The guy takes the girl out to buy some clothes. The girl vanishes into the changing booth, and performs a little fashion show, appearing in various catwalk-like poses and different outfits with increasing velocity. Either this utterly annoys the man, who is quickly running out of patience, or he's increasingly intrigued by those sexy outfits.
Mostly done in form of a Montage, where we see each outfit for a mere second, and then the guy's emotional (and often goofy) reaction. Three out of four times, the montage music will be Diana Ross' "I'm Coming Out".
Alternatively, the girl is the bride and the guy is exchanged for her best friend(s). This fashion show will be much more emotionally fraught, as the pressure to find "The One" mounts, and expect the scene to end with the bride (and possibly friends, and possibly the shop attendant) dissolving into tears — whether of joy or frustration is another story. If a wedding is involved, this may be a sort of Hard-Work Montage.
A Sub-Trope of Costume Porn. Compare Shopping Montage, Costume-Test Montage, Makeover Montage, Fashion Show.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Played for Laughs in a 1996 commercial for Twix candy bars
(part of their "Time Out for Twix" series) where a guy imagines himself being handcuffed to a chair while his girlfriend tries on a series of shoes (to which she says of all of them that "these are cute").
Anime & Manga
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny gives Lacus Clyne one of these while she's meant to be in hiding on the Moon. Each outfit she tries on gets an approval from her Implied Love Interest, Kira, who's actually neither annoyed nor intrigued. Finally, Lacus herself shows a rare bit of irritation and accuses him of not actually caring what she wears.
- The titular character of SoltyRei goes through a holographic dressing room while shopping for clothes, enabling a montage of costumes. The reactions of the man she is seeking the approval of range from indifference to irritation until, without looking at the outfit, he finally snaps that the one she has on at the moment is fine.
- Happens in one episode of the anime Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai, with princess Leona doing the fashion show. One of the outfits she tries is in fact a bikini, which ends angering Pop (whom still suffers from a Nose Bleed).
- Minako does this during the opening for the Sailor Moon S movie, ending with a long fur coat and blowing a kiss like a movie star on the red carpet.
- When Kurumi, Yuki, and Rii visit an abandoned mall in School-Live! one of the things they do is try on different clothes.
- The Story Between a Dumb Prefect and a High School Girl with an Inappropriate Skirt Length: In Chapter 17, Poemu and her friends run into the Student Council President at a swimsuit store and end up having her model the swimsuits while they take photos (even using a fan to simulate Hot Wind).
- In the Turning Red spinoff 4★Town 4★Real, Aaron T. does one while shopping at the mall and persuades his body guard to do one as well.
Comic Books
- Terra #4 (February 2009) in the DC Universe. The title character has one when her friend Power Girl takes her shopping for clothes.
- Meriem, Carrie and Mona do this when buying outfits for their girls' night out in Cavewoman: It's a Girl's Life.
Films — Animation
- Charlie and Itchy take Anne-Marie shopping in All Dogs Go to Heaven. In a clever variation, the outifts are revealed through a spinning full-length mirror.
Films — Live-Action
- Mel Gibson and his daughter in What Women Want.
- In Alfie, Susan Sarandon's character and her husband do this; Alfie drops in and gives Sarandon some... advice, and hilarity ensues.
- Tank Girl: The title character does one of these (without an audience) while trying on a bizarre series of costumes in Liquid Silver.
- Xanadu: When Sonny takes Danny (Gene Kelly) shopping for a new outfit, Danny has one with music and dancing.
- Happens in What a Girl Wants with Amanda Bynes' character. Weirder though is that the guy is Colin Firth, her father.
- One of many Rom Com tropes subverted in Bromantic Comedy I Love You, Man, when Peter is trying on his tux.
- Happens in the Disney Channel original movie Life-Size, in which doll-turned-human Eve (played by Tyra Banks) tries on clothes so she can expand her wardrobe while a real person.
- Done in the Live-Action Adaptation of High School Debut with Haruna trying on clothes and Yoh watching.
- In The New Guy, this sequence is the first indication that Danielle (Eliza Dushku) is interested in Diz (DJ Qualls). Why else would she take him along when she's looking for a new bikini? (Although given the abrupt cut back to the framing device, it may just as easily be an embellishment by the story's Unreliable Narrator.)
- Tuesday Weld does this in Lord Love a Duck for her dad. The Freudian undertones are icky.
- The Brown-Eyed Girl scene in Sleeping with the Enemy.
- Parodied in Wasabi. Hubert (Jean Reno) takes his daughter Yumi for shopping, and while she's giving the usual fashion show, Hubert is also busy beating up yakuza that are trying to kidnap her, keeping the oblivious girl none-the-wiser.
- Petticoat Planet: Steve does one for Lily when she takes him to the storehouses where the men's belongings are kept so he can get some clothes after his spacesuit is destroyed.
- Dumb and Dumber: Harry and Lloyd have one before going to a black tie gala. They eventually settle on old-fashioned pastel-colored tuxedos with top hats, tails and canes, much to the mortification of the tailor.
- In Hot Bot, Bardot puts on a fashion show when for Limus and Leonard when she is trying on outfits in Benny's sex store. The boys give a thumbs up or down for each outfit. They eventually manage to settle on something they can take her our in public in without her being arrested.
- Ali & Ratu Ratu Queens: The four women take Ali to a thrift store to get him more clothes. There is a montage where he tries on outfits each of them pick. Eventually Eva shows up and gets him a decent outfit.
- Combined with Shopping Montage in Death Walks on High Heels when Robert takes Nicole shopping for clothes in London: Nicole having fled Paris without any luggage.
Live-Action TV
- 30 Rock: (Lampshaded, parodied and ultimately subverted) In the episode "Flu Shot" the trope is played straight for two seconds in a flashback sequence, with Tracy and Jenna.
Liz: Stop. I don't need the Montage.
Jenna: Sometimes I was like this, [shakes head no] but other times I was like this [gives thumbs up]. - In the Comic Relief spoof Spider-Plant Man, Rowan Atkinson gains superpowers after being bitten by the spider-plant. He sees a woman getting mugged, but realises he needs to hide his Secret Identity with a costume. Fortunately there's a fancy dress shop nearby so while the woman is struggling with the mugger he emerges in various inappropriate costumes before coming up with the correct green spandex outfit.
- Gossip Girl (2007): In "Dare Devil", Jenny tries on outfit after outfit for Blair's approval, and met with such encouragement as, "Ugh. Too Hannah Montana."
- Parks and Recreation: Cold opening to the "Sweetums" episode, with Tom. It takes place in the office, but otherwise plays the trope straight
- One is alluded to in an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent where Goren et al are on the trail of his nemesis Nicole Wallace—her apprentice held one for her presumptive boyfriend, but was posing by the window so that Nicole herself could have a view of the outfits. This is the first clue in a string of clues leading Goren to Nicole.
- A rare male example in Everybody Hates Chris, the titular character coerces his mother into taking him shopping so he won't look bad during school's picture day.
- MythBusters:
- Used (of all things) for the B myth in the "Exploding Water Heater" episode. Said B myth dealt with jeans shrinking to the point of constricting blood flow, so Kari and Grant went shopping for jeans. Even more unusual in that most of the montage was dedicated to Grant rather than Kari.
- Another male example from another myth — when the build team was seeing if defibrillator plus underwire bra equals burned patient, they needed bras that were the right size for their ballistics-gel stunt torso. It turned out that Tory's chest measurements were the closest. Cue Tory modeling bras for Grant.
- Farscape. John Crichton is given a vision of what life would be like if his alien friends lived with him on Earth. In one scene Aeryn is trying to choose a wedding dress.
Aeryn: [appearing in a rather revealing dress] What about this one?
John: That's good... Just not... for... the wedding. [chases a giggling Aeryn into the change booth, followed by the shop assistant scurrying to stop any hanky-panky] - Used with Charlie and Dean in an episode of Supernatural, with the montage set to "Walking on Sunshine". After each outfit the camera cuts to Dean either doing a thumbs down or a thumbs up. Charlie then lampshades the trope, pouting that Dean interrupted her montage when he turns off the music on her smartphone.
- The Happy Endings episode "Dave of the Dead" has Penny popping out of a dressing room in ever more extreme "hipster" outfits, the kicker being she's trying on the clothes in her friend Alex's clothing store but the clothes aren't from the store.
- Played with in Howie Mandel's special "Live at Carnegie Mall". He goes into a lingerie store and selects a pile of outfits, then tells the clerk that she's just about his girlfriend's size, so could she try them on and see how they fit? A fashion-show montage follows, after which he thanks her but says nothing is quite right. She shrugs and takes the clothes to be put away.
- Angry Birds on the Run: Parodied in S1 E16, where the birds find a box of clothes and decide to use them as a disguise against the guy with the net, and there is a montage of the birds trying on clothes. The clothes turn out to be a Paper-Thin Disguise that the guy with the net easily sees through.
Video Games
- Played for Laughs in Lunar: Eternal Blue: Lucia tries on several laughably inappropriate outfits at the carnival while Ronfar and Hiro play The Peeping Tom.
Visual Novels
- In Kissed by the Baddest Bidder, once Eisuke decides to have the protagonist act as his girlfriend the first order of business is to have her properly outfitted, which he accomplishes by taking her to a luxury clothing store and having her model a series of dresses until he finds one he approves of. The protagonist, who doesn't get much of a say in any of this, finds the whole experience confusing and exhausting rather than in any way enjoyable.
- Done twice in Melody:
- Melody and the protagonist do this while shopping for clothes for Melody’s upcoming school year. Melody surprises the protagonist by picking out dressier, more mature clothes than the ones she’s used to wearing.
- There’s also a version of this when Melody is picking her outfit for her photo shoot. She models the outfits for the protagonist, who helps her choose which one in which to pose.
Web Comics
- In Autumn Bay, Falchionne inflicts one of these on Lieutenant Bishop after he is transformed into a teenage girl by Nesariel.
- Dragon Ball Reboot has one where Gine tries out various outfits after Grandpa Gohan brings her to a fashion store.
- In Legend of Bill, Gina goes through a three-strip fashion shop fashion show after she's been body-swapped with the Evil Queen Vasheeva. It starts here.
Western Animation
- Played with in "South Park Is Gay!", in which the boys enthusiastically adopt the metrosexual lifestyle.
- In The Weekenders when Tish is looking for a new look after getting a "B" and being deemed no longer suitable to be considered the nerd, her friends organized this. Complete with scoring.
- Inevitably happens in "Clothes Minded", the episode of Kim Possible that mostly revolves around her search for a new mission outfit. The judgements come from her friend Monique, and ultimately nothing makes the grade.
- In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy go through this (in two different episodes), courtesy of Rarity. Though Twilight doesn't buy anything and Fluttershy is just modeling.
- Parodied along with the Makeover Montage in Clone High. Most notable, JFK and Ghandi, where Ghandi tries on what appears to be a carbon copy of JFK's striped shirt...three different times.
