Dress Hits Floor



It becomes necessary (or desirable) for a female character to take her clothes off in a non-cable show.

We cut to a shot of her slipping her dress off her shoulders -- then we cut down behind her feet and see the dress tumble to the floor around her legs.

See also Sexy Discretion Shot. Often overlaps with Toplessness From the Back, Sexy Coat Flashing. If the woman in question is barefoot, this can lead to a minor bit of Foot Focus.

Advertising

 * This Somper Furs ad plays with this trope. When a woman sees how good her fur coat looks in the mirror, she grabs the straps of her dress, and the next shot is her dress falling to the floor, indicating she is wearing nothing under the coat.

Anime & Manga

 * Diva pulls this one in Blood Plus. It then turns into Fan Disservice when
 * This happens out of nowhere in the Negima? OP.
 * In Bleach, Yoruichi pulls this on Ichigo, mostly for her amusement. (We only see the first bit of her clothes hitting the ground, and from there it's all Ichigo's increasingly panicked offscreen reactions.)
 * In The Movie of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Anthy strips so Utena won't be the only one naked (Anthy was drawing a nude portrait of Utena), and we cut to a shot of her feet as her skirt falls down her legs and to the floor. Everything else is in silhouette.
 * Token Mini Moe and humanoid weapon BW-Alpha in Crystal Blaze before she transforms.
 * In Black Lagoon Gretel does this. It's intended to be disturbing.

Films -- Live-Action
"Maude: Jeffrey.
 * More a dressing gown and involving two people doing it, but For Your Eyes Only.
 * Famously done in Titanic when Rose decides that she wants Jack to draw her wearing the Heart of the Ocean necklace. Wearing only the necklace.
 * James Bond
 * In Tomorrow Never Dies with Teri Hatcher's character and the discovery, via a Toplessness From the Back shot, that she's not wearing a bra.
 * Done as well in Diamonds Are Forever, You Only Live Twice... well, what James Bond movie is it not done in?
 * In Stardust, Lamia shows off her rejuvenated body in this fashion.
 * Juno: Cherry boy-briefs hit floor.
 * Appears in Gone With the Wind, when Melanie removes her nightgown to.
 * This scene in The Big Lebowski:

Dude: Maude?

(robe hits floor)

Maude: Love me.

Dude: That's my robe."


 * Done beautifully in The Thomas Crown Affair remake, by Rene Russo
 * In the The Man From UNCLE extended version movie, "The Spy With My Face", made from the first-season episode "The Double Affair", Senta Berger (playing the thrush Femme Fatale, Serena), walks into the bathroom of her luxury apartment where Napoleon Solo is taking a shower. (Long story.) The camera focuses on her legs and feet as she lets her dress fall to her feet, kicks her high-heeled shoes off, and then follows her nude legs as she walks into the shower. The scene fades out as Serena begins running her foot up and down Napoleon's wet, naked leg.

Literature

 * The trope is Older Than You Think. In the 1820 book poem Ruslan and Ludmila by Pushkin, in a description of a wedding night it says "On carpets of Byzantine splendour / The jealous covers fall".
 * In the epilogue of Wicked Lovely, Donia undoes the tie holding her skirt together, and it is strongly implied that her and Keenan have sex, but it's never described.
 * Alice Wroke executes this, plus Sexy Coat Flashing in The Demon Princes. Played with somewhat in that she has to take a minute to set it up. Clothes don't fall off all by themselves, you know.

Live-Action TV
"Hardison: ...Why am I looking away?"
 * Several in Xena: Warrior Princess, including two 'Shipperiffic ones: "The Reckoning" (ohdearpowers...) and "The Bitter Suite".
 * A variant on the trope -- with knickers -- occurs in The Last Enemy. Included the "Arm Bra" -- an above-chest shot with said character holding her bra in her outstretched hand.
 * Occurred with an episode of Kung Fu The Legend Continues.
 * When Anya "seduces" (in the "loosest" sense of the word) Xander for the first time in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. "Please remove your clothes now." And the amazing thing? "Still more romantic than Faith."
 * Done in Bottom when Richie is about to lose his virginity to Lady Natasha Letitia Sarah Jane Wellesley Extrong Skiponsong Smythe Smythe Smythe Smythe Smythe Oblomov Boblomov Dob, third Viscountess of Moldavia. The shot focuses on Richie's reaction as each garment hits him.
 * On the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica Reimagined, Number Six does this all the time.
 * Done in episode 4, season 1 of Veronica Mars, in which the protagonist strips off her dress and then goes skinny dipping.
 * Done at least once by Edie in Desperate Housewives; probably more times...
 * Mocked on Scrubs, when Jordan seduces J.D., we get the Between My Legs shot...of J.D.'s scrubs hitting the floor.
 * NCIS
 * The episode "Under Covers". And there was much Squee until after the opening credits.
 * In "Murder 2.0", a woman turns on her shower, Dress Hits Floor (more like bra hits floor), her husband puts on mood music, then blood starts spurting from the shower.
 * In the season 3 premiere of Leverage, played comically with Parker, who's trying (badly) to strike mistress poses for Photoshop mock-ups that the crew needs for a job, then in her Asperger's/carefree manner, simply drops the dress, causing Hardison and Sophie to awkwardly look away.


 * In Cop Series Hunter, there is an episode where a rich woman robbed by some criminal finds him and bargains for return of some jewelry piece. When the robber suggests she is "wired", she drops her clothes to the floor top prove she is not.
 * Done in Veronica Mars. Veronica has a flashback scene to a game of Never Have I Ever, where it comes out that she's never skinny dipped. The end of the episode has her dropping her dress on the beach to do so.

Music
"''Walking through the front door
 * Non-visual, but the chorus of Chris Young's "Gettin' You Home" definitely applies:

Seeing your black dress hit the floor''"

"''She don't play nice, she makes me beg her
 * Lorrie Morgan's "Out of Your Shoes" starts off with "You borrowed my favorite dress" and then ends with this trope.
 * My Darkest Days -- "Porn Star Dancin'"

She drops that dress around her legs

And I'm sittin' right by the stage

With this porn star dancing''"

Music Videos

 * The beginning of the video for "Talking in Your Sleep" by The Romantics.
 * The Kylie Minogue video "On a Night Like This" has this happen twice (both involving her stripping down after she exits a pool).
 * The video for "Getting You Home" by Chris Young ends with this.

Video Games

 * Final Fantasy X did the wetsuit variation again, with Rikku. Though hers was slightly more on-screen. (She was wearing shorts and a top underneath it anyway.)
 * In Geralt's interlude with the Princess Adda in The Witcher, as her dress comes down she rips off his wolfshead medallion and throws it to the floor, where it is shown to be vibrating furiously. The added significance of this is that the medallion is tuned to vibrate in the presence of monsters, and Princess Adda had been cursed into a monstrous form in the past.

Web Original

 * Happens in a joke trailer for Passion of the Christ 2 set in the modern day. Skip to 2:05. See the rest of the trailer as well.

Western Animation

 * Kim Possible has a version of this, except that it is a wetsuit that hits the ground.
 * Parodied in Tek Jansen, the Colbert Report show-within-a-show, when Abraxxxia undresses. Due to the complexity of the armour she's wearing, Random Metal Objects Hit Floor for some time. (The last one is a tray of muffins, which... let's just say it makes sense in context. There was a muffin joke on The Daily Show that day.)
 * Brutally subverted (and mixed with Sexy Coat Flashing) on The Mask episode "Flight as a Feather." During a bill-signing ceremony, Mayor Tilton's ex-girlfriend, Cookie (an exotic dancer with an apparent suicide bomber streak) crashes the ceremony and storms the stage. The mayor's aide tries to stop her, and she opens her trenchcoat and flashes him, leaving the mayor's aide to growl lecherously and comment, "Dy-no-mite!" Once the dress hits the floor, it turns out Cookie is fully-clothed -- in two megatons worth of explosives strapped around her bust and waist.
 * On The Critic, a lonely Jay imagines the Statue of Liberty doing this, her dress dropping with a loud clang.