Walk Walk Fashion Baby

Musings on Skyward Sword Impa's Design

My first thought upon seeing Impa was, eloquently: god I want her gender.

Skyward Sword Impa's character design is undeniably fantastic. Even those who don't like either the game or her character have to admit that her design is striking and memorable. There is a reason Hyrule Warriors blatantly based their Impa design on Skyward Sword Impa's, why BOTW's Impa design utilizes SKSW Impa's Sheikah Eye face paint, and why so many fans base their Impa OCs on her too. Everything from her noodle-like limbs to her inexplicably fashionable onesie to her wildly nonsensical hairstyle captures the hearts of all who see her. Or me, at least. Enough so that I'll be rambling about it even though I'm not an artist.

This ramble will consist of the following 'chapters':

What Is Up With Impa's Hair?

Impa's hair looks really cool and makes absolutely no logical sense.

First: let's get some establishing shots. For this, I played with the model I found on the spriters resource.

Close-up of the back of Impa's head. Hair tapers off in a V at her neck.

Side view. Close-up on her long lock of hair.

Side view. Shows side without braid. Hair looks to be pulled back.

Front view. Shows her hair is pulled back, the middle sectioned out.

Also, because the model didn't have a good image of her front lock, here's a reference image courtesy of shrubbynerb on deviantart.

Side view showing Impa's braid, which almost reaches her hips.

From these images, we can tell that Impa's hair is short, except for the one long front lock, held together by three red hair bands. However, at the same time, the texture of her hair makes it look as if her hair is pulled back by something. If you are anything like me, your first thought was that it was being pulled into her one front lock. But no; the texture of her hair clearly shows that it's being pulled toward the back, not the front. This is especially prominent in the front view, which clearly shows a 'slicked back' middle section, and the first side view, which shows that the front lock seems to be hanging over the rest of the hair, which is pulled toward her back. So what is it being pulled toward?

Nothing. Zip. Nada. Her hair is too short at the back to be pulled into a ponytail or braid, and there do not appear to be hairclips holding her hair down. So how is it staying back, then? Hair gel? Did they have ancient Sheikah hair gel? Technically possible, considering the fact that the LOZ franchise loves its anachronysms, but personally, I am rather skeptical.

Probably, Impa was less designed with in-universe practicality and mind, and more with aesthetics. If we want her hair to make sense, however, what are our options?

First and most obviously: hairclips. There's very thin ones that are almost invisible when you slide them into your hair, which sit tightly against the scalp and work pretty well. Like all hairclips they do loosen over time, but since we're assuming Impa also somehow had access to make-up during the apocalypse, we can suspend our disbelief and assume she had access to unlimited hairclips as well. Hylia's blessing, I'm sure.

Second, and my personal preference: ignoring the hair texture and saying she has a buzzed head, with only the one lock of hair being long. This is my preference because I like buzzed hair. Baldness looks cool and you can fight me on this.

Third, we have the ever-classic undercut. Impa already looks like she's going to the pride parade, might as well give her the classic queer undercut. This also requires ignoring hair texture, except only the sidez would be buzzed. The top would still be longer, and probably need to be secured by hairclips. This would probably look less silly than a full buzzcut with the long lock, but undercuts are kind of annoying to maintain, honestly. If your buzzcut gets too long, you just look like you have short hair. If your undercut gets too long, you look like you forgot to trim your undercut. Which you did. So it's probably not the most practical hairstyle for a fashion icon surviving the apocalypse.

Conclusion: it's probably hairclips but in my heart it's a buzzcut.

Loftwing Feathers?

From her belt Impa has several long