ago tells Inverse she was hired on to potentially make game T-shirts and bring Kim’s jacket to the real world, but they couldn’t find a partner to manufacture a high quality and durable piece.

“We decided to take a risk and try to do it ourselves,” Ago says. The making of the jacket, intriguingly, meant betraying the original drawing’s crop top specifications, and lengthening it to be more wearable, according to Ago.

Disco Elysium as a fashion house of sorts, moving beyond the game’s limited Act 3 and lack of plans for a sequel, has expanded into a series of jackets, prints, and even kimonos. A limited collection of 50 “Thought Cabinet” jackets to be prepared by late January will be donated to the Köler Prize, an award organized by the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia. The Atelier has also expanded into making clothes for other games, like 2025’s The Alters, featuring hot pink, and a lamb-shaped handbag.

While the Thought Cabinet jackets are still being prepared, Inverse got to try out the Lilik-Hiriadi Death Cloak, a one-sized print that fabulously drapes over a velvet body, and comes with its own lore and haunting imagery. The cloak fans out to the sides, giving everyone a good look at the game’s artwork.

“When people think ‘Oh, it’s something from a video game, they think maybe it’s very over-the-top… But for us, we’ve always wanted to create something you could wear it in an everyday setting and it doesn’t feel like too much of a costume.”

When I first received the cloak in the mail, I was quite surprised by how large the sleeves fanned out, and rather unsure of how I would style this into an outfit. (This cloak is unisex, so for someone with even broader shoulders, it would drape like a normal jacket instead of the oversized look I had.) Still over the next few days, as I prepared to attend awards shows, and even a recreational cooking class calling for comfy, loose-fitting clothes, I realized the cloak was a lot more versatile than I had first imagined. It can be slung over any assortment of pants or dresses, for varying effects.

Although the print was quite eye-catching and the art quite mesmerizingly morbid upon examination, I was able to wear this cloak to a New York ballet performance and a Caribbean restaurant and still feel appropriately dressed for the occasions. Despite its unfamiliar shape and strange patterns, the garment simply marked me as fashion-forward, rather than nerdy or another unpleasant gamer stereotype.

“When people think ‘Oh, it’s something from a video game, they think maybe it’s very over-the-top,’” Ago says, “But for us, we’ve always wanted to create something you could wear it in an everyday setting and it doesn’t feel like too much of a costume.”

In fact, one of my artist friends who doesn’t play any games at all, could not help but continuously exclaim about the quality and style of this outfit and wonder where I got it. That is, I received a very different reaction than if I had walked around in my Renaissance Faire getup, an old-fashioned milkmaid’s dress, and looked out of place and time. For artist events around New York, the strange yet familiar elements of the Death Cloak unexpectedly look right at home (and there’s the added satisfaction of admitting, yes, this is actually from a video game).

Details, details

For those who haven’t played Disco, describing it is a bit difficult. You play a cop with a substance abuse problem who can barely recall who he is, mired in self-hatred and loathsome thoughts, but attempting one last mission to redeem himself and the industrial, post-revolutionary city of Revachol. The demons, ghosts, and other surrealist creatures that have become part of Disco fashion likely represent the insecurities and internal dilemmas of the protagonist.

The cloak’s website description and clothing tag evokes the game’s writing, being witty, and often purposefully filled with meaningless jargon, and yet somehow scarily resonant. It reads: “The designer (a known pyrholidon addict) claims it possesses ‘extraphysical, psychological effects.’ The fabric is covered in Death Head’s Moth Sprawl — a *horror vacui* pattern perfected by Semenese-Revacholian artists in the Twenties. For some reason, it reminds you of your thoughts.” In other words, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But for a very specific niche, this cloak might feel like the perfect companion. Like the game, the cloak is a statement on society, remarking upon what sort of role art plays in it.

“I don’t know if people can see it when they look at the garments, but the inside of the garment is almost as important for us than the outside,” Ago says, “We do put a lot of details in to see that the finishing is done really well, and that the labels are interesting. We try to hide some skills. Every garment has its own little link to the game.”

The cloak claims to grant me these stats, which make more sense if you play the game:

+1 Inland Empire: We are each other

+1 Behaviorism: A mesmerizing abyss

The clothes are still made in Estonia for quality control purposes, Ago says. The fabric is couture jacquard and hand-printed.

“It is a piece of art, the fabric itself,” Ago says. “It has three layers of hand-printed screen printing on it. So, like the other prints we do, it has a museum-like quality to it.”

Browsing through the ZA/UM website a few years ago, I was tempted to buy Kim’s jacket but ultimately held off. What was further tempting me were the discounts offered on pieces that contained just one or two defects. I had not seen this approach to selling clothes before: a willingness to share an unfinished work of art, despite conventional market practices.

“Because we are such a small company, we still don’t throw away any of the fabrics. We keep even the leftover rolls,” Ago explains, “For most of the products, the lead time is usually a month. Because we are so small and we don’t want to over produce things. So we’re very conscious of not leaving lots of waste around.”

From the slowly growing Atelier collection to brands like Fenty Beauty or Charlotte Tilbury working with Arcane and Genshin Impact, to Hideo Kojima’s collaboration with GU to make crooked shirts, the world of gaming and fashion and beauty is constantly combining in fantastical, surreal ways. And the Atelier has many undisclosed plans up ahead, including for ZA/UM’s next game, and potentially with other developers’ titles, too, to translate video game art into clothes people can actually wear.

“We try to do weird, different things,” Ago says, mentioning the recent Paris fashion capsule items, “Looking at them on paper, first, we were like, ‘Oh, it’s a bit weird.” They were maybe far from the game, but inspired by them and unique for us.”