Iconic Outfit in Music.
- The Beatles' outfits (mostly the dark suits they wore on the The Ed Sullivan Show, the tan Nehru jackets at Shea Stadium, and the colorful military outfits with epaulettes from Sgt Pepper.)
- Elvis Presley:
- The green US army jacket John Lennon wore in the early Seventies. Also his distinctive round NHS glasses. The Greek fisherman's hat he wore in Help! might also count.
- Carly Rae Jepsen
- The cute "play" clothes and dark hair done in cute pigtails that she wore when car washing in the "Call Me Maybe" music video.
- The sexy black and white spagetti-strapped top and black minidress and cute floral waist coat she wore at the beginning of the "This Kiss" music video. The multi-colored paints, cute sparkly pink spagetti-strapped top and adorable sparkly red vest she wore at the end of the video.
- Michael Jackson
- The glove. Just the one.
- The "Thriller" red jacket and jeans as well.
- Also his "Billie Jean" and "Smooth Criminal" outfits.
- His fedora.
- Pinstripe suit and blue armband.
- Highly polished black loafers with bright white socks.
- Prince: His Purple Rain attire, with the curly hair, purple trench coat, and ruffled shirt.
- KISS, both costumes and make-up.
- Hair Metal in general.
- Björk's swan dress.
- At the 2006 Academy Awards, Jon Stewart joked that "We're sorry Bjork couldn't join us this year. She was getting into her dress and Dick Cheney shot her."
- MADtv paid homage to this outfit when a recurring character wore it. Her name: Ms. Swan.
- Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson is known for the long black frock-coat, tight ballet tights, exaggerated codpiece, thigh-high boots and bedraggled long hair and beard he wore in The '70s, all of which Tull used for publicity long after he stopped adopting that style of clothing or hairstyle (he's actually balding and wears a short goatee and less dramatic clothing in his old age).
- For the more dedicated Tull fan, there's John Evan, the band's keyboardist from the '70s era, with his baggy white suits and polka dot ties.
- The white trousers and yellow leather jacket (and mustache) worn by Freddie Mercury during Queen's "Magic" tour (their final tour) in 1986. And in The '70s, Freddie wore tight, chest hair-exposing latex jumpsuits (often "checkerboard"-colored) and black fingernail polish onstage. Reputedly, when he adopted the "clone" '80's look, some fans threw shaving razors and bottles of nail polish at him in protest. His "leatherman" suit and cap from the 1979 tour, the white wife beaters and trousers from the 1985 Live Aid concert, and his "Flash" t-shirts from the early 80's are also equally iconic. It can be surprising to go back and watch early concert performances and see his long hair, clean-shaven face, and flowing silk shirts.
- The "Magic" tour outfit was also immortalized in Freddie Mercury's depiction in S.H. Figuarts, complete with bottomless mic stand.
- AC/DC: Angus Young's school uniform. Brian Johnson's flat cap and black vest too.
- The Smashing Pumpkins: Billy Corgan's Zero Star Shirt.
- David Bowie
- The lightning bolt makeup
from the album cover and inner sleeve of Aladdin Sane (1973). - The eyepatch he wore (due to his conjunctivitis) during a Dutch television appearance in 1974 is forever tied to his character Halloween Jack from Diamond Dogs, which he was promoting at the time.
- In fact, each decade of Bowie's career is associated with a particular look. In order, they are:
- 1960s: the bowl cut and white dress shirt seen in promotional photos
- Early 1970s: either the candy-striped vinyl jumpsuit, shoulder pauldrons, and big red mullet associated with the Ziggy Stardust character or the aforementioned lightning bolt makeup from the Aladdin Sane cover art
- Late 1970s: either the Waistcoat of Style and slicked-back hair of the Thin White Duke or the black nylon jacket and ruffled-up hair from the Heroes cover photo
- 1980s: either a fancy suit and well-groomed hair or the puffy hair, puffy shirt, and gray tights of Jareth the Goblin King
- 1990s: the spiky hair and goatee from the Earthing era
- 2000s: the black suit and well-groomed hair donned during the Heathen tour and the inner tray art of the Reality CD
- 2010s: the grey suit and fedora seen in the last photoshoot taken before his death in 2016
- The lightning bolt makeup
- Owl City's "I AM" raglan.
- Kurt Cobain
- He only wore a flannel shirt for a few months in 1990, but it is the article of clothing most frequently associated with both him and grunge fashion in general.'
- Otherwise, his striped shirt and jeans outfit from the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video and that green sweater, jeans and Converse sneakers outfit he wore during his MTV unplugged performance (Neversoft went with this look when he appeared in Guitar Hero 5).
- Tom Morello's Boy Scout uniform, which, like the Kurt Cobain outfit mentioned above, he wore in his Guitar Hero appearance.
- Madonna's cone bra. Honorable mention to the wedding dress on the "Like a Virgin" performance at the first MTV VMAs in 1984 and the black dress from the "Like a Prayer" music video.
- Geri Halliwell of the Spice Girls is usually remembered for wearing a dress with the Union Jack on it, which was surprisingly lampshaded at the Royal Wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton when a reporter pointed out a similar dress that an attendant was wearing. More recently, she teamed up with British clothing retailer Next to release her own line of Union Jack-designed clothing.
- Earlier, you had Pete Townshend wearing a Union Jack suit during the early days of The Who.
- Rapper Flavor Flav always wears a large clock around his neck.
- Similar to the Elvis example, Jim Morrison's own leather outfit that he wore in 1967-68.
- Miku Hatsune of Vocaloid. Both her futuristic schoolgirl uniform and green-and-white striped panties are very iconic.
- David Byrne and Talking Heads are forever associated with the gigantic French-gray suit Byrne wore when performing "Girlfriend is Better" on tour, immortalized in the 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense.
- "Weird Al" Yankovic: Loud Hawaiian shirt, dark bottoms, patterned slip-on sneakers, wild auburn curls, and prior to 1998, aviator-style glasses and an unfortunate-looking mustache.
- Pianist and entertainer Liberace is remembered for, in addition to his prolonged career, his embroidered capes.
- Erik Satie was frequently seen wearing a bowler hat, a long coat, and an umbrella.
- The outfits worn by Jennifer Lopez at the 42nd Grammys and Gwyneth Paltrow in the 72nd Academy Awards, so much that they would later be worn by South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
- Practically anything Lady Gaga wore at the MTV VMAs in 2009, but her meat dress deserves special mention.
- Britney Spears wore her hair down in blonde curls, a green, sparkly, form-fitting, midriff-baring halter-top, low-rise black pants and black shoes in the "You Drive Me Crazy (Stop! Remix)" music video, which carried over to her 1999-2000 "...Baby One More Time" tour (save for iconic Girlish Pigtails hairdo, a headset mic, pink top, white pants with pink kneepads and white sneakers). It's a very iconic look in a career of iconic looks◊, and appeared in parodies of her for years.
- The schoolgirl uniform she wore in the music video for "Baby One More Time" too.
- Her tight, red latex spacesuit from the "Oops I Did It Again" video is very recognizable, at least as referenced in ''Jane the Virgin' and numerous .GIF's.
- Édith Piaf's Little Black Dress.
- Daft Punk are never seen without some sort of mask on either of their faces, but variations on these two in particular◊ seem to be the ones people remember the most.
- Abbath Doom Occulta's corpsepaint and spiky black leather bracers and boots are synonymous with Black Metal.
- George Strait: Cowboy hat, pressed shirt, belt buckle, jeans, cowboy boots. Copied by many other country music singers.
- Billie Joe Armstrong: Black polo shirt, red tie, and Guyliner, which he wore during the American Idiot tour. He doesn't wear the black shirt and tie regularly anymore, but it remains his most iconic look.
- Amy Winehouse: Beehive Hairdo, thick black eye liner and tattoos.
- Slipknot's combination of masks and jumpsuits. Even though they change the mask designs every album cycle and the jumpsuits have changed to a uniform black outfit, they're still associated with jumpsuits.
- Spike Jones's zoot suit with ridiculously large checks.
- In a (sometimes) infamous sense, a character wearing short, blonde, spiky hair in Girlish Pigtails shaped like teddy bear ears, flesh-colored lingerie and a giant, white foam finger (often with his or her tongue sticking out), dancing suggestively and twerking, will recall the performance Miley Cyrus gave at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards◊. Bonus points if the character stands next to a man in a black shirt, short, black hair, dark aviator sunglasses and a loud, pinstriped black-and-white suit a la Robin Thicke. Ditto to the "Wrecking Ball" outfit.
- Sleeveless, midriff-baring top, tied-up high ponytail, mini-skirt and high heels = Ariana Grande.
- The Residents, an Avant-Garde Music Band, always appeared as 4 eyeballs (of various colors) wearing suits and top hats. That is, until one of the Eyeball helmets was stolen by a fan. Although it was returned, it was never used again. Instead, said Eyeball helmet was replaced with a skull helmet. So now their Iconic Outfits are 3 eyeballs wearing suits and top hats and one skull wearing a suit.
- PSY's blue tuxedo jacket from the "Gangnam Style" music video.
- Iggy Azalea's Cher Horowitz outfit from the "Fancy" video.
- Pharrell's mountie hat and red jacket from the 2014 Grammys. Also his white tuxedo shirt and shorts from the "Happy" video.
- Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation" military outfit.◊. Also the vest from "That's the Way Love Goes" and the black sweater-things and shiny pants she and Micheal wore in "Scream".
- The Ramones' classic biker jackets, to the point that in some languages that style of jacket is known as the "Ramones jacket".
- t.A.T.u.'s Catholic schoolgirl uniform from the "All The Things She Said" music video.
- According to The Other Wiki, Avril Lavigne mentioned in an interview that she stopped wearing "ties and wife-beaters" by 2002 (a reaction against the glammed-out, sexualized look of the early-2000s) as it "felt like (she) was wearing a costume".
- Lacey Sturm from Flyleaf in a black dress is the most common image attributed to the band.
- Fans of the earlier Progressive Rock period of Genesis may be familiar with many of the costumes Peter Gabriel wore in live performances during his years with the group, including the fox's head and red dress◊, the bats' wings◊ worn in "Watcher Of The Skies", or the flower mask◊ used in the "Willow Farm" section of Supper's Ready. A little later on, his "Rael◊" and "Slipperman◊" costumes on the Lamb Lies Down On Broadway tour would be recognizable as well.
- Frontwoman Amy Lee of Evanescence is mostly remembered for the white negligee she wore in the "Bring Me to Life" and "My Immortal" music videos. The red Gothic Punk dress she wore in the "Going Under" music video is popular too.
- Backstreet Boys: The white outfits they wore in the dance segments of the "I Want It That Way" music video is easily their most remembered look.
- While Danny Elfman was in Oingo Boingo he often wore a white tank top, usually with suspenders but not always, and black pants in the music videos and concerts.
- Singer and Lead Guitarist Tomas Kalnoky of Streetlight Manifesto plays a red Gibson ES-335 and wears a striped short-sleeve shirt, cargo pants rolled to the ankles, and a green military-style cap at nearly every show.
- Eminem:
- Eminem's signature look will always be the look he was photographed in most while starting out - a white tshirt or wifebeater, a dog tag necklace, cropped hair bleached platinum blond, silver hoop earrings, and baggy carpenter jeans. He didn't wear it all that often - even in the "My Name Is" video he spends more time wearing prison overalls, a straitjacket, or dressed as various characters - but it became iconic due to spawning a fashion trend. It turned up a uniform for his army of angry young men emulating him in the video, live performance and lyrics of "The Real Slim Shady", and carried on being referenced decades after he abandoned the image.
- In "Stan", Eminem's Loony Fan Stan wears the outfit as part of his emulation of him.
- In "Cocaine", Eminem reflects on creating the Slim character: "Shady's an insane maniac — yeah, Slim Shady, that's a zany name, ain't it?" Now all you need's an image to go with the name, baby! Wifebeaters and white t-shirts, Hanes mainly.
- Eminem wears this outfit again in the video for "Love The Way You Lie", though with dark hair instead of blond.
- Slim went blond again and wore a variation on this outfit in 2013 in parts of the music video for "Berzerk".
- In the video for "The Monster", Marshall keeps Slim chained up in a cage. Marshall wears classy, hipster-ish clothing, and Slim is dressed in his typical outfit.
- In 2018, by which time he was a middle-aged bearded brunette in a black tracksuit and an 80s rope chain, P!nk was performing her Eminem collab "Revenge" with a giant inflatable Eminem on stage with bleached hair and a white tshirt. (A group of fake-Slim-Shadies right out of the "The Real Slim Shady" video reference him in the unreleased music video.)
- In "Greatest", Eminem swipes at his copycats by calling them "honkeys" in "wife-beaters, white t-shirts, what?".
- Slim Shady, in particular, is associated with the Dickies overalls, Hockey Mask and Chainsaw that Eminem wore while touring his The Marshall Mathers LP set in the year 2000.
- From 2002 until he withdrew from touring in 2005, Eminem began being depicted wearing a sleek black suit, playing off the widely distributed court footage regarding his 2002 assault charge, but also creating the image of him as a light entertainment showman (something he'd been dabbling with since appearing as a Depraved Kids' Show Host in "My Name Is"). In the Encore era, with its theme around Slim Shady having a mental breakdown, the look also took on the resonance of the suit a corpse might be dressed in before being placed in the coffin. The photoshoots promoting Encore, which are full of suicide imagery and show him posing with a casket, reinforce this.
- Eminem's signature look will always be the look he was photographed in most while starting out - a white tshirt or wifebeater, a dog tag necklace, cropped hair bleached platinum blond, silver hoop earrings, and baggy carpenter jeans. He didn't wear it all that often - even in the "My Name Is" video he spends more time wearing prison overalls, a straitjacket, or dressed as various characters - but it became iconic due to spawning a fashion trend. It turned up a uniform for his army of angry young men emulating him in the video, live performance and lyrics of "The Real Slim Shady", and carried on being referenced decades after he abandoned the image.
- Bruce Springsteen is probably best known for his Born in the U.S.A.-era clothes. For the cover of the album, he wore a white t-shirt and blue jeans, with a red baseball cap in the backpocket. During the actual tours, he often sported a headband and emphasized a more muscular physique.
- Marvin Gaye: His red beanie and double-denim jacket, seen on the cover of the album Let's Get It On.
- Skrillex: His long-haired sidecut hairstyle, often accompanied with glasses.
- Selena: You can't say Selena's name without picturing her globally famous Astrodome outfit. Anytime anyone dresses up as her, it's always this outfit. Her sparkly purple jumpsuit, long hair with the feathered bangs, the bandage on her finger, and most iconic of all, the lipstick-stained microphone all combine to make the one outfit the entire world knows her for.
- Scatman John: His top hat, pinstripe suit, and mustache which he wore in numerous music videos and album covers.
- Eiffel 65 in their black and silver jumpsuits from their Blue (Da Ba Dee) music video.
