History Main / CultureEqualsCostume

* Although most South Pacific islands have it bad, the media portrayal of the island of Papua New Guinea is just... Bad. Documentaries and the like have a tendency to show the people in loincloths, face paint, and headdresses, often conducting tribal rituals. In reality, western clothes are universally worn, and since almost the entire country is Christian, people mostly wear traditional dress to preform at province festivals.

* ''Manga/DragonBall'''s setting doesn't exactly correspond to any real-world country or culture, but with so many elements lifted from the Chinese story ''Literature/JourneyToTheWest'', many of the mainstay characters ''dress'' with a decidedly Chinese "feel": Tien, Gohan, Goten, Mercenary Tao, Krillin, and Yamcha all sport different variations of ''changshan'' (in Tao's case, all the time), Mai and Oolong don Mao suits, and Chi Chi has an entire assortment of ''qipao''. Alternatively, Majin Buu's character was inspired by Middle Eastern jinn and ''Literature/ArabianNights'', and was given clothes with a more vaguely Arabic aesthetic.

* The Creator/NormanRockwell painting ''[[http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/untour/subnor.htm The Golden Rule]]'' with all the people from all over the world. It seems to be a quick visual way of portraying diversity...through stereotypes. Poor guy just can't win these days.

* In ''Series/TheTwilightZone'' episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" one of the people trapped in the featureless prison is a Scotsman in full tartan regalia and carrying a bagpipe. {{Justified|Trope}} in that [[spoiler: all the characters are dolls, and that's probably how he would have been represented in the early 60s.]]

* Tyr in ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'' regularly wears ''mail armor'' presumably to announce that he is a Nietchean.

** For a side note, more than a few girls' schools in HongKong have cheongsam as ''uniform''.

* Russians always wear the stereotypical ''ushanka'' [[PrettyInMink fur hat]] and a huge wool coat.

* In ''ComicBook/{{WITCH}}'' and its animated adaptation Yan Lin commonly wears the [[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanfu hanfu]]. {{Justified}} because she's an old lady (in her fifties in the animated adaptation, unspecified but older in the comic books) and noted to be quite eccentric, and she likely does it to stand out among the other inhabitants of Heatherfield's Chinatown (who wear western clothing).

** Both of Hay Lin's Guardian outfits and the one worn by Yan Lin are based on Chinese clothing: the traditional {{Qipao}} for Hay Lin (with the second being as close as possible to one while still making it a two-piece) and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangzhuang Tangzhuang]] for her grandmother (who was actually born in China and lived there for a while).

* The retired ''ComicBook/AsroCity'' hero El Hombre wore a costume modeled after a very streamlined matador.

* Go into any Arab country, from Africa to the Persian Gulf, and the men will wear headdresses no matter where they are, and expect women in ''hijab'' and figure-concealing dresses all over the place, if not burqas. While TruthInTelevision to a certain extent, like the "Jewish" example above, Muslim men and women can dress in varied ways depending on how observant they are, where they live, and what branch of Islam they hail from.

** [[DeepSouth Southerners]]? For the women, it's super-short "[[TheDukesOfHazzard Daisy Duke]]" denim shorts and a button-up shirt that's been tied instead of buttoned, [[BareYourMidriff baring her midriff]]. The men wear mostly the same clothes as the Midwesterners, only with even more of a "country bumpkin" look. Expect more wife-beaters and shirtlessness, though. The men wear caps or shirts with Confederate flags on them.

** SouthOfTheBorder, everyone wears a sombrero and sarape. Due to the popular conception of {{Spexico}}, these two areas are often mixed. In reality, Mexicans don't wear sombreros or sarapes in everyday life. Some never wear them at all.

** Westerners and [[EverythingIsBigInTexas Texans]] get the cowboy hat and boots.

** [[EagleLand Obnoxious Americans abroad]] wear Bermuda shorts, sandals with socks, and either [[HawaiianShirtedTourist Hawaiian shirts]] or touristy T-shirts/sweatshirts with loud writing on them. Sunglasses, stupid hat, camera and/or cell phone, and fanny pack complete the look.

* Scots wear kilts on special occasions (weddings, funerals, football matches, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking barfights]] etc etc) and that's it. Despite this, it is a common belief that all Scottish men wear them all the time.

* Exploited by the Scottish regiment in McAuslan, on the grounds that it makes the Arabs sit up and pay attention. TruthInTelevision, actually.

Reasons can vary. Sometimes, it's simply that the character in question is [[CloudCuckoolander unorthodox]], and it fits their personality or beliefs to wear it. Other times, it's more likely to be a case of ignorance on the part of the author, or maybe pandering to the SmallReferencePools. It is also a convenient way to invoke stereotypes, especially in days gone past. When you have lots of people from different cultures, it can be a quick way of pointing out that they're a diverse group - for example, CosmopolitanCouncil members often dress in their stereotypical regional/national costumes. And sometimes, it's just the RuleOfCool coming into play (see CostumePorn).

(As noted, there are actually places where traditional clothes are plausible - for example, India and parts of the Middle East. This shouldn't just be a list of characters in traditional costume - just cases where use of the traditional costume is noticeably unusual, whether it's justified or not.)

* Brazilians only wear fancy costumes (particularly the Carmen Miranda-like) during Carnival. And they do not wear tutti-frutti hats at all - that was a get-up of Carmen Miranda.

** Of special note, the third season adds the English Innes Bridges (a mixed-parentage young lady who also goes by her Chinese Name Qiao Yi Ming as ''recording artiste''), who started out in a very generic Morris-dancer-ish dress, which in later eps has been replaced with ''a dress straight out of the Prince William wedding. Complete with funny little hat.'' There's a CallBack later on as Innes mentions that England is so old that ''they have no record of their own Independence Day'', and they wind up treating major events such as the Charles and Diana wedding or - you guessed it - the William and Kate wedding with the same magnitude as a national event.

* The Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam almost always wore Western suits, but when receiving his Nobel Prize wore a traditional achkan, shalwar and turban - especially significant as he was the first Pakistani and the first Muslim laureate (although most mainstream Muslims view Ahmadiyyas (of which Salam was one) as heretics).

* Although most South Pacific islands have it bad, the media portrayal of the island of Papua New Guinea is just... Bad. Documentaries and the like have a tendency to show the people in loinclothes, face paint, and headdresses, often conducting tribal rituals. In reality, western clothes are universally worn, and since almost the entire country is Christian, people mostly wear traditional dress to preform at province festivals.

** Kingsley Shacklebolt.

* A token Islamic [[ComicBook/{{X-Men}} X-Man]] Sooraya Qadir, code name Dust, wore a full-body black abaya. Her "burqa" (as it was often incorrectly referred to) was often drawn as ''very'' form-fitting, which is CompletelyMissingThePoint, and unfortunately her characterization under most writers starts and ends with her religion, though some at least had the sense to have her say that she wore it by choice and not because anyone was forcing her.

* Each one of China's 55 officially recognized minority has its own official costume, and they are so well characterized that the are less costumes and more uniforms (it is common for a member of a minority to show up to state functions in their ethnic costume, like how a Scotsman generally goes to Buckingham Palace in a kilt).

* Averted with Rolf from ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'', who only wears traditional costumes when some festival or ritual demands it. Of course, this is ''Rolf'', so "once per episode" isn't ''that'' much of an exaggeration.

* Webcomic/{{Collar 6}} had Sixx tell Laura about the major global powers of their world. Each nation was represented by a woman in a fetishized version of some type of clothing stereotypically seen as characteristic of the region.
* In Webcomic/MahouShounenFight, all of the main character's [[MagicalGirl transformed]] selves are modeled from their culture's stereotypical associations: Mike the American being a {{Cowboy}}, Oliver the Brit being a knight, Yuki the Japanese being a {{Samurai}} etc. %%Please find the source of Raji's costume

* ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'' shows that it crops up in Japan as well. The assorted Chinese characters are normally seen wearing some variation of sterotypically Chinese clothing. Ranma [[GenderBender him/herself]], despite being Japanese, also wears nothing but Chinese clothing (as well as a thin, tightly-braided pigtail) to emphasize the parallel to traditional {{Wuxia}} heroes.

* Costumes play a big part of ''Series/TheAmazingRace; locals hired to run tasks and pit stop greeters will usually be in traditional costumes, and often racers will be put in costume as part of a task. Averted for everyone else the racers encounter.