Woman in White

For the Wilkie Collins novel and related works, see The Woman in White.


"''"Old Monterey on a Hot, Dusty Night Walking, no car, bus delayed Then from a door comes a girl all in white I don't know where she is, but I've got to find her..."''"

- Bob Welch, "Something Strong"

There's something about a Woman In White that just draws the eye and sets the imagination alight. Not just a blouse or skirt, but a completely white ensemble. We're talking shoes, dress, scarf, purse, hat, lipstick and sometimes even hair.

Maybe they're eccentric, mad, evil (this one especially), possibly even already dead, but they're always important to the plot, usually powerful in one way or another. And most importantly: they've got style.

All the symbolism behind the color white may be involved, but it might just be fashion. If it's just fashion, then it implies a fastidious neatness, and an ability to "keep clean" even if one is not, usually by "not getting their hands dirty". If symbolism is to be had, it can range from purity to death.

Chiaroscuro may be used to make the white even more vivid.

Age is not important; even quite young girls may feature as the Woman in White, which tend to make them the Creepy Child as well. And while this trope is almost Always Female, lately, there are more and more male characters that fit in as well. Compare to Lady in Red and Little Dead Riding Hood, where the age difference produces a very different trope.

A Winter Royal Lady is often a Woman in White, as is a woman in a traditional Fairytale Wedding Dress.

The woman in white is usually the before of the Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress. White Shirt of Death is also possible. The Bedsheet Ghost is related. Ghosts are often portrayed as silent women in white, known as Grey Ladies.

Compare Pink Means Feminine, True-Blue Femininity.

Contrast Princesses Prefer Pink, Little Black Dress. Compare/Contrast Man in White, Evil Albino, Woman in Black, and the more explicit about significance Gold and White Are Divine.

Anime and Manga

 * When portayed in color, Athenas personall assistant Nike in Appleseed is always dressed in white and blond as well.
 * Sawako of Kimi ni Todoke dons a white dress, pretending to be a ghost during her school's courage test. Combined with her pale skin, black hair, and semi-creepiness/fierce determination to make her peers happy, she manages to look like Sadako.
 * Lind in Ah! My Goddess.
 * Lua Klein in Baccano!. Although the reason why she does so is because her Ax Crazy fiancee insists. Y'know, so the blood (from his victims) will show up better.
 * There's a scene at the end of Kotomi's arc in Clannad in which she wears a white dress.
 * Also, the Girl from the Illusionary World/ is shown only in a white dress.
 * Aura, from .hack. She's got the white hair, too. It's actually a very pale lavender but it's close enough.
 * Helba as well. She takes the darker forms of this trope. Within the setting, she's an infamous hacker, though she is portrayed as one of the protagonists as, unlike most of CC Corp, she actually knows and cares what's going in in The World (the game the series takes place in) and takes it seriously and works to find a true solution rather then just shutting the game down. Her name is also pulled from the Queen of Darkness in the Epic poem The World is based on.
 * Madlax, final episodes, the white cocktail dress.
 * The evil Society of Light in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has both male and female members.
 * The Wili Maiden in Princess Tutu, the ghost of a woman who committed suicide and now tries to bring young men into the afterlife, dresses in an all-white tutu with white tights. Of course, she's based on a character from a ballet which shares the name of the episode--"Giselle".
 * Athena in Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer, who Misaki refers to as "the white angel".
 * From Bleach, Rukia Kuchiki, during the Soul Society Arc. Later,.
 * Also, every single female Arrancar falls under this trope.
 * Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
 * And her tragic Expy, Tomoe from Rurouni Kenshin.
 * from Mai-HiME, as
 * Cyborg 009 loves the trope, since the 2001 series has several: Artemis, Hera, Princess Ixquic, little Arisu and three of the five Pu'Awak sisters (Aphros, Deena and Daphne).
 * Sailor Cosmos from Sailor Moon is a sailor senshi from a future where  Her costume is all white, including her hair. Of course, this isn't the case in the anime.
 * C.C. from Code Geass.
 * Pretty much every girl in Aria.
 * Kirakishou from Rozen Maiden originally had white hair and a white dress, though sometimes she is also shown with a pale pink dress, pale pink hair or both.
 * Miyu from Vampire Princess Miyu usually wears a white short kimono with an either red or lilac sash.
 * Meiko "Menma" Honma of Ano Hana. She's a Cute Ghost Girl, and she was wearing a white dress when she drowned and died.
 * Oriko of Oriko Magica, at least in her Magical Girl outfit.
 * Kanzeon Bosatsu from Saiyuki is a Man/Woman in white
 * Horribly subverted in a Filler Detective Conan case, where the Woman in White is the actress Akiko Kinoshita... who only wears white clothes when her lifeless body is found in the snow.
 * Black Butler:  wears a True-Blue Femininity Meido outfit in her first few appearances. After The Reveal, her wardrobe shifts to white and remains so in all her subsequent appearances.
 * In Peacemaker Kurogane, although male, Okita Souji plays the woman in white when out-of-uniform, using feminine speech patterns and invoking the innocence aspect of white with his cute pet pig and a fondness for sweets and playing with children. Of course, to those who know him it's a double-entendre of sorts, with the death-and-mourning aspects of white evoking his deadliness as a swordsman.
 * Seika "Mariana" Akishima from Amakusa 1637. When she and her friends became Time Travelers stuck in the Amakusa area before the Shimabara rebellion, she was wearing a white Pimped-Out Dress instead of their school uniforms, so said white gown becomes her trademark clothing.
 * Austria's Nyotalia form is often portrayed as one, in contrast to Fem!Prussia.

Comic Books

 * Formerly known as "The White Queen", X-Men's Emma Frost is seldom seen costumed in any color that isn't white. Civilian clothes are a different matter (or at least used to be).
 * This was probably her dress preference long before becoming the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, which is why the uniform of office suited her for over a decade. Other White Queens also fit the trope.
 * More Marvel Comics examples:
 * Silver Sable's costumes are pale enough to pass for white, only slightly darker than her hair.
 * Dagger from Cloak and Dagger wore all white in contrast to Cloak's black.
 * Done with Elisa Cameron, the protagonist of the Dark Horse comic Ghost.
 * At the end of the first issue of the new Birds of Prey series, an Asian woman in white called "White Canary" has shown up. Given her Badassitude, two possibilities for who she is spring to Black Canary's mind: Cassandra Cain or Lady Shiva. Oh Crap...She turns out to be.
 * Wonder Woman, in her "New Wonder Woman"/"Diana Prince" stories from the early '70s, frequently (though not invariably) wore all-white outfits, including a Spy Catsuit that came to visually define that version of the character. She owned a mod clothing boutique in these stories, so it was probably a fashion statement.
 * The Stunt-Girl Counterspies of Jet Dream wear all-white jumpsuits on the job.

Film
"Carrie Fisher: It's not really possible to write out a list of Princess Leia's likes and dislikes. I do know her favorite color, though, it's white. She wears white all the time."
 * Lady Snowblood, who inspired Kill Bill's O-Ren Ishii.
 * The Dangerous Woman in A Prairie Home Companion wears a white trenchcoat.
 * Asami Yamazaki in Audition is shown dressed in white throughout the film,.
 * Lucy in Bram Stokers Dracula.
 * The 1988 film The Lady in White features a ghostly woman in a white flowing gown.
 * Diane from Say Anything tends to wear white.
 * Cool World's Holli Would dresses in white (albeit her clothes are quite Stripperiffic as a cartoon); besides being slutty as hell, she is the closest to a villain we get.
 * Averted with Switch in The Matrix. All of the other human characters dress in black inside the Matrix, but Switch doesn't play any particularly important role (other than her death).
 * Mirana, the White Queen in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, not only wears all white, but has pale white skin and long white hair.
 * Princess Tamina, the resident Barrier Maiden of Prince of Persia the Sands of Time, dresses in white.
 * Princess Leia Organa from Star Wars:


 * Melie, heroine of noir film Rider on the Storm, is dressed in white through the entire movie. It works symbolically, as relates to her character; but since the actress is a gamine dark-skinned brunette, it's also rather odd.
 * In Dead End, a mysterious woman in a white dress repeatedly appears to a family lost in the woods on vacation.
 * Nina of Black Swan, in contrast to Lily's Woman in Black.
 * Esmeralda wore a long, white dress at the end of Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
 * In The Princess and the Frog, Tiana imagines herself in a classy white dress during her "I Want" Song, seen here. When she actually gets her restaurant, however, she wears green in reference to her and Naveen's froggy adventure.
 * Iris in The Natural wears a white dress and a huge white hat to watch Roy play against the Cubs. He's in a bad slump, but in his last at-bat, he turns around and glimpses her standing in the brilliant afternoon light. Naturally (ha), he smacks a home run into the scoreboard clock and the papers the next day read The Knight and the Lady in White.
 * Juliet in William Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet, until after her wedding to Romeo. She also dies wearing a white dress.
 * Mrs. Myers in the Halloween 2 remake.
 * Elysia is like an angel in Warriors of Virtue.
 * Helen Mirren in the 2010 movie RED.
 * The armory sirens in Tron: Legacy, specifically Gem.
 * Dame Judi Dench's character in The Chronicles of Riddick.
 * Debbie Salt in the climax of Scream 2.
 * Lilli appears at a party in pure white gown in Snow White a Tale of Terror, which is visually striking as no one else does this. Plot-wise, it also spurs memories of her mother (it was her gown once), which makes her father nostalgic and sends her stepmother straight into labor.

Literature

 * Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings is described as "wholly clad in white" by Tolkien, and faithfully depicted as such in the films.
 * There's also Eowyn, the White Lady of Rohan.
 * Aredhel in The Silmarillion, also called 'The White Lady of the Noldor'.
 * In CS Lewis's Narnia series, the White Witch.
 * Lanfear in The Wheel of Time usually wears white.
 * In the novel of Welcome to The NHK, Misaki is introduced wearing all white.
 * The Woman in White is the title of Wilkie Collins's Victorian mystery novel, the plot of which revolves around a mysterious woman in white.
 * In The Secret Garden, Mary wears white. This is because her mother has died, and her guardian finds black too much for such a young child. (In Victorian times, children could wear white, though no colors, in mourning.)
 * In GK Chesterton's The Tales of the Long Bow, Owen Hood fell in Love At First Sight with a woman he met in the woods, wearing white. When he sees her again, coming out of a tea-room, in blue, it is a shock to him to realize that she could wear blue (and be seen out of the woods).
 * Ravenclaw's house ghost in Harry Potter,, known as The Grey Lady.
 * Admiral Ar'alani of Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn isn't strictly all in white. She wears a white admiral's uniform, contrasting to the other Chiss - politicians wear their family colors, other members of the Defense Force wear black - which is implied to have the standard decorations. Plus, she's a Chiss, with blue skin and glowing red eyes. Interestingly, she's an ascension of Ari Roselani, a fan who first met Timothy Zahn while dressed as Thrawn, a (male) Chiss admiral all in white.
 * In Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novel Turn Coat, Harry observes that when they meet Madeline, she is "of course" all in white.
 * Not to mention Lara Raith. Though it almost seems to be Lady in White.
 * They're Vampires of the White Court. If it's not white or silver, they're probably not wearing it. Which is part of their appeal.
 * There's also Queen Mab, THE Lady in White. She pulls this off especially well when appearing for the first time.
 * The Ghost In The Third Row by Bruce Coville features a ghost called the Woman In White, an actress who had been murdered in the theater fifty years ago. The fact that the protagonists in the book were putting on the play of her origin story gets her attention...
 * Lily Weatherwax in Witches Abroad always wears white as part of her plan to cast herself as "the good one."
 * Lydia, the mother of Rosilda and Arild  in Maria Gripe's ...och de vita skuggorna i skogen ("...and the White Shadows in the Forest") only ever dressed in white or black, depending on her mood (a trait she took over from her mysticist mother), and usually carried a bouquet of white roses as well.
 * Kahlan Amnell of the Sword of Truth series. She is introduced as a very mysterious woman who is obviously very important, matching the archetype. It is later revealed that a white dress is the official dress code of the Mother Confessor, the most powerful woman in the Midlands.
 * Sephrenia, in the Elenium trilogy by David Eddings, always wears a white robe, somewhat clerical in nature. As she eventually explains, she is a member of the clergy, being the High Priestess of the Styric goddess Aphrael.
 * Camilla from The Secret History is mentioned as often wearing white, in contrast to everyone else at Hampden, who generally wears black. (She frequently borrows Charles' clothes, too. The two are described at one point as looking like "long-dead celebrants from some forgotten garden party".)
 * There's that poem/ghost story - I think it was by Lord Byron, but he might have just been reciting it - about a woman in white.

Live Action TV

 * Highlander the Series has Rebecca Horne, Amanda's mentor.
 * The pilot episode of Supernatural features a Woman in White.
 * There are also all the girls in white nightgowns who get killed by the Monster of the Week, or the girl in the white hospital gown who caused people in her town to act out fairy tales... Let's just say that women wearing white on Supernatural are either going to be the victim or the villain.
 * Dollhouse. Dr. Saunders (technically ) in.
 * Battlestar Galactica:
 * Although usually a Lady in Red, Head-Six wears white on Kobol (home of the Gods) and in the Opera House visions.
 * D'Anna (the Cylon 'Three' model) wears white in the Season 3 episodes where she becomes obsessed with the connection between life and death. Eventually, her religious fervour, plus her forbidden inquiries about the Final Five, cause her entire line to be boxed.
 * Servalan in Blakes Seven wears all white until late S2.
 * Doctor Who:
 * A mysterious woman wearing all white and credited only as "The Woman" appears in "The End of Time", giving mysterious messages mostly to Wilfred Mott.
 * River Song, the mysterious woman hinted to play a hugely important role sometime in the Doctor's personal future, first appears in the two-parter "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" dressed in a white spacesuit. She ends the two-part story dressed in a white gown.
 * When we first see Monica, the main character of Touched By an Angel, she's barefoot and wearing a simple white dress.
 * A one-shot character in Farscape has white skin, hair, and clothes...and turns out to be the bad guy.
 * Smallville, Season 10, episode 12: returns, seemingly with magical powers, dressed all in white. As it turns out, the cast are actually  and her white-clad status indicates that she is hacking in from the outside.
 * In True Blood, Sookie Stackhouse in season one (particularly before she sleeps with Bill for the first time) is often dressed in white. Her waitress uniform includes a white t-shirt (where she first meets Bill and frequently afterward); in episode two, where she and Bill take a walk together and share their first kiss, she wears a white dress; during both of her dream sequances about Bill, her night gown is white (and so is her dress within one of the dreams); the night of her grandmothers funeral, just before losing her virginity to Bill, she removes her black funeral dress and puts on a long white one. A few days prior to this she and Bill go to Fangtasia, the local vampire bar, and she meets her other love interest Eric Northman. On the ride over to the bar, Bill says she "looks like vampire bait". She is wearing a white and red floral dress.
 * In Merlin, Prince Arthur sees the spirit of his mother Queen Igraine wearing a very, very pale gold dress - it's practically white, and the costume colour was no doubt chosen to acknowledge the supernatural aspects of this trope.

Music

 * Lights in the video for Second Go. Until she gets covered in paint, anyway
 * A curly-haired, barefoot Woman in White (allegedly played by Susanne Muller-Pi) is seen dancing and singing in Peter Schilling's video "Different Story"
 * In the concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, there's a character called "Lilywhite Lilith" who falls into this trope. It's implied that she's not even human, but rather some kind of cave creature.
 * Amy Lee loves this.
 * The unnamed girl from the Pet Shop Boys video Domino Dancing first appears in a white short dress. When, though, she's seen as a Woman in Black too, though she later shows up in the white dress again.

Video Games

 * Liara T'Soni wears a rather stunning white combat outfit during and after Lair of the Shadow Broker in Mass Effect 2.
 * Namine in the Kingdom Hearts series.
 * Yorda in Ico is a good example of this trope, even if her dress does have brown accents. Also, Mono in Ico's spiritual successor/prequel Shadow of the Colossus to an extent - again, despite non-white accents on her dress.
 * In the game Summoner, there is a mysterious Woman In White who turns out to be  In her first appearance, King Belias mistakes her for a ghost.
 * Merrill's upgrade outfit in Dragon Age 2 is white and polished silver.
 * Hotel Dusk: Room 215: Mila.
 * In Final Fantasy VIII, Rinoa's first appearance is in a short white dress.
 * In one of the endings of the first Silent Hill games, one of the names of the End Boss is Women in White.
 * KAEDE Smith in Killer7, with the Carmilla Smiles being some twisted variant of that.
 * In The Path, there's a mysterious girl in white who inhabits the woods.
 * in Chrono Cross.
 * , and conversely  when we first see her in the prologue of Blazblue: Calamity Trigger's storymode.
 * Fina from Skies of Arcadia.
 * Let us not forget the lovely Kirie from Fatal Frame, as well as the second game's Sae.
 * In the Touhou fan game Concealed The Conclusion, the final battle with has her dressed in white, mainly because.
 * In The Path for PC/Mac, a girl literally named Girl In White by the game developers leads you back to the path to Grandmother's house if you stay still long enough. Some speculate that she is a spirit who wants to protect the granddaughters from meeting their Wolves while others suggest she is a long-lost sister to the granddaughters or perhaps the grandmother herself. Curiously, while the Girl in White does indeed wear all white and is young, her skin tone and hair color are fairly dark.
 * Zelda in her Shrine Maiden dress in The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword.
 * Mildred Avalon of Arcana Heart, also a case of Light Is Not Good.
 * The Nameless Sister from Turgor.
 * Fire Emblem has numerous examples:
 * Rena, Elice and Maria in Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light / Mystery of the Emblem.
 * Edain, Tailto, Lana (or her expy Manna), Deirdre, Yuria, and Linda in Geneaology of the Holy War.
 * Safy, Selphina and Linoan in Thracia 776.
 * Ellen in The Sealed Sword. Also, when Lilina is promoted to Sage, her sprite changes into a Woman in White one, despite official artwork showing that she's dressed in red and blue instead.
 * Ninian, Isadora and Eleanora in The Blazing Blade.
 * Natasha and L'Arachel in The Sacred Stones.
 * Leanne in Path of Radiance, and Micaiah in Radiant Dawn after her second class change.
 * Gardevoir from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire resembles a beautiful young woman wearing a long, flowing white dress. Subverted by the fact that Gardevoir can actually be both genders.
 * One shows up in The Seventh Guest from time to time.
 * Princess Peach in the original Super Mario Bros game.
 * The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater wears a mostly-white sneaking suit that makes her look like a ghost in several scenes. In this case, white probably symbolizes, but it also foreshadows the field of white flowers where you will at the end of the game.
 * In Hellsinker we have the human form of.
 * In Nie R Kaine wears white with her white hair and pale skin.
 * Deus Ex Human Revolution's Megan Reed fits the trope to a tee, up to and including her ambiguous loyalties.

Visual Novels

 * Ace Attorney's Dahlia Hawthorne wears an all-white outfit, including a semi-transparent shawl and a parasol, in stark contrast with her red hair.
 * In Fate/stay night, Ilyasviel von Einzbern is a homunculus Evil Albino/Heroic Albino Elegant Gothic Lolita. Normally, she wears purple, but her magical Dress of Heaven is white. Her mother, Irisviel, had the same wardrobe in Fate/Zero.
 * Arcueid a.k.a. The White Princesses of Shinso in Tsukihime is particularly fond of white clothes for a vampire.
 * White Len also fits, following the Creepy Child variant.
 * Saya in Saya no Uta.

Web Comics

 * In Gunnerkrigg Court, there's a ghost lady in white haunting the Annan River.
 * "...she died and we did nothing."
 * Lately, Ms. Jones has been seen wearing white.
 * In Girl Genius, the Geisterdamen (German for "ghost maiden") are a race of female monsters (it's not mentioned how they reproduce) who are entirely white, including hair, skin and clothing.
 * Melissa in Antihero for Hire.
 * As in the original, the T-Girls of the Remix Comic version of Jet Dream wear all-white outfits. Harmony Thunder doubly so, as she is also often represented by artwork from the "Diana Prince, Wonder Woman" stories (see above).
 * In The Water Phoenix King, Commander Corva's usual working clothes, which are her vestments as a priestess of a storm god, make her this; the outfit also has a very nice hat. Off-duty, she tends to wear earth tones.
 * In Sluggy Freelance, Gwynn's counterpart in "the Dimension of Lame" mostly wears a white robe (and when she does, that's almost invariably the entirety of her outfit that you can see), which goes with her status as a good wizard of sorts whose power still came at a price.

Western Animation

 * In Teen Titans, Raven becomes this from time to time.

Real Life

 * Emily Dickinson became something of a local celebrity in her town, as during the few times she ever left her house, she would always wear completely white outfits.
 * Death is considered to wear white in some places in Asia. White is also the traditional colour of mourning in Islam.
 * La Llorona, a Mexican myth about a crying ghost, is also called this.
 * Just about every Spanish-speaking country has mythology related to La Llorona, even Spain. Generally speaking, though, the story is usually the same: she was a beautiful young mistress who tried to permanently win the heart of the man she loved by drowning her own children because she knew he wasn't all that fond of kids. It wasn't until he called her out on it that she realized how horrifying her actions were and promptly drowned herself in an effort to find her children. Naturally, she's a ghost said to haunt riversides calling for her children.
 * There is another myth about white dressed women, it's about the Mulher de Branco (it means exactly the trope name), in Brazilian North / Northeast. She is the ghost of a bride that died (mostly killed) before entering the church to marry, and now, searches for her groom near the place she died, usually in a dark, creepy forest. If she finds a man she thinks is like her groom, she takes him to the world of dead with her... Unless said man runs like hell, which they promptly do.
 * A more recent one was "la rubia de Kennedy" ("blonde woman of Kennedy Avenue"). In The Seventies, a young Chilean woman named Martha Infante died in an accident in said Avenue, and for several years, her ghost supposedly haunted the corner where she perished. The "ghost" was a blonde girl wearing a white coat who would ask for a ride, then tell the driver 'please don't drive so fast' and vanish.
 * People who want to enter into Yoruba and Santeria "priesthood" must wear white clothes for a full year (minimum) before being officially invested, the only color element being their necklaces. Albeit this is done for both sexes, but women stand out more.
 * Newark, NJ has a local legend about a lady in white haunting Branch Brook Park. Story goes that a car accident killed a girl whilest her boyfriend/fiance/husband/prom date was driving and she haunts the place to this day.
 * The standard description for female ghosts in the Philippines is a woman all in white with long black hair that obscures her face. Often believed to be virginal and the subject of a violent death (probably rape), she's commonly known as a "White Lady."
 * In Oberlin, Ohio, there is a story of a woman in white that haunts the lake in a local park.
 * In Bohemia, there's the legend of the White Lady, the ghost of Perchta of Rožmberk.
 * In the Netherlands, there are legends of Witte Wieven, "White Women". They're spirits of women who were kidnapped by other Witte Wieven. Depending on where the story is set, they're either Exclusively Evil or just want to be left alone. A version of the tale this city girl was told tells of a drunk farmer walking home through the forest when he meets a woman dressed in white, and he asks her to dance. Which she does, all night long, until daybreak rolls around and the farmer drops dead at her feet.
 * Mary Queen of Scots was famous for her frequent use of white within her wardrobe. This is thought to be in part because she was often in mourning for either her father in law, mother, husband or second husband, and in part that she looked very good in white (and apparently wanted to marry her first husband Francis in it, during a time when white was not commonly worn in weddings, red being the preferred choice, long before she entered her period of mourning.
 * Both St. Bernadette and the kids at Fatima, Portugal initially reported seeing "a beautiful young lady all in white". Considering all these legends about terrible ghost women, it's no wonder their parents got upset, although some people figured Bernadette was seeing a harmless revenant spirit.
 * Although it's well known that the Victorian era had a predominance of using blacks and shades of grey as mourning colours, what's less well known is that it had been traditional to wear white as a mourning colour. This started dying out during the Victorian era but continued to be a colour worn to funerals and to visit the graves of loved ones right up until WW 1. However, Queen Victoria, who always wore mourning black while in Britain, would change to all-white attire when visiting France due to the tradition of white being the mourning colour of French royalty.