It takes a certain type of person to walk out of the house wearing what Shalua wears. This person would have to be bold, on their way to a cosplay convention, or blind in both eyes. Shalua has no excuse.
It’s actually hard to analyze just what’s going on here. Why did she think wearing this would be a good idea? From the picture, you can almost sense uneasiness in her face. That’s because even she doesn’t know what she’s wearing. She’s trying to cover up as much as she can with her arms. Why not just keep the lab coat on? In fact, why does she even have a lab coat if she just drapes it along her shoulders? She insists upon wearing two pieces of garment that she taped together?
Look at the materials on her tank top. Half of it black glossy pleather, the alternating side is a purple velvet. Why are they together? She obviously likes both, but couldn’t decide what to wear. So she wore both. Yet instead of wearing velvet over pleather, she stitched, taped and stapled one on top of the other. Same goes for the mini-skirt, which drapes the velvet over pleather. But the skirt works on it’s own. Why put purple streamers over it? Shalua makes her own clothes, but probably can’t see how awful these two work together.
I would say this was a conscious design, referring to the fact that Shalua is also a franken-creation. She has a mechanical arm and a ton of other implants in her body. But why would she want to remind herself painful nature? Maybe she stripped her clothes away because her humanity slowly feels stripped away. Only, not even a stripper would wear this.
But even worst is a greenish-blue bra underneath the franken-top. Already you can see it looks cleaner, and would actually work well with the lab coat. The color repeats in her high heel shoes, and two crisscrossing straps. These straps connect a ribbon of velvet to her leather skirt. But if you need a place to connect one material to another, you shouldn’t design clothes.
So this only begs the question: why would anyone wear this? Many cosplayers might want to wear this for an event, but Shalua isn’t a cosplayer. She’s a scientist for an organization. Final Fantasy VII’s world’s in a bit of a post-apocalyptic state. Perhaps her employer Reeve won’t mind that she doesn’t follow the dress code. But why this?