Frills of Justice

No Magical Girl can be complete without a spiffy costume, decked out with frills and bling. While there are a huge variety of styles when it comes to such costumes, the pervading theme seems to be colorful, very girly, highly unlikely fighting gear meant to appeal to Rule of Cool, Rule of Cute, or Rule of Glamorous and whose impracticality never seems to get in the way of their ability to take out the bad guys. Impossibly Cool Clothes is definitely in effect here. Usually Suspension of Disbelief is required to belief such a costume to be ideal for fighting, though occasionally there will be a Hand Wave in the form of an explicit mention that the protection of the outfit is magical.

While every Magical Girl has her own unique costume, there are definitely some very common elements that pop up within the genre and which, when combined, become the iconic Magical Girl costume. The most common traits include:


 * A frilly skirt or dress. An overwhelming majority of the time this is a Mini Dress of Power. "Frilly" can mean pleats that echo the schoolgirl Sailor Fuku, large ballerina tutu ruffles, flowery fairy-style skirts, airy poofy skirts...and so on. More rare is a tight miniskirt or short shorts.
 * A distinctive, bright color scheme. Pinks and other pastels feature heavily but by no means have a monopoly. The Dark Magical Girl gets lots of black added to the palette. A team of magical girls will usually be Color Coded for Your Convenience.
 * Ribbons. It could be a Giant Waist Ribbon, it could be a prominent bow on the chest, it could be hair ribbons (see further down), it could be other ribbons that look cool when the girl is twirling in her Transformation Sequence.
 * Accessories and jewelry in an assortment of recurring motifs: hearts, stars, flowers, butterflies (especially Butterfly of Death and Rebirth and as symbols of metamorphosis that fit well with growing girls) wings and gems.
 * A signature accessory, rod, wand or weapon decked in the same motifs.
 * A Transformation Trinket, which may be the same item as above. It too may transform and integrate itself into the costume.

The more variable traits, trope-ified:

Whole Outfit Tropes

 * Battle Ballgown
 * Bare Your Midriff - A trait that is becoming more recently popular, mainly for older characters.
 * Fairytale Wedding Dress
 * Kimono
 * Leotard of Power - Almost never alone, usualy combined with the skirt.
 * Modesty Shorts
 * Sailor Fuku - Codename wa Sailor V and Sailor Moon are the first and most obvious examples but as iconic as they are on Japanese schoolgirls, echos of them appear in other designs.
 * Who Wears Short Shorts

Decoration Tropes

 * Chest Broach (placeholder)- often doubling as a Power Crystal.
 * Detached Sleeves
 * Flowy Ribbons (placeholder)
 * Giant Poofy Sleeves
 * Giant Waist Ribbon
 * Wings- especially for the leader of a Magical Girl team

Foot Gear Tropes

 * Combat Stilettos
 * Thigh High Boots
 * Zettai Ryouki

Accessory tropes

 * Cool Crown - A princess tiara or some form of circlet, specially if the Magical Girl has a princess origin story.
 * Some form of short cape.
 * Hair Decorations
 * Opera Gloves - or other fancy gloves
 * Power Crystal
 * Pretty Choker Necklace (placeholder)
 * Requisite Royal Regalia

Hair And Eye Tropes

 * Amazing Technicolor Hair
 * Curtains Match the Windows
 * Elemental Eye Colors
 * Girlish Pigtails
 * Odango Hair
 * Tomboyish Ponytail
 * Power Makes Your Hair Grow
 * Princess Curls
 * Mega Twintails

Other elements may include items from the Cute Witch motif, (i.e. a witch hat, which at one point was what Magical Girl meant.) and echoes of actual armor, like shoulder pads, arm bracers and such, though rarely actual armor. Magical girls who go through a mid-season, new season or plot-related power upgrade will often get a Frilly Upgrade for their costume to match.

A cousin trope to the Mini Dress of Power and Pimped Out Dress, subtrope to Impossibly Cool Clothes. This trope applies to Magical Girls only for anything else, please consult Costume Tropes.