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 Willing Suspension of Disbelief is required in order to accept that such a costume is 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, usually 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 Brooch - often doubling as a Power Crystal.
 * Detached Sleeves
 * Flowy Ribbons
 * Giant Poofy Sleeves
 * Giant Waist Ribbon
 * Wings- especially for the leader of a Magical Girl team

Legwear and Footgear 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
 * 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), 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 Standard Superhero Suits, or Costume Tropes.

Anime and Manga

 * Sailor Moon. Along with its predecessor Codename: Sailor V it defined the "miniskirted sailor fuku" look for Magical Girls.
 * Futari wa Pretty Cure. Given its more self-aware, Post Modern sensibilities, its magical girls have outfits that are a bit more realistic.  While both certainly have their frills, Cure Black's outfit has a bare minimum, the better to suit her more rough-and-tumble Action Girl style, and White has just enough more to distinguish her as the Girly-Girl in their Tomboy and Girly Girl pairing.
 * Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei's Magical Girl spoof, the Model Warrior plays this trope straight. Also for once, the pink one is not the leader.
 * The Lyrical Nanoha outfits, which have very distinctive military elements as well as traditional elements. Nanoha Takamachi is one example, she wears a dress which has Giant Poofy Sleeves. After the timeskip, the girls got shorter skirts. With Fate Testarossa, her initial outfit's upgrade has frills. Her last resort Sonic Form reverses it though, this leaves Fate with naught but skin-tight clothing to "make her faster."
 * Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Madoka's magical girl outfit is the closest to this. Though her peers have elements in their outfits.
 * Agents of the Realm did a spoof on this - Though the dresses are nice, when a monster showed up for the first time, the girls have to pursue it on foot. They were delayed, since they have to pause and untangle themselves from the branches and shrubs of the forest.
 * The Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!'s Magical Boys wear these when they change into their Battle Lovers form.
 * Magic Knight Rayearth is an early subversion, in that the girls do not get special outfits, but pieces of armor which they wear over their normal school uniforms. Over time the armor expands and covers more of their bodies, but defies the Frilly Upgrade trope by not actually getting fancier.  Ignoring that they're schoolgirls wearing school uniforms, the result is eminently practical for actual combat.
 * Played with, like so many other tropes, by Revolutionary Girl Utena. When she ascends the tower for a duel Utena's regular uniform gains a few fairly minimal militaristic touches -- a bit of a petticoat, epaulettes with a shoulder cord, a few other minor details.  But in addition to being relatively subtle compared to your usual Magical Girl, the later Transformation Sequences in the series suggest it's an affect that Anthy applies to her, not something inherent to her position as the Prince.

Comic Books

 * W.I.T.C.H.. After the girls got new powers in erm..."New Powers" arc of in the show, they got new outfits, which has new gloves, even personal symbols on their costumes, bigger wings, and Rapunzel Hair. A bonus feature, their new uniforms really defends their wearers from attacks by moving strips of cloths. Even the accessories can turn into new weapons later on.

Fan Works

 * Sailor Nothing, as its name would suggest, follows Sailor Moon's lead with fuku-clad magical girls.

Live-Action Television

 * Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, the Live Action Adaptation of Sailor Moon from 2002, just barely manages to make the sailor fuku uniforms work.

Music

 * Intentionally or not, the usual costumes worn by the girls of BABYMETAL clearly echo this aesthetic.

Video Games

 * City of Heroes, which has a ridiculously extensive costume creator, not only makes it possible to design virtually any set of Frills ever seen or imagined, it actively encourages it -- and with the way costume parts unlocked or were dropped, it also encouraged frequent Frilly Upgrades.  Even better, after the game's resurrection in 2019, every possible costume part was made available to players, allowing for maximum frillage from level 1.

Web Comics
"Yuki: M...Mr. Largo-san!! This not right! I agree maid dress and skirt bad, but...m...magic girl supposed war cute thing! Not- Largo: You wanna look cute or kick ass?"
 * In Megatokyo, this trope was reversed and lampshaded in strip [ ]. After Yuki became a Magical Girl, she dons on Meido dress and a pair of cute meganekko glasses. Later, Largo gives her Cool Shades and a combat outfit. Yuki responds:


 * Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki, judging from [ this particular strip], Chiaki appears to knows why frills and ribbons are insanely superior armor.

Western Animation

 * Winx Club's Charmix arc, the brooches and purses are now added to the fairy outfits to the characters' first power ups. Season 3, the Charmix were abandoned completely and the girls got new Enchantix outfits and powers. This was meant as a new fresh start for the uniforms. Then season 4, these uniforms were also abandoned and replaced with the Believix uniforms. Plus, there's also the 2 sub-transformations, Sophix and Lovix. When Season 5 and 6 rolls around, will bring their own outfits.