February 27, 1996. A date that can feel like a lifetime ago, literally for those who were born after 1996 (probably almost everyone reading this article). A date that may not mean much to many of you (for anyone that you know born on that day, happy birthday, and for anybody who achieved a milestone on it, congratulations), but a date that is intrinsically significant for fans of a particular franchise full of powerful creatures, appealing world-building media, and a game that tried to blend imagination with reality. If you read the title, you know what I am talking about.

You, reader, I wager that you clicked on this post either because you love Pokémon or because you are curious and with some time in your hands (also, you may like my style of writing, and if this is the main reason you are here, I am exceedingly obliged). So, for those who grew up with Pokémon, you may know the importance of a 25-year celebration, a milestone that marks the longevity of something that exists because of the love and appreciation fans have for it. Since I am a fan of Pokémon myself, I couldn’t let the opportunity go to write about something that I love. Moreover, because this is a fashion blog, I will discuss the importance of character outfits and style as a general component of world-building and the effect a brand can have on people’s personal image. And for those who consume Pokémon through media osmosis, know that you won’t feel lost as I will walk everybody through the celebration details and the different forms of fashion expression found in and outside the games and anime.

Fun fact (and this one I think is relatively popular): Pokémon is the highest-grossing media franchise of all time. So, how does a billion’s worth franchise celebrate its own anniversary? In the first two months of 2021, they... announced a musical program that will culminate in an album with 14 tracks released by Capitol Records featuring Katy Perry, J Balvin, Post Malone, and more; partnered with McDonald’s (again) to release an exclusive collection of trade cards; collaborated with Levi Strauss & Co and Zavvi to launch new clothing lines; distributed special Pikachu that can learn the move Sing (a direct nod to the musical program); announced New Pokémon Snap’s release date for April 30th and the next video game titles Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, Pokémon Shining Pearl, and Pokémon Legends: Arceus (a shocking and pleasant surprise since Legends promises to be open-world, providing a possible new formula to reinvent the main series games); and held a virtual concert featuring animated Post Malone singing censored versions of Psycho, Circles, Congratulations, and a remix of the song Only Wanna Be With You by Hootie & The Blowfish. The Only Wanna Be With You remix adds in some chord progressions and instruments from classic Pokémon city themes like Ecruteak City’s to create a pleasant result that I recommend everybody checking out (the smoothness of the melody reminds me a lot of Sunflower).

Ok, that was quite a lot. But I assure you, the Pokémon Company and Nintendo will not sleep on the opportunity to make 2021 a year of celebration. They are planning on doing a lot more throughout the year, including releasing the star-studded musical album and even more brand deals, so if you want to know more, follow Pokémon on their social media, check out their website, or just read the news as I assure you, people are going to talk about the franchise year-round. But maybe you are also thinking, “I love a particular Pokémon design, or even if I don’t share a deep connection with the franchise, I want to celebrate the 25th anniversary in some way to have something else to be joyful about during the Pandemic by styling myself with Pokémon-related clothing.” (You don’t need to, but hey, it is an excellent segue to my next point). Well, there are different ways fashion connects with Pokémon to create an aesthetic that can be either very seamless and quotidian or particular to special occasions.

Seaking an Everyday Style?

I want to first highlight Pokémon’s partnership with Original Stitch. The work put into making button-up shirt patterns for men, women, and kids based on each Pokémon from Generation 1 and 2 (and some from 3 and 8) is phenomenal. Some designs are outlandish for my taste, but others like Machoke’s, Clefairy’s, and Dratini’s are subtle enough to be worn out on a date or even in a professional scenario (if the workplace is not that serious). You can even choose between dress, casual, and Hawaiian shirts and design the collar, buttons, and sleeve styles of your liking, creating this highly customizable experience that makes every article of clothing something unique. They also sell unisex polo shirts with small Pokémon sprites that can be embroidered on the left chest and the front and back waist area. Original Stitch’s shirts are the perfect choice of garments if you want to show your love or, at least interest, in Pokémon in more formal scenarios with stylish designs.

However, if you want to wear more casual, cheaper, and informal clothing that features Pokémon illustrations more prominently (like you may want to do with Disney characters, superheroes, or you know, a name brand like Supreme), the Pokémon Center shop, Hot Topic, and Difuzed are great places for you to find comfortable, cool, and official t-shirts, jackets, socks, shoes, gloves, and much more. Notably, the Pokémon Center is the best place to find garments specific to the pocket monster you like most since brands that license Pokémon are less likely to profit from choosing random monsters to depict in their products from the 893 possible options.

Still, if you are not convinced of Pokémon’s impact in the fashion world, the company has also partnered with artists, clothing designers, and streetwear brands to produce limited-edition capsule collections seeking to explore the connection between fashion and pop culture. Recent examples include the Thunderbolt Project from Fragment Design by Hiroshi Fujiwara, Rivals from heritage street fashion brand 10Deep, Fictional Archaeology illustrated by contemporary artist Daniel Arsham for Japanese global apparel retailer Uniqlo, With Pokémon UT also sold by Uniqlo, an 8-bit Pokémon graphics collection from Adidas, a trading card game inspired line from Japanese contemporary clothing brand BEAMS, a “Gotta Catch’em All” line from South Korean streetwear brand Thisisneverthat, a sepia collection from streetwear and sneaker retail store BAIT, and a Pikachu illustrated pink sweater worn by Offset during the Spring/Summer 2019 NYFW designed by fashionista Jeremy Scott. From the list, BAIT’s and Thisisneverthat’s collections were open for sale and are still available for purchase.

Pokémon Go has also proven to be a landscape where fashion blends with the Pokémon world. Companies like Uniqlo, Gucci, The North Face, and Longchamp have released exclusive digital models of their accessories and clothing items for players to outfit their avatars with. If you open the style section of the game now, your playable character can wear Uniqlo With Pokémon UT Pikachu, Ditto, and Eevee t-shirts, a Gucci x The North Face backpack, hat, and t-shirt, and Longchamp’s Pikachu backpack. Out of the three, the Gucci x The North Face digital clothing models have nothing to do with Pokémon, featuring neither a logo nor a drawing connecting the garments with the franchise, something that points to the future of Pokémon Go as a platform for the promotion of branded items (something that was already part of the game in the form of McDonald’s and Starbucks sponsored PokéStops), creating a unique partnership between fashion and video games.

A-Mew-sing Character Design

The other side of the connection between Pokémon and clothing is found through cosplay. For playable trainer characters, gym leaders, antagonists, champions, side characters, their clothing is intrinsic to their personality, the connection between their Pokémon, their profession, and how they are seen by gamers. Because of the iconicity of Pokémon costume designs and because cosplaying is bound to happen in any franchise with multiple well-designed characters, cosplaying as Pokémon characters is a widespread practice today (as always, I recommend you to go on Google, select any Pokémon character, and search for their cosplays). Such appeal of dressing up as game and anime characters comes from the love fans have for them and is a testament to the developers’ accomplishment of creating cohesive and stylish looks that have captivated audiences for 25 years. I can like Lucario’s model as much as I enjoy Cynthia’s style, and that is something that differentiates Pokémon from almost any other media franchise in existence: there is a vast plurality of well-thought-out diverse designs for anybody to like and choose from. In-game/in-anime fashion is an unsung appeal of Pokémon.

Ash Ketchum is arguably one of the most iconic anime characters ever, as audiences have accompanied him in his journey for 23 seasons. Although his age has not changed that much throughout the series (he started his Pokémon trainer career being 10-years-old and turned 12 once, but then that was seemingly forgotten later on), his clothing has been modified by animators for every single generation besides Gen 2. As a side note, Pokémon is divided by generations, with each new one occurring around every three to four years, presenting a novel region and new Pokémon. The anime divides its episodes into many seasons inside one gen, and when a new one arrives, the visual style of the series changes. And because Ash is the only constant of the anime, he and his garments are the most direct proof of each style’s particularities.

The most basic Ash Ketchum starter pack consists of his iconic cap, spiky hair, a loose jacket or pants, and a form of high-top sneakers. Those are the four aspects of his look that have been consistent since the beginning. Moreover, his color palette has continued to reside on the blues, reds, blacks, and whites with touches of green and yellow once in a while. Yet, there have been various revisions and adjustments to Ash’s look that keep on making his appearance both iconic and fresh. There are generations where he wears fingerless gloves and others that he doesn’t. In some, he puts on blue, black, or grey cargo/jeans pants, while in others, he wears shorts. Ash typically wears a jacket or vest above his black, blue, or white t-shirt, but in Gen 7, he wore no jacket (most likely because the anime depicted Alola, a region inspired by Hawaii and Polynesia, and those places are hot year-round). And most strikingly, his cap logo is consistently different. Therefore, the relationship between Ash and fashion is a terrific example of how a character that has existed for almost 24 years can look both familiar and yet fresh as a way to keep his appearance constant while also updating it to the cultural identity of the forever-changing audiences as time passes.

However, Ash has never fully appeared in any of the games. He is specially written for the anime to represent the player character gamers select when starting a Pokémon installment. A weird fact about the games is that the gender of the avatar you choose to play as exists as a named preset version that can also be canon in other Pokémon media like the anime. May, Dawn, and Serena are the female presets (and rivals if the player selects the male gender) for Pokémon Ruby and Pokémon Sapphire, Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl, and Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, respectively, as well as Ash’s female companions in the series.

So, all of the playable trainers are unique in how they are styled, and they exist in an exciting relationship to Ash in the sense that the model’s clothing is both specialized to their region and drawn to convey diverse identities, but each new designs follows a pattern that makes the visual aesthetic of the playable trainer character class clear and distinguishable to the audience. Serena may wear something resembling black high-top boot sneakers, grey thigh highs, a red buttoned high-waist knife-pleated miniskirt with a butterfly collar black t-shirt, a red hobo bag, and white sunglasses atop a red wide-brimmed hat (very French), but her overall composition doesn’t move too far from Dawn’s original pink boots, black knee-high socks, pink miniskirt, black vest over a white sleeveless top, yellow duffel bag, red scarf, and white beanie. In other words, while Ash is always the same person wearing the same type of garments that are reworked to keep the anime fresh after 23 seasons, the preset playable trainers are distinctive characters of their own that share the same function and are part of the same class, so their costumes are similar to each other in general structure and number of components but different in how they functionally look.

Ash and the playable trainer class are not the only characters designed with a cohesive and uniform visual identity in mind. Generation 8 gym leaders literally wear sports uniforms as a tribute to football’s history and importance in the U.K., the region Gen 8’s Galar is based on. In Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield, battles happen inside massive stadiums, many times with audiences cheering the player on to replicate the idea the Pokémon battles are the de facto sport of the Pokémon world. Of course, then, the gym leaders’ battle uniforms would mirror sports uniforms in real life and follow a similar pattern, but as I mentioned with the trainer class, they are also personalized to each leader.

Gym Leaders in Fashion

Nessa, the water type gym leader, wears a sports bra and biker shorts with the Galarain water type crest (a drop of water), the colors that represent it in the region (orange, blue, and white), and various sponsor logos. Like football clubs with their crests and colors, gym leaders in Galar acquire the Pokémon type crest and color when they are selected to represent it. So in the U.K.-based region, types like water, fighting, and ice are stand-ins for the clubs, and the gym leaders take the football players’ place. Nevertheless, Nessa is a model with a fondness for water (if you want to know more about her, check out this episode of Pokémon: Twilight Wings), so the fact that she chose to design a uniform that only consists of a sports bra and biker shorts is very telling of her “fashionable athletic beach” style. Moreover, she wears lots of water-themed jewelry (navel chains, wave bracelets, hoop earrings, ear piercings, and a water droplet necklace) and sandals with rescue buoys as decorative side pieces, combining her stylish side with the water motif. The same applies to Kabu, the fire-type gym leader. He wears a cooling towel, a red polo t-shirt with the fire-type crest (the kanji for fire) tucked inside white shorts, a black and red flame tattoo-like sleeve, and red, black, and white cleats with red socks and something that resembles a shin protector. The fire gym motif is there in the colors and the crest, but Kabu’s style makes his visual aesthetic resemble that of an old football player.

The fashion world inside the Pokémon games is not only represented by Nessa. The gym leader Elesa from Gen 5 is also a model, Valerie from Gen 6 (based in France) is a fashion designer, and Lisia from Gen 3 is a pageant icon. Elesa is worth mentioning first because she is one of the only characters that appear in two games with two different costumes. In Pokémon Black and Pokémon White, Elesa is blond and wears yellow high-heels, black tights, a yellow sleeveless shift dress with black and white arrow patterns, a black choker, and red and blue headphones with cable tails. In turn, in Pokémon Black 2 and Pokémon White 2, she is dark-haired and wears red and blue flats, a blue and yellow top and shorts connected through a Pokeball patterned belt, a yellow fluff coat, and white headphones with red and blue spikes. Those are two drastically different outfits that challenge video games’ depiction of characters never changing their clothing (typically because designing them is already time-consuming). Elesa is the perfect character to do so because she is a model in Unova, the region that imitates the US’s East Coast, where New York, one of the “Big Four” fashion capitals, is located.

Finally, Valerie and Lisia are characters that, at first, look nothing alike. However, something that underlies both of their visual aesthetics is how much Pokémon inspire how they style themselves. Valerie allegedly wants to identify herself as a pocket monster, so she designs her main outfit to look very animalistic. Her costume makes her seem like a butterfly, and as a fairy-type gym leader, it suits her eccentric, magical personality very well. It consists of black and pink clog heels, grey thigh-high socks with detailed rims and x-shaped seams, a purple, black, yellow, and pink dress with sleeves that resemble butterfly wings, and a purple antennae-like tiara. Contrastingly, Lisia’s ace Pokémon is called Altaria (the Pokémon that won the pageant called Pokémon Contest Spectaculars with her), so her outfit takes full inspiration from this pocket monster. Part of Altaria’s behavior is that she is regal, soft, and kind, and when she bonds with a trainer, she envelops them in her cotton cloud-like wings and hums. Her color scheme is also very appealing, residing in various cool blues and cloud whites. So, Lisia uses Altaria’s personality and physical attributes as central motifs for her contest costume. She wears sparkling boots with cloud collars and diamond ornaments, one white and blue striped sock on her left leg, mini jeans shorts, a tutu skirt with a cloud belt that resembles the sky, a ribbon crop top, a cloud scarf, fluffy cloud-like arm accessories, and blue diamond jewelry.

In conclusion, the Pokémon franchise has impacted the lives of so many people for 25 years, and the 2021’s celebration promises to provide a myriad of new content to keep fans excited year-round. Fashion and clothing merchandise is something the Pokémon Company has invested in before, and this year is no exception. Previous collaborations challenged the outlook of video games as only pure entertainment, and maybe this year will continue to bring exciting opportunities for games to cross over into the fashion world and vice versa. However, Pokémon also captivates audiences through character designs that have a broad cosplay appeal. Trainers, gym leaders, side characters are all appealing partially because of how their costumes convey their personality, uniqueness, profession, and the connection between them and Pokémon, even if sometimes they may be structured similarly. Though this may be common for most video games and animation series, Pokémon puts an emphasis on creating a world like ours that integrates fashion into its fabric. Therefore, it is safe to say that fashion is a critical stylistic feature of Pokémon, more than people may realize.

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