How to Describe a Person’s Clothing

This is a small thing, but can make the difference between a believable story or not. When your characters come on

Photo credit: Yuelcalnabi

stage, readers want to know what they look like. What they are wearing, including shoes, jewelry, dresses, suits–whatever. Give a quick description and be done with it. Do be sure, though, if your female character has boots on, don’t have her feet wet from a puddle.

Note: These are in no particular order, pretty much how I discovered them and wrote them down:

• Wore martial arts slippers
• Collar of his greatcoat
• Poor taste in clothes
• Top button of his shirt was undone, exposing his undershirt
• Middle-aged, wavy-haired brunette packed tightly into a peacock-blue knockoff Chanel suit.
• He wore a yellow-and-blue window-pane shirt, a big-knotted red tie of gleaming silk brocade, leather knit suspenders.
• Round spectacles tinted pink
• Wearing tan slacks and a powder-blue golf shirt, a thick gold chain around his neck. He chewed gum.
• The driver was a big guy, wearing a steel-gray suit, wine-colored necktie and sunglasses.
• Wore a rumpled suit and a tie that wasn’t knotted properly
• He was not a man who wore suits well
• Wore a faded gray David Lynch Rules sweatshirt, wrinkled cargo pants, high lace-up boots
• Tight beige cotton pants and a loose cotton shirt striped with shades of blue and pink and red. No panty line.
• His khaki shirt wet with spots of perspiration around his collar and under his arms
• Dark blue tie, plain gold cufflinks and a pair of black lace-up Derby shoes.
• Tweed jacket, coat
• Tight sleeveless tunic over crop pants
• Despite that, and the ugliest Aloha shirt I’d ever seen
• With their beaded purses and gem-studded slippers, their arched eyebrows and raccoon eyes
• Dust-streaked plaid shirt and faded Levis
• Graying heavyset man with wire-rimmed glasses
• His tshirt contoured around his body like wet kleenex

 

• Sturdy, compact body, neatly dressed in a pressed suit, shined shoes and perfectly rolled-up sleeves
• Tan jacket. Brown pants, black shoes, a groove in his forehead from a hat now resting on his lap.
• Cheap sports coat he might have stolen from a used care salesman
• Power suits, this morning a dark blue worsted
• Wore an ill-fitting gray suit over a pale blue shirt and a 1980’s navy blue tie. Taking fashion direction from NYPD Blue

For more descriptors for characters and settings, click here.