Analysis / Culture Equals Costume

Specific flavors of Culture Equals Costume, for the sake of example:

• Most Japanese women don't actually wear a kimono all the time, but that doesn't stop the occasional author from having their Japanese character treat them as casual day-wear: they're mainly for special occasions nowadays. The few women who still wear kimonos every day are mostly very old women.
  • These days, a lot of younger Japanese women don't even know how to tie the obi on a yukata. Clip-ons have become increasingly common.
• Similarly, most Chinese women don't actually wear the qipao (AKA cheongsam in Hong Kong and often therefore the West) at all, let alone on a regular basis, but for some authors, that's just what Chinese women wear. This is acceptable in some settings, such as 1920s-1940s Shanghai or 1950s-1960s Hong Kong where the qipao was the daily wear for Chinese women. There are also Chinese restaurants and more than a few schools in Hong Kong that have qipao as uniforms (most of which are girls' schools), several of which being renowned to be "elite" schools locally.
  • There is also the male equivalent of Changshan— THE look of all Elderly Kung Fu Teacher Archetypes.
  • Ironically, the qipao is actually based on Manchurian dress. A lot of the clothes thought of as stereotypically Chinese were forced on the Han on pain of death by the Manchu when they founded the Qing dynasty, including the long braid and shaved scalp, or queue, that men wore. Qing-dynasty clothing has been so heavily influential in molding the perception of "how Chinese people dress" that pre-Qing Chinese clothing, the hanfu, is largely unfamiliar outside and even somewhat inside China (though in recent years there's been a drive to re-popularize it), and is often confused with the Japanese kimono (which was inspired by it). In stories, you only ever see it in pre-Qing settings, and sometimes not even then.
• There was a time not so long ago when some authors put all their German stereotypes (and maybe their Swiss ones too) in lederhosen or dirndls on a regular basis in the honest belief that it was plausible. The pickelhaube also seems to be more common as an everyday clothing item than as military gear.
• Similarly for the Spanish stereotypes, and so on.
  • South of the Border, everyone wears a sombrero and sarape and has a moustache. 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.
• Every adult man from England from the 1860s through the 1960s, must wear a three-piece suit, including waistcoat (with pocket watch) and dome-top/derby/bowler hat, according to Hollywood. They all also carry large black umbrellas.
• Hollywood also likes depicting French people wearing berets, even though few ever actually wear them. This stem from the early 20th century, where French farmers mainly from the Brittany region go by ship to England and Wales to sell onions, and usually seen wearing berets and the Breton striped shirt. Because they were the only French people ordinary British people would usually meet, the "Onion Johnnies" as they were called eventually morphed into the Anglophone stereotype of the French today. However, the stereotypical French tourist (to the French) is the beauf: an obese man in sandals and shorts, a wifebeater, and one of those fishing hats with Ricard on it. Also a cigarette dangling from their mouth.
• According to Hollywood, every Italian-American man either wears a fancy tailored suit, or a tank top and jeans (leather jacket if it's a winter scene). Even people who aren't "greasers" or "mobsters" will often be seen sporting one of these two looks. Mobsters will often trade the wife-beater for a wispy, loudly-colored tracksuit. There's the dark shirt/white tie combo worn by all 1940s era gangsters, as well.
• To denote "Jew" in general, have them wear a yarmulke, or go all out and depict them in Chasidic or Ultra-Orthodox dress wearing all black, long beards, and long curling sideburns. While everyday dress for a small segment of Jews, the vast majority rarely even wear yarmulkes except in services, depending on how observant one is. See also Gratuitous Use of the Tallit, which is pretty much never worn outside a synagogue in real life. Alternatively, Hollywood insists Jewish Americans in particular are partial to the argyle sweater vest with long sleeve button-down dress shirt and thick-rimmed glasses, which tends to overlap with nerds (that may just be due to the influence of Woody Allen though).
  • The origins of this are weird. Those huge black coats, fedoras/fur hats, and curling sidelocks actually originate in 17th-century Poland rather than the ancient Middle East. And the nerdy look? Nerd stereotypes partly originated from nasty stereotypes of Jews and East Asians. In other words: Jews and Asians are nerds by definition.
• Russians always wear the stereotypical ushanka fur hat and a huge wool coat.
  • In real life, ushankas are part of military and police winter uniform. Civilians wear them too (though not everyone, as Hollywood may lead you to believe). "Ears" are almost always tied up, getting down only when it's very cold.
  • A Russian babushka ("grandmother") must wear a headscarf. In English, the headscarf will also be called a babushka (the actual Russian word for it is platok).
• Indians will invariably wear a Sikh turban no matter whether or not they are actually Sikhs. Weirdly, most characters shown wearing them are ostensibly Hindu, and Hinduism and Sikhism are entirely different religions; about the only thing they have in common is that they originated in India. Even though certain Hindus do wear turbans (e.g: Mahatma Gandhi in his early years) they are different from Sikh turbans, both in their make and method of wearing. Also, all Indian women wear saris all the time (which logically means anything vaguely traditional-looking worn by an Indian woman is a sari).
• 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 (although some authors will refer to whatever they wear as a burqa, even when it's clearly not). While Truth in Television 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. Not to mention that religious minorities like Christians and others exist among Arabs, which is rarely mentioned-they may have similar or different clothing styles.
  • In Ottoman times the fez was the choice headgear for fictional depictions of Muslims, especially Turks. Sometimes they're still shown, even though the fez fell out of favor in Turkey after World War I (in fact, it was banned there in 1925), though it is still worn in some other Muslim countries.
• Canadians can't go anywhere without their toques and Mountie uniforms, eh?
  • Every Canuck goes to work in that Mighty Lumberjack style.
  • Ohmigod don't forget your nine sweaters and parka! It's freezing up there, right?
  • You mustn't forget that staple of light summer wear, the hockey jersey worn over jeans. A CFL jersey may substitute if your hockey jersey's in the wash or something.
• Americans in general are less prone to this (partly because so much media is made by Americans), but the closest thing to a traditional American costume seems to be a cowboy outfit. The reasoning seems to be that most early American entertainment exports were Westerns, so other countries sensibly assumed that they were supposed to be representations of the contemporary US. Different regions of the US, however, often get this:
  • Californians are usually dressed like surfers, hippies, or valley girls.
  • Westerners and Texans get the cowboy hat, plaid jacket, blue jeans, and boots. Texan businessmen in media can wear suits, but even they they still need to wear it with a cowboy hat.
  • For Midwesterners, it's dusty denim overalls. Preferably with a plow or pitchfork in one hand to complete the look.
  • Southerners? For the women, it's super-short "Daisy Duke" denim shorts and a button-up shirt that's been tied instead of buttoned, 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.
  • Obnoxious Americans abroad are portrayed as obese middle-aged men wearing Bermuda shorts, sandals with socks, and either 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.
  • In general, you can tell an American in fiction by their casual yet tasteful clothes: baseball cap, T-shirt, blue jeans (worn form-fitting, unless the character is a hoodlum), and sneakers. In reality, this tends to be truer of Los Angeles and cities and towns in the Midwest; people in other cities (New York, San Francisco, et. al.) often dress more stylishly, such as wearing three-piece suits or skirts and blouses even when not working.
• Most Dutch people go through their daily life without ever wearing wooden clogs and/or mirrors in their hair.
• Scots wear kilts on special occasions (weddings, funerals, football matches, barfights, etc, etc) and that's it. Despite this, it is a common belief that all Scottish men wear them all the time.
• Indigenous North Americans are almost always shown with the Braids, Beads and Buckskins despite those aspects only applying to a couple out of literally hundreds of cultures across Canada, USA, and Mexico. If it's a modern setting and the buckskin look is too much, elements of cowboy clothes may be substituted. In truth, most native people now just wear clothes no different from the majority.
• 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.
• Apparently, All Asians Wear Conical Straw Hats.