All of the characters in Final Fantasy look pretty...unique. With the spikey hair styles, distinctive clothing, and of course the whole facial difference. So you gotta wonder how they came up with the 'look' for each character. I was looking through a few final fantasy sites when I ran across a page comparing Squall with a Japanese singer, Gackt Camui. So I looked a little deeper into the matter, and found some good pictures to compare him to Squall. There's definately a resemblance here. I'm assuming they might have taken alot from Gackt's look because he's a popular J-Pop artist, especially with the girls. And YES, that is a man. He's just....bishounen. (Bishounen means literally 'Beautiful Boy' in reference to being more feminine looking)

Lets look at Squall's hair first. A kind of medium brown with windswept spikes that hang down partially in his face.
I'd say it's pretty similar to Gackt's hair in this shot. Gackt's hair has less spikes then Squall's, and looks a little less rounded, but the guy hasn't been CG rendered so I guess that cuts him some slack.
Next, lets look at Squall's clothing. Now Squall wears three different outfits during the game, the Garden uniform, the SeeD uniform, and his regular clothes. And his clothes are pretty distinctive, Everyone knows by now that black leather jacket he wears. It also makes him easy to recognize in the game's logo, due to the gray/silver fur ruff around the neck.
And black leather pants, with three straps on the right leg. I'm not including the additional things he wears (the gloves, necklace, shoes, those crossed leather belt things, his ring, the white shirt, ect.) just because I don't want to go to a fruit of the loom site or something to find a picture of a plain white shirt. Anyway...going on...
Looks awfully similar to this shot, doesn't it? Unfortunately, I have no idea if this was taken before or after Final Fantasy VIII came out in Japan. But i'm kind of guessing that it was taken beforehand. It doesn't look exactly like Squall's outfit, I'm thinking more latex then leather there, but it's pretty damn close.

So what can I conclude from all this? Well, a few things.

1. Squall and Gackt are related (not really, but it'd be a nice twist to find out Gackt was really Squall's father, not Laguna.)
2. Gackt had an influence on Square's designers (or...)
3. Square's design had an influence on the way Gackt was dressing.
4. The fur collared jacket might be a popular thing in Japan (?)
5. Neither Squall or Gacket smile! (I've only seen Squall smile at the end of the game, and Gackt smile in a video detailing the making of 'Mizerable')
6. Both are idolized off and online (Take a look around!)