Star-Spangled Spandex

"I'm seeing stars" is not an original pick up line for her.

Mickey: [regarding Zatanna's dress] Are those stars?!
Zatanna: Maybe.
Mickey: Those are real %&$#ing stars!

— Zatanna (2010)

Humans like shiny stuff. Humans wear shiny stuff. Humans become shiny stuff.

This trope is for people who (whole or in part) appear to be "made of stars". They may appear to be "cut out" of the real world, revealing distant stars and nebulas. It's usually because they are wielders of vast cosmic power or are Energy Beings. Occasionally, they just have a really good tailor.

Basically, these characters are wearing natural camouflage for deep space.

A Sub-Trope of Symbol Motif Clothing.

Compare Chrome Champion, Celestial Body (if someone wearing this actually has stars within them). In live action or animation, this may become a variant of Unmoving Plaid.

Not to be confused with Wearing a Flag on Your Head or Captain Geographic, which describe national-emblem clothing which may or may not include a star motif.

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Examples

Comic Books

DC Universe

• Legion of Super-Heroes:
  • Star Boy seemed to have this a number of Re Tools back, although it was clear from context that it was just a normal shirt which looks like it's made of stars. Later, it was a map of the multiverse.
  • Laurel Gand, Andromeda, wore a starfield outfit. In reboot continuity, so did her alleged ancestor Lar Gand (M'onel/Valor).
  • Her son's adult version from a Bad Future, Lord Chaos, wears a starfield costume similar to Donna's first stellar costume, used when she changed her codename to Troia.
• Supergirl: Villain Reactron wears a suit like this. Post-Crisis he claimed it was "made from a region of space", but later admitted this was untrue. The Pre-Crisis version wore a purple outfit with big five-pointed stars all over it.
• The Sandman, at times Morpheus' cape appears to be made out of the night sky.
  • The Sandman: Overture gives us Night, who appears to have the night sky making up much of her body.
• Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner used one of these during his time as Ion.
• Wonder Girl:
  • Donna Troy, Wonder Woman's former Side Kick, has several outfits made out of starfield fabric. Some artists even give her Star Spangled Hair! (like in the image)
  • In the New 52, Cassie Sandsmark's outfit looks like it's made of stars on a red background.
• In Countdown to Adventure the Starman of the magical Earth-33 has star-spangled spandex with the occasional planet, and an Unmoving Plaid effect, very much creating the effect of a costume-shaped doorway to space. Surprisingly, no other Starman has had this effect (except the brief period Thom "Star Boy" Kallor wore the mantle, alluded to above).
• As mentioned above Zatanna has a dress that looks like it's made from the night sky, but it's not something she wears often.

Marvel Universe

• Eternity is a universe that has gained sapience. Quasar (who is the Champion of Eternity... Well, actually Infinity, but they're the same being or... something) tends to have this weird effect with his cloak.
• Captain Marvel: Genis-Vell had a similar deal going with the blue portion of his uniform.
  • As did Captain Mar-Vell in Paradise X.
  • It comes with the Uni-Power. Even Spider-Man, when he briefly had the power, had this in his uniform◊.
• At times, you could see stars on the costume of Marvel UK's Dark Angel'' (originally Hell's Angel.)
  • Her costume was made out of The Fabric of the Universe.
• Singularity, a superheroine introduced in 2015's all-female A-Force team, has this look. Like Eternity, above, she is a universe that has gained sapience.

Other

• In Femforce, the lining of Nightveil's magical Cloak of Darkness—an item of cosmic power—is a star field.

Fan Works

• Empath's suit in Empath: The Luckiest Smurf is basically black with white stars.
• In Sonic Holograph, whenever the Moon Goddess Hoshinova makes somebody her host, they turn atlesst partially purple with star-like sparkles littered throughout.

Literature

• Zandramas, Big Bad of David Eddings' Malloreon. This was a plot point relative to her eventual fate.
• Boogiepop Series: Boogiepop's cloak sometimes appears to be lined with nebulae.
• Dark Lord of Derkholm: Derk's original cape as Dark Lord has a lining made of a miniature universe.
• In the fourth The Heroes of Olympus book, House of Hades, the primordial goddess Nyx has a black dress that swirls with stars and galaxies that seem to be bursting into life.
• He Who Fights With Monsters: One of Jason's first skills is Cloak of Shadows, a literal full-body hooded cloak that he can summon around himself. It appears to literally be made of the night sky, complete with stars. It can let him fade into shadows, reduce his falling speed, and lets him walk on water.
• The Secret Country trilogy by Pamela Dean: Fence, chief wizard of the Secret Country, wears star studded robes — as in astronomical stars, complete with galaxies and nebulae. It is not wise to look to closely at said robes as one is likely to get motion sickness.
• In Under a Velvet Cloak, Karena has a normal velvet cloak. However, when she becomes Nox the Goddess of Night, she takes the robe, imbues it with raw, highly magical Chaos, and it becomes a dark, sparkling cloak, the symbol of the Office.

Live-Action TV

• Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager. It may be not be a coincidence that her place of work on the ship is Astrometrics.
• The Sorcerer's Hat as depicted in Once Upon a Time adapts the celestial imagery into an appearance that's basically a hat shaped window into space. The view particularly focuses on a galaxy nebula.
• The Sandman (2022): The inner lining of Dream's Badass Longcoat is a night sky, as seen in a Freeze-Frame Bonus in "Imperfect Hosts" when he uses it to catch a snake.

Music

• Peter Gabriel at the end of the "Sledgehammer" video wears a star-spangled bodysuit, or just becomes the star-spangled man.
• "Building a Mystery" by Sarah McLachlan has a dress like this. It's made with real stars.
• The Vocaloid Galaco has boots, a skirt, and a tank top of this sort.

Myth And Legend

• Egyptian god Ptah sometimes has this effect in his eyes.

Tabletop Games

• The god Ao in the Forgotten Realms setting gets around like this.
• Dungeons & Dragons has a cloak that looks exactly like this. A player can grab stars from the cloak and throw them like they're shurikens. Sadly, said shurikens are underpowered for the level the player would be at when they typically get one of these cloaks.
• In Magic: The Gathering, anything associated with the gods of Theros. This is actually not the night sky, but a view of Nyx, home of the gods.
• In Exalted, when the Unconquered Sun enters his Magnanimous Unbound Sun form, his armor morphs into a obsidian sheath of sculpted muscular in which galaxies roll and spin.

Video Games

• BLACKSOULS: The inside of Mabel's dress is black studded with stars, looking more like the sky at night rather than clothing.
• Cavern of Dreams: Sage has stars and constellations on the bottom of her hat, and under her dress/robe. This is fitting for a celestial-themed sorceress.
• Final Fantasy VIII's final transformation of the final boss, Ultimecia, has a huge cloak of stars against a starry background like she is absorbing the universe.
• There is a mage robe in Dungeon Siege that has this appearance, with curved brass astrolabe-themed lines criss-crossing purple drapery studded with stars to resemble space or a night sky, complete with a spiral galaxy on the chestpiece.
• The appearance of Metal Slug 5's completely-unrelated-to-the-rest-of-the-game Final Boss is that of a demonic silhouette literally made of space. With a skull vaguely emerging from the belly.
• Kingdom of Loathing: The player can battle constellations which are Unusual Euphemisms for certain body parts made of stars, collect the stars and lines and turn them into weapons and clothing.
• There are a number of Subeta wardrobe items that look like this.
• The Titan herald Agalon the Observer in World of Warcraft has stars all over his body.
  • The Celestial Steed is a mount made of the same stuff Algalon is.
  • The canon lore anthology World of Warcraft: Chronicle revealed that Agalon is a member of a race named the Celestials which the Titans tasked with observing the worlds they had ordered and alerting them to problems needing their attention. It is unclear if the other similar appearing bosses and summons that came later are also Celestials or merely something similar.
• Rift has a mount called Nebula whose body is horse armor arranged around a constantly moving star field. And when viewed from the right angle there is, of course, a nebula.
• In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the Shadow Queen looks like this. In Super Paper Mario, the inside of Count Bleck's cape looks like a starry void.
  • Not to mention the miniboss Monstar from the first game. Justified though in that he actually was a mass of star kids.
• In Stardew Valley one of the more mysterious characters, Mr. Qi, wears a hat and coat that are patterned with stars of different colors.
• In Super Mario Galaxy, the Cosmic Mario race opponent looks like stars in a dark blue sky.
• In the Super Smash Bros. series games, the underside of Rosalina's dress is depicted as a starry, black void.
• A subtle example from the 11th Touhou game, Subterranean Animism. The Final Boss is a hell-raven girl sporting a white cape and large black wings. The cape normally drapes over her folded wings - when they are spread open, the cape trails behind and you can the see the inside resembles a field of stars. Probably related to her having the "power of the Sun" (read: nuclear fusion).
  • It looks even cooler in Hisotensoku. The design on the inside of her cape actually moves around.
• I=MGCM: Akisa's Ultimate Magica dress is fully white with a purple accent color, and her unique scarf has starry/celestial sparkles on the inside. Her skills have her using dark matter attacks, and 2 of the skills resembling Sphere of Destruction.

Web Comics

• In Gene Catlow, the leaders of the Feline Family, Big Momma and Big Daddy, have galaxies inside them, due to wielding Cosmic Power.
• Homestuck more typically combines this with Scary Shiny Glasses, but it's played in the usual sense with Snowman of the billiards-themed gang The Felt, and by extension Jade Harley's Three in the Morning Dress, which was alchemised using a poster of The Felt and an 8-ball (i.e. what Snowman represents). Doc Scratch takes this one step further, in that he's constantly flashing through different points in space to represent his temporal-spatial instability, including a field of stars.
• Caprice in A Miracle of Science has starlit hair.
  • Word of God indicated that this was a Martian personal ornamentation... thingy.
    • Namely artificial gemstones and antigravity beads for that floaty look. Yes, even Martian jewelry uses ubertech.
• In Nedroid, Reginald once tried to hit on a woman wearing "space pants", only to learn they were a gift from her astronaut boyfriend.

Western Animation

• Alien X from Ben 10: Alien Force fits, as do other Celestial Sapiens when they've appeared. All look like giant humans made of starfields.
• Nocturne of Danny Phantom.
• Bob wound up like this◊ due to an accident in one of the Reboot movies.
• Pretty much the standard for anything or anyone made of Null Matter in Shadow Raiders.
• Hera's wrap in Disney's Hercules. Somewhat justified, as she represents the Heavens.
• Steven Universe: White Diamond wears a cape patterned with white diamonds on a black-and-grey background which resembles a night sky.
• Supernova from Rick and Morty, specifically the episode 'Vindicators 3: Return of Worldender'.
• Lord Nebula from Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys. Oddly enough, this becomes more prominent when he's brought down to a humanoid form.

Real Life

• This blind owl has this effect in its eyes due to capsular cataract.
• Galaxy-print clothes, patterned to resemble outer space, were a big trend in the mid-2010s.

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