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Two belts is too many when the second is for an utterly useless scabbard which is far too small to carry your pizza cleaver!

"Hell, stop making every character look like their clothes were chosen by blind clowns. That would HAVE to save some time."
[GM]Dave, Bannable Offenses

Some characters wear a realistic outfit, to the point that a cosplay of them might be relatively simple. But this gets kind of boring; it's not a challenge for the cosplayer to put together, and very few people will actually realize that they are in costume. (Which might explain why even mundane series tend to gravitate towards unique school uniforms and such.)

Sometimes the character designers realize that their characters' wardrobes are too realistic. One way to compensate for this is by mixing bits and pieces of what might be a number of perfectly acceptable outfits into a bizarre Frankensteinian mess. The outfit may be comfortable, but something about it just looks slightly, but not totally, off.

Often involves Too Many Belts, Goggles Do Nothing, Virtual Paper Doll (with some questionable mixing and matching), Impossibly Tacky Clothes, Fashionable Asymmetry.

An especially bad example may have you asking, "WTH, Costuming Department?".

This is typically justified in settings where characters are forced to scavenge and fabricate clothing or armor from whatever scraps they have at hand. It's especially prominent in Post Apocalyptic fiction.

See also Rainbow Pimp Gear (where video game characters achieve this effect due to their ideal gear being unfortunately mismatched), Seriously Scruffy (when the character's odd outfit is down to stress) and Improvised Clothes.

Contrast Pimped-Out Dress, which could have loads of accessories, but (usually) in a stylish manner.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • The Bount in Bleach had strange accessories like headphones and chains to make them look less normal.
  • In Brave10, the Braves are pretty terrible in their sartorial choices, although it's the villains who really take the Stripperiffic Rummage Sale Reject aesthetic up a notch. Award-hopefuls include Fuuma Kotaro who is covered in blades including platform stillettos, Ishikawa Goemon with a crossdressing asymmetric belt-heavy number, Date Masamune in his Kyoto outfit that is indeed fearsome to behold but not for the reasons he thinks, and Kaio who has no bottoms on but a lot going on elsewhere.
  • Chrono from Chrono Crusade has an outfit that at first glance seems distinctly anime, but when he takes off his coat it's apparent that he's wearing what would be a normal outfit for a young boy living in New York during the 1920s — as long as you ignore the bright red color of his shorts, anyway.
  • Digimon:
    • Most of the cast's outfits — in particular, the liberal use of goggles and gloves. The reason the franchise's homepage is linked and not individual series is because it would be faster to list aversions than go through each series's weirdly dressed characters in list form. In fact, the only total aversions are Hikari in Digimon Adventure, Iori in Digimon Adventure 02, and four minor characters in Digimon Frontier. Digimon Data Squad actually got backlash for generally neutralising the weird clothing, with the result that Digimon Fusion sees the return of the rummage sale rejects in truly spectacular force. Comparatively Digimon Tamers also toned it down somewhat; only Hirokazu's clothing — and at a stretch, Ruki and Jenrya's — couldn't pass for normal.
    • Digimon Adventure 02 provides some justification in that the strange clothing, excluding Takeru and Hikari, is automatically applied to the Chosen Children upon arriving in the Digital World; their outfits in the real world, again excluding Takeru and Hikari, are much more normal. Said Digital World clothing is said to be a manifestation of how they see themselves and, well, they're all eleven or less. Some individual cases and situations are also justified, such as Ryo.
  • Dragon Ball Super: Goku Black wears a gray gi over a black turtleneck, baggy pants, stark white boots, and a piece of red cloth wrapped around his waist like a sash. He also has a single Potara earring on his left ear and a Time Ring on his right hand.
  • The fashions of Endora in Endride alternate between this and Impossibly Cool Clothes. There are a lot of belts, feathers, complex layers (upon layers, upon layers), and other unusual and purely aesthetic costuming choices going on.
  • This is the default mode of clothing for the cast of Fist of the North Star, to the point that, outside of flashbacks, we see recognizable outfits only twice (the Godland arc has the villains in military uniforms, and a late manga villain wears a business outfit).
  • Kino, of Kino's Journey is a fairly subtle version of this. She looks to be wearing normal traveling clothing most of the time, but then you realize she's wearing two trench coats of completely different designs, a hunting cap, goggles, a dress shirt, pants, a belt with a ridiculous number of pouches, a second belt for her gun, a boatload of weapons, a scarf, and metal wrist guards. As a traveler, clothing is supposed to be practical rather than pretty, but it seems overkill until the later episodes.
  • In Lyrical Nanoha, the outfit one's Transformation Sequence results in is called a "Barrier Jacket", and is partially determined via the subconscious. As the series progresses, more and more Barrier Jackets are a pastiche of random pieces of medieval armor, capes, military uniforms, and exaggerated modern teenager apparel. Which actually makes sense, as later characters have more exposure to different cultures (Belka, Midchilda, and Earth) with those aspects.
  • Raikou Shimizu of Nabari no Ou is a triumphant example, sporting a sleeveless... jean-jacket... thing in combination with black hakama and colorful bracelets (plus pink hair and a huge number of talismans...) And it gets worse when he's stressed out.
  • The cast of Naruto alternate between Impossibly Cool Clothes and Rummage Sale Rejects depending on personal taste.
    • Naruto's safety-orange-hued jacket and pants certainly stands out. On the few occasions where Naruto isn't wearing his jacket, you can see he has some sort of layer of chainmail under it, which explains having something so loose if not the color. By the time of the second series, he abandons the goofy-looking orange and blue jacket in favor of a slightly less goofy-looking orange and black jacket. The most curious part is that it is shown in the manga that many people in the village wear orange just like him.
    • Lee and Guy's green jumpsuits are acknowledged as goofy looking by almost everyone but them and Naruto.
  • Very often, Mikako from Neighborhood Story ends up with a case of this in her attempts to dress in a way that is absurdly flashy, original, and/or outlandish.
  • Sadamitsu in the Tokyo Arc of Otogi Zoshi looks particularly ridiculous. His jacket — an orange and yellow thing with Cupid-style cherubs on the chest and a large red heart in back — is bad enough, but he supplements this with a midriff-baring black shirt, shiny leather pants, studded leather wristbands, a silver medallion necklace, and some skull jewelry on his hands.
  • The school uniforms in Princess Tutu are distinctive enough (and odd enough) that they don't fit under this... but what the characters like to wear outside of their uniforms are just normal enough to make you scratch your head. Ahiru wears big poofy yellow shorts and a midriff-baring sweater that is appropriately bird-like, while Fakir seems to be wearing one of the standard boy's dance outfits... except that he has inexplicably torn up the top and haphazardly sewn it back together.
  • Kirika Kure, of Puella Magi Oriko Magica. Mismatched stockings, mismatched armbands, two skirts, a necktie with a weird medallion pinned to it, Too Many Belts (one with a stuffed animal dangling from it), an unnecessary eyepatch, the list goes on. In her case, it's meant to convey that she's really not quite right in the head as a consequence of her wish.
  • Handwaved in Saber Marionette J, where Lime originally shows up in a fairly standard android jumpsuit and, because of Otaru's poverty, really does get her newer outfit from a rummage sale.
  • SoltyRei plays with this when, during a shopping trip, the main character goes through a series of fairly reasonable outfits. Without looking, her guardian assures her to just pick the current one, and she does out of affection — a tight cute, orange jumpsuit with clunky boots number the other women look embarrassed about.
  • One early episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX featured a masquerade party where the students dressed like Duel Monsters; Judai got a little confused and combined the costumes of several monsters (Saggi the Dark Clown, Breaker the Magical Warrior, Celtic Guardian, and Gearfried the Iron Knight). Fortunately, even he eventually realized he looked ridiculous in the mishmash costume and ditched it.
  • Tenth of Number Girl thinks she's a fashionista when in reality she's this.
  • In Elfen Lied, it's a Justified trope with Lucy - who is found naked and amnesiac on a beach, so the teens who find her take her back to the out of season hotel they're watching over and let her literally just dress herself by picking from leftover clothing. She ends up looking like, well, an elf from Santa's workshop - complete with poof-ball hat. But it kind of works and has become very iconic. Later in the series she switches to more normal outfits.

    Comic Books 
  • The Creeper: Jack Ryder actually got his costume from a costume shop's rejected costume parts. And it shows. In Batman: The Animated Series he acquired the costume from various clothes in a Vintage Clothing boutique.
  • Deadpool: In one story, the Punisher arrived in a Big Damn Heroes moment wearing an outfit consisting of the weapons used by a bunch of different C and D-List villains. It looked ridiculous, but as it was basically made of guns (most of which were of the Shoulder Cannon and wrist-blaster variety so he could use them simultaneously), the effect was badass enough that even Deadpool didn't snark about it.
  • ElfQuest: In Elf Quest: Rogue's Curse, Rayek assembles a new outfit by raiding boxes of leftover wares. Some people rather liked the results.

  • Green Lantern: Alan Scott got his costume from a theatre's box of spare costume parts.
  • Harley Quinn: Harley Quinn's bizarre and Stripperiffic New 52 era costume was supposedly created by stealing individual pieces from different women after escaping from Arkham.
  • Iron Man: One incident forced Tony Stark to don pieces of costumes from his fellow West Coast Avengers to retrieve one of his missing armors. Hawkeye ended up giving him the joking name "Spare Parts Man". Thankfully, he retired that "armor" pretty quickly.
Manhunter: Subverted, as Kate Spencer's costume was assembled from whatever super-weapons she could grab from the evidence room. It looks badass.

  • The Sandman (1989): Delirium's patchwork outfits are always an odd mixture of thrift store fixtures.
  • Starman: Jack Knight's costume is something he pieced together in a few minutes from things he hadn't sold in his secondhand shop.
  • Star Wars (Marvel 1977): Issue #79 features a gag comic showing assistant editor Eliot Brown demonstrating how to create a Darth Vader costume out of junk.

  • The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: The Lost Light members sometimes use holomatter avatars to look like humans. Most of them can pass up as dressing in more on less regular clothing (if we don't count that Cyclonus is an Indian lady in a Victorian dress or Skids and Nightbeat being respectively either the Ninth or Eleventh Doctor and Luther), but then you have Rodimus, that is basically John Bender wearing Marty McFly's vest instead of his usual jacket, plus a tribal flame tattoo on his right arm, a bandanna, and Hot Rod/Rodimus's usual flame pattern on the undershirt; and Whirl, whose default design (seen in issues 13 and 47) looks enough like a regular tomboyish little girl except for the eyepatch, but then the redesign seen in issue 30 adds in bandages, spiked elbowpads, kneepad, choker and ankle bracelets(the latter worn over army boots), fingerless gloves, wristwatches on both arms, bike shorts under the jumper and a pair of AK-47 sheated on her back and chained on the front of the belt. And that's not mentioning her bushy sideburns, V-shaped eyebrows, and lightning-shaped pupil.
  • X-Men:
    • Jubilee's costumes, before she got depowered, were probably inspired by the anime look, but she's the comic-book example that jumps out as having WAY too many accessories. Her most infamous attire is a bright yellow trench coat, huge hot pink wrap-around glasses, large, round earrings with her name on them, and what looks like giant dishwashing gloves, and this was worn over shorts and a red shirt. Given that she debuted in The '80s... Word of God is that the outfit was deliberately designed to look like a Robin costume made out of actual clothing. Wonderfully Lampshaded in the Marvel vs DC Crossover: Robin appears out of nowhere in front of Jubilee and she just replies (paraphrasing) "Nice outfit." They end up as potential love interests before battling.
    • Pre-Shadowcat Kitty Pryde (then going by the codename "Sprite") went through a couple of attempts at designing her own costume, all of which were intended to look like something a young teenager in The '80s would think was cool. The most infamous was a Dazzler-inspired gold lamé monstrosity with legwarmers and rollerskates.
  • Young Avengers: Kate Bishop's first 'costume' (having started in a bridesmaid dress she performed an Action Dress Rip on) is assembled from pieces of costumes and weapons belonging to other heroes she finds in Avengers Mansion. It looks makeshift and leads one of her teammates to dub her 'Hawkingbird' (the primary elements coming from the costumes of Mockingbird and Hawkeye). Fortunately, this name does not stick.

    Comic Strips 
  • Happens in Beetle Bailey every time Sarge has to wear civvies; he has NO fashion sense whatsoever and always ends up looking ridiculous.

    Fan Works 
  • The main character in FREAKIN GENSOKYO ends up this way. Some highlights include his ice-resistant camo kimono, Princess Kaguya wig, Remilia Scarlet costume, dungarees, and bright yellow motorbike helmet.
  • In Thousand Shinji, Rei does this on purpose because she likes wearing patchwork outfits. In chapter 8:
    Following Rei into the shop, what happened next was a descent into a surreal world of Rei getting excited and happy as she almost maniacally went through dozens of second or even third-hand outfits before assembling a wardrobe that could best be described of as "fabulously ghetto". It was an embracement of urban decay and poverty by a very wealthy individual.
    Rei left the shop wearing a light, frilly Western-style bridesmaid’s dress, a battered-looking long jacket that had probably been donated to charity by a dead hobo, a paint-stained grey toque, threadbare red gloves with the fingers cut off, and combat boots two sizes too big for Rei that had probably first seen use shortly after Second Impact. The rest of her purchases were similarly eclectic, and Rei had actually asked to see some of the items that they store had been considering tossing as being too badly damaged to sell.
    Everyone but Shinji just looked at Rei in exasperation at her bizarre choices.
  • In Karma in Retrograde, Touya is stuck wearing garish and haphazardly thrown together outfits from the clothes Aizawa got for him from the dumpster and thrift store for his first few weeks at U.A. He doesn't mind because he's used to buying clothes for practicality because of how little money he had. Meanwhile, everyone else insists that he gets new clothes that make him look actually presentable.
    Present Mic: My god, what did Shouta do to you?
    Touya: Um... You mean Aizawa?
    Present Mic: Yes, I mean Aizawa! That outfit has him written all over it!
    Touya: It’s not that bad.
    Present Mic: It’s a bright-ass outfit that still somehow manages to convey ‘depression’. And you're okay wearing that?
  • In Amazing Fantasy, Martin Li's Hero costume as the Wraith consists of a purple t-shirt with skulls on it, Zipperiffic cargo shorts, elastic bands and scarves wrapped around his face, arms, and knees, and steel-toed shinobi sandals straight out of Naruto. The narration even calls him a fashion disaster.
  • The Darcy Twins from Power Rangers RPM Re Geared dress in clothes that even a young child finds tacky, yet take offence when this is pointed out.
  • In Edna's Intervention, one of Edna Mode's criticisms on Aoyama's Pro Hero costumes is that some of the elements clash with each other since he just chose to wear every accessory he thought "sparkled". One of her suggestions was to replace his Cool Shades with a circlet to better match the overall Knight in Shining Armor look he has going.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In 68 Kill, Chip winds up looking like this when all of his clothes are stolen and he is forced to dress from the contents of the motel's lost and found box. He ends up wearing pink flip-flops, grey sweatpants, and woman's off-the-shoulder t-shirt with a red lip pattern on it.
  • Diane Keaton made this look famous in Annie Hall, even inspiring a fashion trend (people are likely to know what the "Annie Hall" look is without knowing a thing about the movie).
  • The Dark Knight: The Joker was apparently designed with this look in mind, to seem as though his outfit was pieced together from different suits he'd stolen. Surprisingly, the cops who tried to determine his identity from his possessions discovered that the entire suit was custom-made. Joker comments at one point that his clothes aren't cheap; he paid for them using money stolen from mob banks.
  • Tyler Durden's wardrobe in the movie version of Fight Club is a combination of retro Impossibly Cool Clothes and deliberately shabby rummage sale clothes that perfectly convey Durden's iconoclastic-rebel-hipster personality. The fact that they look so cool is aided enormously by the fact that they're worn by Brad Pitt, whose girlfriend at the time provided the tacky pink bathrobe he wears in one scene.
  • Most pirates in the Pirates of the Caribbean series. Justified as most of their gear is either plundered, or scrounged, or bought from some remote colonial port.
  • The titular hero of The Pumaman has a costume that consists of khaki pants and a poncho.
  • Most of the cast of The Room (2003) are dressed in mismatched clothes that are several sizes too big or small, as the film's budget included almost nothing for costumes, forcing the wardrobe director to shop at thrift stores for whatever she could find.
  • In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Khan and his followers wear outfits made out of whatever they could cannibalize from their spaceship Botany Bay after nearly 15 years of isolation.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), those new outfits are not haute couture, to put it mildly. Donatello has a computer's cooling fan stuck to the back of his shell, and Michelangelo has a hoodie tied around his waist as a belt, among other things. Flashbacks show that the turtles dressed that way since they were children, probably from what they could scrounge from the sewers.
  • Then there's the absurdity sported by the title character of The Wild World of Batwoman, whose costume resembles neither a bat nor a woman. The actress actually made her own costume, although what she was taking at the time is a mystery to the ages.

    Literature 
  • In American Psycho most of the other characters apart from Bateman embody this trope. The clothing they are all wearing is fine if you don't think about it too much. However the second you start to imagine what all the other characters are wearing you quickly realize that they would all look really stupid.
  • The Babysitters Club series:
    • Claudia was described as wearing the wackiest outfits possible, often a mishmash of clothes from clashing social situations (i.e., a tutu, combat boots, baseball jersey, and top hat) usually followed by the sentence, "On anyone else, it would have looked crazy, but on Claudia, it was fabulous!".
    • One book includes a minor character who constantly wears incredibly tacky pants and brags about how little he spent on them.
  • In David Eddings' Belgariad series of novels, Belgarath developed his trademark vagrant's outfit on purpose in order to pass mostly unnoticed. While everyone thinks that his ragged tunic and mismatched shoes are remnants of rubbish heaps, the entire outfit was custom-tailored, including a tunic that has patches over intact cloth, and his mismatched boots were custom-made by a master cobbler and fit perfectly — after Belgarath spent a full day patiently explaining to the craftsman why he didn't want them to match and wanted them to be scuffed up a little after they were made.
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Willy Wonka wears a suit that would be positively natty, albeit more appropriate for a Stage Magician than a chocolate factory owner, if not for the strange colors involved: plum-colored tailcoat, bottle-green trousers, pearly-gray gloves, black top hat. Tellingly, the two movie adaptations tone this down into coordinating but still-whimsical ensembles and have him clean-shaven — he's written as having a black goatee — to boot. The 2013 stage musical chooses to take the original description and push it further — teal lapels and cuffs on the coat, an orange Waistcoat of Style, blue tie with orange stripes. On top of that, there are several contrasting patterns invoked, resulting in quite an eyeful. Of course, this is a reflection of Mr. Wonka's extreme eccentricity, and depending on one's point of view could even be regarded as Awesome Anachronistic Apparel. Moreover, it is all beautifully tailored and he is impeccably groomed in all versions, so he's a Sharp-Dressed Man as well!
  • Cradle Series: Northstrider, Monarch of the Hungry Deep, one of the richest and most powerful people in a world of very rich and very powerful people, is generally described as looking like he got dressed by robbing beggars. He wears a completely random assortment of mismatched clothing; even his shoes don't match. Lindon theorizes that he just wears something until it gets so worn that he has to replace it, at which point he grabs whatever is nearby and uses that without any consideration for how it fits with the rest of his outfit.
  • Little Willie Connolly in J.R. Lowell's 1972 thriller Daughter of Darkness is a Child Prodigy with a sky-high IQ, who is also this. She has her mind on other things and just doesn't care what she has on. It drives the headmistress at her gifted school crazy, and sends her into fantasies of making all the kids wear uniforms.
  • Discworld, Lords and Ladies: The Elves dress like this. Once you get past the Glamour, you realize that they have a very poor grasp of Rule of Cool. Justified in that they actually embody Creative Sterility: for all their psychically-induced Can't Argue with Elves, they wouldn't know genuine style if it bit them on the nose.
  • In Dr. Franklin's Island the castaways, scavenging from the crashed plane, dress quite haphazardly. When they're captured for their Slow Transformation, they're put in a faux hotel suite full of Mundane Luxury, including a walk-in closet with clothing taken from the general stores available to the doctor's staff and their families, which is all much too big for the half-starved girls. After some experimenting and being horrified at their reflections, they settle on an "off the shoulder beach hippie" look.
  • Being deposed English aristocracy who have taken up banditry and kidnapping to maintain their illegal estates, the "Villains" of Early Riser dress in a combination of traditionally stuffy, upper-class clothing (tweed, High-Class Glass, etc...), well-worn cold-weather gear, and plenty of weapons. When Lord Farnesworth first threatens Charlie, his outfit is described as such:
    He was dressed in the mismatched blend of clothes that was the adopted uniform of the Winter Villain: much-mended ski salopettes with a mammoth-wool tweed jackets under a down-filled puffa, criss-crossed with belts of thermalites. He had large boots, again mismatched, a sturdy tea cosy for a hat which was embroidered 'A gift from Whitby' and was missing his nose — frostbite, I figured. There was also a scar the thickness of a little finger that ran from his forehead to his chin by way of his left eye — which held a cracked monocle.
  • Many of the more ignorant wizards and witches in Harry Potter tend to err towards this when trying to pass off as Muggles. This is partly due to the majority of wizarding society secluding themselves from the Muggle world (thus not really interacting with them much, if at all), and/or dressing primarily in long robes and other such similar items. Those who do fare better tend to be either Muggle-born or half-blood (thus, usually in the constant presence of Muggles), or they study Muggles (as Mr. Weasley does, thus ensuring his children pick up this skill from him).
  • In Lonely Werewolf Girl, Agrivex deliberately dresses in the worst faux-punk outfits she can create as a way of rebelling against her fashion-obsessed, always immaculately dressed, Aunt.
  • Star Wars Legends: Most of the time, when characters in the X-Wing Series have their clothing mentioned at all, they're in pilot's jumpsuits, although there are notable exceptions.
    • In Wraith Squadron, when three Wraiths doing The Infiltration are passing as wild-shirted tourists, well — better just to quote.
      Wedge shook his [pile of clothes] out. A short-sleeved tunic in orange and yellow tropical fruit patterns and short pants in lavender. "I'm going to throw up."
      [...] Donos looked mournfully at his outfit: a shirt with thin red and green horizontal stripes and shorts with black and white vertical stripes. "Sir, permission to kill Face?" [...]
      Face unfolded his own fashion disaster. A black silken shirt with a variety of insects picked out on it in glittery silver, shorts in a brighter, more painful shade of orange than that of New Republic pilot's suits, and a red kerchief for his neck. "As you can see, I saved the best for myself."
    • In Starfighters of Adumar, "Red Flight" are told to dress in the local Feudal Future fashion for a diplomatic dinner. Wedge, Tycho, and Wes choose nicely coordinated outfits, but Hobbie throws together random colors and styles from the wardrobe on the basis that:
      "There are three types of dress clothing. The kind that offends the wearer, the kind that offends the viewers, and the kind the offends everybody. I'm going for the third type. Fair is fair."
  • There's a lot of this in Philip K. Dick's 1969 science fiction novel Ubik. At one point, a character is described as wearing a "tweed toga, loafers, crimson sash, and a purple airplane propeller beanie." Given that it's a Philip K. Dick novel, this might be a genuine attempt to simulate future fashion, or it might just be weird for the sake of weird.
  • In the Nemesis Series, the mystic character Graywytch is described as wearing a goth-themed outfit, but one that mixes different subcultures with no rhyme or reason, "as if she'd grabbed a bunch of random things from Goth 'N Go without checking if they actually worked together."
  • The title character of Penrod is forced to perform in an awful children's pageant wearing an outfit made by his mother out of one of his older sister's old dresses and, even more mortifyingly to Penrod, a cast-off pair of his father's long underwear. That in itself probably qualifies already, but to avoid appearing in public in his father's long johns, he sneaks into an unlocked janitor's closet and dons a pair of overalls he finds in there just before going onto the stage.
  • Amanda Martín, the protagonist and Amateur Sleuth of Ripper (2014) likes to wear ensembles consisting of consist of pieces bought at thrift shops. Self-expression is more important to her than following trends or even practicality. Her dad takes her out for breakfast and she wears a sarong wrapped untraditionally and flip-flops. When her dad points out it's raining, instead of changing into more practical footwear or grabbing a coat, she puts on a scarf and a Bolivian-style wool cap with earflaps and ties made out of multicolored braids.
    • Either averted or very downplayed with her mother, Indiana. She also wears thrift-store clothes but at least according to her, she has developed a fine eye for picking out the best.
  • In Neverwhere, Lady Door is described as dressing "as if she'd done a midnight raid on the History of Fashion section of the Victoria and Albert museum, and was still wearing everything she'd taken."

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Babylon 5, Londo Mollari's clothes aren't quite as bad as many of the others who fall under this trope, and they at least all go together, but he nevertheless does look like he's cosplaying a Frenchman from the Napoleon era for Halloween. Centauri nobility in general do dress very formally, but some of the other examples (Refa, Jaddo, etc.) have a more subtle look.
  • Shawn Hunter on Boy Meets World had clothes that were always badly mismatched (even by the standards of '90s grunge fashion) and at least two sizes too big. It was strongly hinted that his clothes were literal rummage sale rejects, as his family was extremely poor and slovenly. However, he often hid them under a tattered black leather jacket, thereby managing to look somewhat cool.
  • Ilana from Broad City has shamelessly tacky fashion sense, and yet somehow, due to her generally outspoken personality, it suits her.
  • 1977 Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5. Think the poor man's Billy Idol, combining spiked hair and Guyliner with black t-shirt with cut-off sleeves and clusters of safety-pins over ripped jeans. He accessorizes with chains and dogtags. When he kills Slayer Nikki Wood, he goes out of his way of stripping them of their Badass Long Coat.
  • Mason from Dead Like Me likes to take the layered look a bit too far and is very rarely seen wearing fewer than three tops at once, often paired with some shabby-looking Hobo Gloves, stolen accessories, and maybe some hideous ankle-zip trousers.
  • Doctor Who:
    • Various incarnations of the titular Time Lord take this approach to their outfits. The later versions tend towards less outlandish but nonetheless distinctive looks.
      • The Second Doctor had a many-pocketed, unkempt coat to go with his "space hobo" look.
      • The Third Doctor wore velvet smoking jackets and frilly shirts that Jon Pertwee wore precisely because they looked silly. He also wore a cape most of the time. And his hair, fluffed out with rollers because the actress playing his companion teased him about his bald spot, slowly increased in size as his tenure went on. He also had a tattoo (in the 1970s, before it was cool).
      • The Fourth Doctor's first season outfit is a horrible shabby mess — an ugly shirt, a corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows, a tacky brown and yellow argyle cardigan, a crumpled-up scarf used as a tie, scuffed shoes, and baggy trousers — the aim being to reflect how young he was compared to the previous Doctors, foregoing "mad professor" in favor of "starving student". And there's that scarf; a happy accident (they bought too much wool for the old lady who knitted it expecting her to only use what she needed to make a normal scarf, but instead she thought she was supposed to use it all up). As the Doctor's character developed it was decided he should begin to look bohemian and byronic — he grows his sideburns out longer, ditches the jacket for frock coats, swaps the cardigan for waistcoats, the scuffed shoes for boots with tall heels, and the tacky shirt for a plain ivory shirt with voluminous Victorian-style sleeves, themes he sticks to for the whole of the rest of his tenure. Having established a beautiful and romantic taste in fashion, he then goes on to bury it under huge hair, a big floppy hat and several layers of hideous and ill-matching scarf significantly longer than he is tall, with awesomely disastrous visual results. Certain stories exploit this by having him remove all the mismatched parts of his outfit in order to give him a few moments of looking actually good, usually when he's supposed to be dashing and romantic, or Darker and Edgier ("The Hand of Fear", "The Deadly Assassin", some scenes in "Image of the Fendahl", "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" and the punting scene in "Shada" come to mind). He tends to stick to browns with the occasional dash of dark red or purple — Word of God says the colour palette was inspired by the tendency to describe Tom Baker's characteristically deep voice as "dark brown". Early on he also has a habit of doing his buttons up wrong — he buttons up his cardigan so one side is longer than the other, buttons up his frock coat so the double-breast doesn't cross right, and (in "The Masque of Mandragora") does up his waistcoat all the way to the bottom, creating a weird bulge.
      • The Fifth Doctor's red-trimmed cricket outfit and decorative vegetable. Not many men can pull off a decorative vegetable.
      • The Sixth Doctor's ridiculous clown suit (to match his ego-inflated personality). At a who-con in Tampa, Colin Baker (The Sixth Doctor) told the audience that he had chosen his garish coat specifically because he didn't have to look at it.
      • The Seventh Doctor's question-mark sweater (with question mark-handled umbrella) which might just have gone too far.
      • Subverted by the Eighth Doctor, who stole his outfit from the locker of someone who was going to a costume party. After rummaging through and apparently giving a certain amount of consideration to some really costume-y things, he settled on a rather peculiar but elegant Edwardian suit.
      • The Ninth Doctor averts this: his dark pants, dark-colored v-neck t-shirt, and a black leather coat coordinate nicely — though the coat may not be the best thing to be wearing in WWII England, as Captain Jack notes.note 
      Jack: "Flag Girl was bad enough, but U-boat Captain?"
      • The Tenth Doctor wears a brown pinstripe or blue suit (it varies) with an open collar shirt, a tie, and... Converse trainers (in three varying colors), along with a duster. Believe it or not, the whole thing works. The trainers-with-suit looked odder when Ten's stint started than it does now since while it hasn't exactly become a trend, it definitely has its imitators.
      • The Eleventh Doctor got most of his outfit from what was lying around in a hospital while he was fighting two Starfish Aliens. The old professor outfit with a bowtie is actually one of the more "normal" ones. For one brief, shining moment in the Series 5 finale, his outfit consisted of tight pants, button-down shirt, tweed jacket, suspenders, bowtie, and a fez. While holding a mop, for no particular reason. At the start of the next series, he has a stetson. However, River Song doesn't like him in hats and has an... unambiguous way of demonstrating this. There's also the long-johns he wore in "The Crimson Horror". It Makes Sense in Context, but especially on Matt Smith's lanky frame, the effect is more than a little silly.
      • The Thirteenth Doctor returns to form, throwing together a raincoat with culottes, a rainbow-striped t-shirt, braces/suspenders, and work boots — with no apparent regard for colour coordination. In her particular case, she bought them from a thrift store, as she was separated from the TARDIS at the time.
    • The Dulcians from "The Dominators" are Human Aliens where both sexes wear curtain-like dresses. On the ladies (i.e. Zoe and Kando), the dresses actually look rather sexy; the men, on the other hand...
    • The Doctor's companion Adric wore ill-fitting pajamas with a rather childish star on the pocket and bright green boots.
  • Janet Donner, a one-off character from the Eerie, Indiana episode "The Lost Hour", spends most of the episode in an outfit that would almost look normal were it not for rampant over-accessorizing: Every inch of the front of her coat is covered with pins and brooches, her belt similarly has various items hanging off it, and her earrings are mismatched. However, as a teenager who's been living in an otherwise (mostly) deserted version of Eerie for a year, she just gets everything she has by looting the World O' Stuff - so it's meant to look like she's just been scavenging for whatever random trinkets she thinks look cool.
  • Ford Prefect in the television adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981) had a carefully clashing outfit involving a striped cricket blazer and an Argyle sweater.
  • Both Howard and Vince of The Mighty Boosh are this, though they're at opposite extremes. Howard is constantly dressing in plain second-hand-looking clothing from the seventies in some hideous shade of brown with a very rare splash of hideous colour, like the purple and orange poncho he wore in series two. Vince on the other hand is a campy fashionista who makes a lot of his own clothes when he isn't buying them from the most trendy shops in London, and dresses in bright sparkly clothes, often with many accessories like belts, a pink hat or bright red cowboy boots. Vince always manages to pull his outfits off pretty well, but Howard, um, doesn't.
  • Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: Played for Laughs. When Ned discussed the importance of wearing an appropriate outfit (and having an appropriate haircut) before tryouts, Coconut Head comes in, wanting to try out basketball. He is wearing a black shirt, a blue wrestling singlet, black socks, and black dance shoes. He also did not change his haircut.
  • The wardrobe of Punky Brewster, especially during its NBC run, certainly qualifies. A mauve vest over a red T-shirt over a blue long-sleeve shirt, jeans with one leg rolled up and another with a kerchief tied to it at the knee, a red shoe on her right foot, and a yellow shoe on her left. Must have been a royal pain for the paint crew of Ruby-Spears to fill in those colors in the animated edition.
  • Rupauls Drag Race:
    • One of the most dreaded challenges of every season is when Ru tasks the queens with creating a whole outfit out of unconventional materials, such as dollar store items, curtains, yard sale junk, etc. Since the contestants have varying design skills, the end result ranges from stunning to...this.
    • Season 6 contestant Joslyn Fox made this trope her signature style, wearing extremely busy outfits and enough jewelry to open a mall kiosk. Considering she tends to be rather stripperiffic as well, RuPaul and the other judges were often baffled at how she could have on so much yet still be so naked at the same time!
  • Gunter and Tinka from Shake it Up are never seen without these kind of clothes. At one point they wore burglar outfits and they sparkled.
  • Top Gear:
    • For a modest man, James May has a collection of incredibly loud shirts. He especially favors a purple-and-pink striped number that May himself has dubbed "The Pink-and-Purple Rugby Shirt of Doom." One of them, a white shirt with a blue flower pattern, even has its own fanbase. Lampshaded by the man himself during an episode of James May's Man Lab, when he presents a rack full of said shirts and then proceeds to pull out the infamous purple-and-pink one...
      James: Look at this thing. I've never even worn it!
    • The use of this trope also turned into a Running Gag in series 12.
      "Are you wearing that for a bet?"
    • Invoked when May tells a story on The Grand Tour that the manufacturer of the rugby shirt once asked him to stop wearing it, even going so far as to offer him free clothes.
      James: But I still said no, because I'm an arse.
  • The clothes worn by Harper in Wizards of Waverly Place have been based around such things as food and markers. Harper goes beyond this and into crazy costumer since she makes her own outfits.

    Music 
  • The title character from Leonard Cohen's song "Suzanne" is described as dressing this way: "She's wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters."

    Music Videos 
  • Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" mentioned a lot of items that are considered under this trope (Zebra jammies, big ass coats, and velour jumpsuits, to name a few), which gets subverted into Mundane Made Awesome territory due to the message of the song.
  • Weird Al's song (and music video) "Tacky" does indeed have some ridiculously garishly bright and outlandish outfits.

    Pinballs 
  • Captain B. Zarr from The Party Zone wears a black flight jacket, aviator goggles, a propeller-topped polka-dotted aviator helmet, and white cowboy gloves.

    Podcasts 
  • Welcome to Night Vale: Main character's Cecil's outfits include his best furry pants and tunic, tights and rubber clogs, a Hawaiian shirt and honey comb hat, and at least according to the "Not Canon Except for the Parts Which Are" Thrilling Adventure Hour crossover, a fanny pack at almost all times.

    Tabletop Games 
  • The Flash Gits of Warhammer 40,000 "fame" often come across looking like the Pirate/jewelry/Bling of War version of this. Since they are Orks, they believe that the more shiny things they wear, the larger their hats are, the awesomer the banner they strap to their backs and the bigger their gun (or guns!) are, the more respect they will get.
    • Much of John Blanche's artwork for both Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer features this. Scrolls, skulls, feathers, furs, silks and everything in between adorn the subjects of his work.

    Theatre 
  • RENT started a whole new fashion fad trying to duplicate the mismatching East Village thrift shop look, spending hundreds of dollars on what actually only costs $10 to achieve.

    Video Games 
  • Taken to extremes in the Jak and Daxter series of games:
  • No More Heroes' Travis Touchdown is no doubt a pathetic enough Otaku to deliberately dress this way. At least the single glove seems kinda handy for using his beam katana, but the rest... the player can choose exactly how ridiculous Travis' outfit becomes by buying more clothes (or diving for shirts in Santa Destroy's many dumpsters), all of them awesomely tasteless Otaku wear.
  • Celine, from Star Ocean: The Second Story, wears what appears to be a hovering shower curtain as a cape.
  • Fallout, especially the third game, would follow Mad Max and have Raiders with weird attire made out of literal garbage, such as discarded tires. In The Pitt expansion for the third numbered game, Pitt Raiders have Bombshell armor with a bikini top literally made of bombshells (here being the front of a mini nuke bomb). In Fallout: New Vegas, legionares wear what is obviously sports equipment with odd decorations (including feathers and paper plates). Centurions however show off their badass status by wearing a mishmash of things from enemies they've killed. Including supermutant helmets and Brotherhood armor parts. Much of the Legion's better armor is clearly constructed from football equipment.
  • While leveling in World of Warcraft you'll often end up with a medley of gear for your Virtual Paper Doll. Penny Arcade explores the problem in this comic, and the Brothers Grinn illustrate it here.
    • The various quest reward gear items obtained between levels 60 to 65 are the most blatant example of this trope as well as the inspiration for the Penny Arcade comic. Mismatched in the most extreme case of garish color clash that could only occur if a clown car exploded in a Skittles factory, the stats on the pieces are still head and shoulders above the most powerful endgame raid gear obtained prior to The Burning Crusade expansion. Many players refer to this phase of a character's life as the pimp suit.
    • Later expansions have done better, with more unified-looking sets... at the cost of sometimes plunging deep into Real Is Brown.
    • Mists of Pandaria now has Transmogrification, which allows players (for some in-game gold, and with certain limitations) to change pieces of their outfits to match the look of other pieces they have, either averting or invoking this trope as they wish.
    • With the advent of Legion you can now Transmogrify to any piece of equipment you've ever had soulbound, so by the time you reach max level you've got quite a wardrobe to choose from. This also created a secondary market for rare, visually appealing Bind on Equip drops.
  • From Software's Evergrace duology: the jokey or downright strange looking weapons and armor, ranging from a frying pan WITH the bacon and eggs still in it, to a bird's nest with the bird still in it (worn as a helmet), to a downed tree (the 'sacred pole', which is about 20 feet long and when not in use is off the edge of the screen), to a random globe you find on someone's desk, to a fanservice-y bit of armor which is just two straps with gigantic pauldrons all megaboost one or more stats. (keep also in mind they can be upgraded and utilized like normal equipment too. The shopkeeper even calls you out on it. "YOU want to upgrade THAT? You're weird.") However, the best all-round builds with an even increase in stats are all plain and generic armor of sorts. And the best full set in the game only looks out of place because this is a medieval fantasy game. (It's a suit of futuristic armor that resembles one of the Armored Core hover leg mechas). Since a good amount of enemies have an immunity to one form of attack or another, using a ridiculous-looking build to Min Max just a couple stats leads to a lot of 0 damage hits on some areas. (An interesting gameplay quirk is that armor that boosts attack doesn't just boost attack, but one of the three kinds of melee attacks too, piercing, chopping, slashing. Whatever is the highest becomes your 'main physical attribute' and determines what is immune to you)
  • Some of the Pokémon protagonists have unusual combinations of clothing. The most prominent examples include Emerald!Brendan wearing shorts over pants (along with a hat that looks like white hair and a headband,) Lyra wearing a hybrid of short shorts and overalls with a hoodie underneath it, and HGSS!Ethan wearing a hoodie and a backwards hat with... early 20th century-style knickerbockers.
    • The Gym Leaders and Elite Four members can get even more bizarre with their outfits. For example, Brycen wears what looks like half of a kimono, a domino mask, and slip-on shoes.
    • On a similar note, Frontier Brain Greta from Pokémon Emerald, who wears a kimono jacket and red sneakers over a blue bodysuit.
    • AZ from Pokémon X and Y is another candidate, but given his size and how he's been Walking the Earth for 3000 years, his disheveled appearance might be justified.
    • This can be invoked by the player in Pokémon X and Y, Pokémon Sun and Moon and Pokémon Sword and Shield, depending on how they customize their character's outfit. It's very much possible to get things in clashing colors, or mix ripped jean shorts with a Waistcoat of Style, among various other choices.
  • The Fable series opens the door to this trope by allowing the player to customize the Hero's appearance. Most of the clothes (and tattoos) are parts of sets that at least compliment each other if worn together. If the player chooses to mix and match, though, the results can range from badass to completely ridiculous. Fable II introduces dyes for clothing and hair, which just adds to the fun.
  • Team Fortress 2 occasionally has shades of this ever since the advent of new unlockable weapons, optional cosmetic items, and the option to paint said cosmetic items. In-universe, the Soldier's 2011 Halloween costume comes across as this, consisting of a coat hanger, cardboard box, plastic cups, dryer hoses, and shoeboxes to dress up as a plausible yet hilariously poor-quality 'robot.' This is in stark contrast to the other classes' costumes, which are all quite clearly well designed in-universe. Justified in that the Soldier is a Cloud Cuckoolander in a state of Perpetual Poverty, so the cheap, unconvincing robot costume suits him. He also makes up for it with unique and priceless vocal responses.
  • In contrast to the well-tailored and crisp casual clothes he wore in Persona 3, in Persona 4: Arena, Akihiko Sanada promptly ditches them for a dark red, ragged cape, torn pants, and shiny red boots, and he's otherwise topless the entire time. Everyone pointing out the absurdity of his outfit and him failing to see how absurd it looks is a Running Gag that pops up in both Arena games. Apparently, the cape and half nudity weren't originally going to be the case; according to the character artist, Akihiko was originally supposed to retain his sharp looks with a suit (giving him a look similar to his appearance in the non-canon Persona -trinity soul- anime), but was given the outfit he got after Wada, Arena's designer, wanted a "rugged" looking character in the roster, and no one else could properly fit the role.
  • Persona 4 Golden: Marie wears a mishmash of styles, including a plaid skirt, striped stockings, platform boots, a blue hat, a white shirt with a black tie, and a number of gold-coloured pins. This is because Marie herself, suffering from a bad case of Identity Amnesia, has no idea what passes for fashion.
  • Dragon Age: Origins: Morrigan's initial outfit consists of rags, polished stones, feathers, and bits of armor. Justified given she lives in a swamp, so every piece of clothing she owned was salvaged or found.
  • Tidus, the main character of Final Fantasy X. Most of Tetsuya Nomura's character designs for VII and VIII were at least plausible, but many of the characters from FFX (the aforementioned Tidus and Lulu with her belt-dress being prime offenders) have costumes that are simply strange. Nooj, from the sequel Final Fantasy X-2, takes the cake with an outfit that is nothing short of bizarre.
  • Final Fantasy XII: Basch. The national costume of Dalmasca appears to be "pastel BDSM wear", Vaan never puts on a shirt, Fran wears a merry-widow with thigh-highs, Penelo has bizarre leather wing-things on the back of her costume, Ashe has a Chippendales collar and the world's shortest skirt, but Basch takes the cake by showing up in multiple ridiculous outfits: bright orange shorts under armour, a leather thong on the outside of his clothes that seems to be riding up rather a lot, and an open-fronted shirt and jacket combo set off with what appears to be a potholder or a scrap of his favourite childhood security blanket strapped to one side of his chest.
  • Ivalice is prone to these, as Final Fantasy Tactics A2 provides the page image with Luso Clemens. Even though he's wearing overalls, he still has two belts, along with a sash that's more of a ragged green blanket, double-decker boots, elbow guards that look like plates, a decorative bandage, some other kind of strap, a clover pin...
  • Nomura growing out his more extreme Rummage Sale Reject style can be seen in the progression of the costume designs in the Kingdom Hearts series. Compare, for example, Riku in Kingdom Hearts and Riku in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]. Some iconic things like Sora's poofy pants and big shoes may stick around forever, though.
  • While most any game involving appearance/clothing customization is vulnerable to this, superhero games are like magnets due to the sheer variety of options typically available. "Costume Contests" were popular in both City of Heroes and Champions Online for this very reason, if only to find things such as a knight in multicolored armor (which is also a mix of plate and Roman gladiator) with jester shoes and a jet pack, or a werewolf with bull horns, horse hooves, fairy wings, and hot pink spandex pants that has a flaming aura, and of course the hilarity of the "Randomize" button that intentionally creates this effect.
  • Tales of Berseria: Velvet. After she was placed in prison, she was not given a change of clothing for three years. After she finally broke out, the best she could do was grab scraps of material from other prisoners' clothes and armor she could find and tied it all together with belts.
  • Rita from Tales of Vesperia really looks like she just rolled out of bed, found whatever was nearby that fit, and went out adventuring. Most obviously, both her socks and shoes don't match at all, and her top is covered with a hodge-podge of poorly-matched colors and whatever she finds useful. Given an early visit to her room shows that it's piled high with junk, it's quite possible that she really did just grab whatever clothes were on hand in the morning.
    • When Judith, a shameless flirt who normally wears very little, is tasked to seduce the guard in Heliord, she gets an outfit made that is best described as "rabbit cosplay themed." It is certainly a choice, and must be seen to be believed.
  • In The Sims series, it's possible to make a character in Create-a-Sim that looks like this simply through the various customization options. The Sims 2 had some premade outfits that looked so bad/weird that mods existed to hide them from normal view. Additionally, many of the premade characters or townies often had tacky outfits.
  • Code Vein: Io wears a bizarre outfit that looks something like the barest remnants of a shredded gown, including a torso piece that barely contains her breasts and looks like it's liable to rip apart any second, plus some bandages. She occasionally tosses on a hooded jacket (her Blood Veil), which does absolutely nothing to make the outfit less insane. She even fights in it. Oh, and all her sister Attendants wear the exact same outfit. They are all Blood Magic clones meant to serve the Successors and are apparently born wearing it. Notably, the outfit looks like a ruined version of the wedding gown Karen is wearing, and the Attendants are nearly identical to Karen in physical appearance as well.
  • Played for Horror in Your Turn to Die. The second Floor Master, Rio Ranger, likes taking personal effects from every deceased participant of the Death Game. Sara realizes this when she notices him wearing Joe's hairclip.
  • Ex from Puyo Puyo Tetris. We're pretty sure a frilled dress shirt and suspenders don't pair well with a space suit's pants, boots, and gloves. Ringo certainly doesn't hesitate to comment on it in Puyo Puyo Tetris 2.
  • The protagonist of Disco Elysium starts out in a filthy, tasteless but cohesive disco loungewear outfit, but the player will find other items of clothing as they play, often abandoned in bins or similar, and virtually all horrible, filthy or bizarre. Since each clothing item affects your stats, you will likely be changing your outfit to whatever gives you the most plusses for a check, meaning you may find an optimal outfit for passing (e.g.) an Electrochemistry check will be mustard bell-bottoms, a dragon kimono, filthy Hobo Gloves, and a pair of too-small plastic sunglasses called by the game "Shades of Self-destruction". Or, especially early in the game, you may have no items in a slot except ones that penalise a stat you desperately need, leading to you maximising your chances to make that roll by taking off your pants. (On top of this, the character's Horrific Necktie will talk to the player if you have it equipped and the game warns you that to ever take it off would be to betray it, encouraging it to be kept on with outfits that would not normally require a tie, such as outfits that do not have a shirt. Your sidekick Kim ignores most of the wardrobe crimes but will ask pointed questions about it if you start incorporating bits of a fascist uniform into your wardrobe.
  • CyberPunk 2077 is a heavy offender, since street fashions in the 2070s run towards bright colors, loud patterns, synthetic fabrics, and something of a return of Glam Rock fashions. Since Rainbow Pimp Gear is also in full effect, having your main character wear a sequinned tank-top, lime-colored suit jacket, turquoise hotpants, and knee-high aluminium-plated boots is more likely than not to happen but will blend in fairly well. This is contrasted with the sleek, monochrome, and minimalist look of the corporate styles.
  • Prepare to have your character look like this in Animal Crossing if you are participating in fashion challenges with Gracie or Label, depending on the entry. This could be averted if you know what clothing items get the most points, however.
  • Nobody Saves the World: Official artwork for Nostramagus shows that his outfit is completely mismatched, combining magic and warrior outfits as well as having just a sock on one foot and a sandal on the other.

    Webcomics 
  • Dean & Nala + Vinny: Dean. For a cyclist who often puts in serious mileage in a single day, Dean dresses oddly, opting for a tank top, baggy shorts and Crocs (one white, another black) instead of specialized bike gear. He doesn't even wear a helmet.
  • Tsillah of Wapsi Square dresses like this. It appears to be a deliberate stylistic choice on her part, as she is perfectly capable of constructing stylish clothing out of shadows.
  • Takako of Iothera makes no attempt to coordinate her clothing.
    Cassandra: I know not wearing the entire ROYGVIB spectrum at once is anathema to you, but...
  • Consolers:
    • Square Enix has a rather... strange fashion sense. Belt with zipper on head, anyone?
    • Konami also wears a rather strange outfit: bodysuit with a suit jacket over, MGS-style harness, red winged helmet, vampire cape, and bright blue and pink shoes with DDR arrows...
  • Girl Genius has this pop up regularly. Considering most of the time it happens, people are, in fact, scrounging for clothing (Tarvek's outfit in the Castle Heterodyne arc makes sense since he started off only wearing a bedsheet and boots; the outfit he ended up with is thus a major improvement) due to the crazy situations they are in.
  • Welcome to Hell has Sock, who has a outfit that must be seen to be believed.
  • In Questionable Content once Pintsize gets his new humanoid body he starts dressing like this. He specifically says that he wants his outfits to toe the line between "hilariously irreverant" and "literally a clown".

    Web Original 
  • The original design of Trope-tan, the anthropomorphic representation of TV Tropes, wore an orange midriff top, patchy brown pants, yellow shoes, crazy belts, and goggles. She was designed to be a Rummage Sale Reject.
  • Jericho, of the Whateley Universe, dresses every day in clothes that are so gaudy and so mismatched that people actually get ill from looking at him. He's blind and his psychic vision is black-and-white and uses that as an excuse.
    • He's specifically picked each part of his ensemble to not go with anything else in order to draw attention away from the crowd he hangs with. That or to fit in with them. Said crowd includes a Lamia, two tetra-armed demonic-looking, fear aura packing receptive empath twins, a mute Ancient Apex Predator, and an extremely violent current incarnation of the Ultimate Blacksmith. Besides, if he's forced to, he will wear the school uniform. Just don't ask WHICH school uniform...
    • For Ayla's birthday party, he dressed in a nice shirt and jeans, but said that underneath he had his 'Undershirt of DOOOOM!' He wasn't joking: when the party was attacked by mercenaries, he unbuttoned his shirt to reveal it, and two of the attackers collapsed, vomiting.
  • Worm:
    • Brian's little sister Aisha is introduced wearing a strapless top too skimpy to pass for underwear, torn denim jeans, and green fishnet leggings.
    • The Butcher. Her armor and mask have an Asian style, yet also have Spikes of Villainy and three bleached skulls. As Taylor puts it:
      The costume, it was asymmetrical, lacking harmony, trying to do too many things at once. The samurai, the headhunter, the bloodletter. None of it fit the title she wore: Butcher.

    Western Animation 
  • The Amazing World of Gumball: Parodied in the episode "The Console". Gumball's new portable game system turns all of Elmore into a parody of JRPGs, and at one point Anais is seen dressed like Luso from Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (because the alternative, a Chainmail Bikini with platform boots, wasn't "age-appropriate").
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: Done intentionally with the Freedom Fighters, who are noted in the artbook to be wearing random pieces of clothes they scavenged and pieces of armor they stole.
  • KaBlam!: June wears: A long sweater that's orange with black spots (think Fred Flintstone), a yellow t-shirt, green plaid baggy shorts, and purple shoes (or cleats in the earlier episodes). If anything, it just makes her even cuter.
  • The Hair Bear Bunch: In "No Space Like Home," the bears are outfitted with turn-of-the-century swimsuits (all part of an escape plan). Bubi describes the outfits as "early rummage sale."
  • King of the Hill: Referenced in an episode where Connie mentions that the yearbook had to discontinue sections like "class clown" because the previous year's "worst dresser" was actually very poor.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Luna Eclipsed", Memetic Bystander "Derpy Hooves" is dressed in a Nightmare Night costume which consists of five paper bags (one on her head and one on each hoof).
  • The New Batman Adventures: The Creeper bought his costume (a speedo, boots, gloves, and a giant cape-like red boa) at a thrift store in Gotham.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Cupid's Errant Arrow", Boimler's attempt at "every cool outfit in history" at once results in a fusion of multiple different style. Which Barb says did look sexy until he ruined it.

    Real Life 
  • Prince and the Revolution in The '80s had this as their default mode, especially between 1983-1985. Evidence, complete with predictable '80s Hair.
  • If Prince was bad in The '80s, Cyndi Lauper was worse, though she was doing it on purpose. Before she got famous, someone sneered at her for "dressing creatively," to which she fired back "Oh, this is what your daughter's gonna be wearin' in a year." Sure, enough, when she hit it big...
  • ABBA did this purposefully. For tax reasons. Performers in Sweden are allowed to deduct their stage clothing from their taxes only if they were not usable as street clothes.
  • Grunge music got its name partly because the artists were wearing old, beat-up clothing (often obtained from thrift shops, relatives' closets, or even the trash), part out of poverty, part out of practicality (in The Other Rainforest, flannel and denim are very good at keeping you warm during the 9-month rainy season), part out of rebelling against fashion.
  • Lady Gaga, often intersecting with WTH, Costuming Department?. At this point, the most shocking thing she could do would be to wear a t-shirt and jeans in public. If she did, no one would recognize her. (Though as of 2019 she's had a more common and casual style, mirroring her calmer works like Joanne and A Star is Born.)
  • According to this blog, many of Benedict Cumberbatch's outfits end up looking like this when he's not being dressed up by stylists. He has admitted that the blog has led to him "putting in more effort as of late". His good friend and Sherlock co-star Martin Freeman, known for his brightly colored paisley scarves, is sometimes featured on the blog as well.
  • A downplayed example happened in the 2016 Academy Awards with Mad Max: Fury Road costume designer Jenny Beavan - whose subversion of the ceremony's dress code led to amused looks.
  • Most Russian soldiers during The '90s. They even had an ironic rhyme: "Forma nomer vosem', chto spizdim, to i nosim." (Uniform #8, we wear what we could jack.)
    • Mostly applied to active duty combat deployments, refers to various improvised improvements to standard equipment, scrounged or looted off dead combatants from either side. Popularized due to overly heavy, one size fits all cost-cutting solutions implemented in standard-issue gear. Examples abound like 32 kg ~= 70 lb flak jacket torso armor, useful against small arms debris and shrapnel, but a useless hindrance in close-range urban combat scenarios, due to its inability to stop assault rifle rounds despite its extreme bulk. Desirable item upgrades were quality combat boots, more utilitarian camo (better suited to local climate, lighter, better pattern, improved comfort, improved ergonomic storage), holsters/utility belts/hands free store and carry solutions, lightened paratrooper-issue AK's, squad support weapon-sized extended capacity clips taped together in pairs (for 90+ readily accessible rounds, instead of 20-30), and any manner of light and high-quality sidearms or combat knives. Hence, once so many violations stacked up for utilitarian reasons and improving survival, no one thought anything of small personal touches added for swagger, making for a decidedly mismatched guerrila unit look.
    • Exception: "demobilization parade uniform". A long-standing tradition to painstakingly prepare a ridiculous, customized version with any and all bling (ribbons, patches, decorative elements) and flair they could scrounge and sneak under the radar, to be worn on the trip home. Stated goal is to "arrive home in style", but really more of a random reason to get silly and competitive to waste time until discharge, and occupy themselves to make waiting for it a little less difficult.
  • "Wacky Tacky Day", found at High Schools across the U.S.
  • Grunge/Punk/Hard rock band the Lunachicks have the tendency to wear outfits like this. At first, it seemed as if it was out of necessity due to lack of a wardrobe budget; later on, however, it was very much intentional. Evidence. See also: the video for "Babysitters on Acid."
  • David Tennant himself spends half his time like this, on one occasion wearing a lurid green-gold paisley silk shirt and bright red tartan trousers, and on another, a neat white tux jacket, cumberbund, shirt, and bowtie with orange-brown trousers. Another occasion saw him wearing an incredibly bizarre pink and blue brocade tie. His look as the Tenth Doctor is one of his more ordinary looks, apart from a straight-up tux or jeans and a normal-looking shirt. Oh, and there's this.
  • Super Junior's 5th album concept ended up looking a lot like this. Hilarity ensued. Leeteuk in particular has two coats, a sarashi made of rope, and two pairs of underwear over fishnet stockings.
  • Shite Shirts uses this deliberately, to the extent that you can't even choose a design - you get what you're given.
  • Country group The Band Perry has been pretty consistently called "An incredibly talented band in desperate need of a better stylist." Their music has been described as "classic Country with an eclectic infusion of Rock, Gospel, and Soul." A lot of the time, so is their fashion sense.
  • At the height of *NSYNC's fame, they regularly showed up to award shows and other functions in hilariously clashing outfits. The Huffington Post even noted being disappointed that they wore simple black suits when they briefly reunited on stage.
  • Radio/TV/YouTube personality and musician Nardwuar the Human Serviette is known for dressing like this during interviews. (And to a milder extent out-of-character.) The styles of clothes are fairly normal, but the colors and patterns are almost always loud and mismatched. It's done intentionally to compliment his keet-like on-air personality.


 
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Gentoku's Dress Sense SUCKS!

To the Nascita crew's horror, a freshly face-turned Gentoku is revealed to have a fashion sense that can be charitably described as questionable.

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