What do you call someone who dresses strangely or extravagantly? [closed]
Solution 1:
I would use Flamboyant. A person with a showy style.
The word doesn't just apply to clothing but to any extravagant style of behaviour.
As others have said, in times gone by the words fop and dandy would have been common. However, they would nowadays be taken to referring to the Regency period.
Solution 2:
Ostentatious or showy for negative connotations.
(disapproving) expensive or noticeable in a way that is intended to impress people
Resplendent for positive.
Attractive and impressive through being richly colourful or sumptuous:
Extravagant for somewhat neutral
Exceeding what is reasonable or appropriate; excessive or elaborate:
Take your pick.
[Oxford]
Solution 3:
masquerade dress/costume:
noun used to emphasise the wearing of clothing to appear in the likeness of another character or object
outlandish: adjective
Looking or sounding bizarre or unfamiliar
(archaic) Foreign or alien
[Source: Oxford Dictionaries]
Solution 4:
I might also add Bohemian
Adjective
- of, relating to, or characteristic of Bohemia, its people, or their language
- unconventional in appearance, behaviour, etc
"He was somewhat bohemian in appearance..."
Solution 5:
Please note Jano, the two photos you present
are utterly different
I normally love your questions but I'm afraid this one does not work!
I noticed this incredibly intelligent comment above, I'll paste it in here:
"The two photos are TOTALLY DIFFERENT, the only similarity is they are both human beings. The second photo is just utterly normal, everyday, Harajuku street wear (ultimately just a reflection of ordinary 1980 punk youtube.com/watch?v=1Tko1G6XRiQ ). (The particular photo is rather out of date, so, circa 2010 not 2015, but that's a detail.) You can easily find, trivially, 10 to 20 million people who dress like this as normal every day wear in many countries presently. It's just ordinary "Harujuku style". It's as uninteresting as saying "preppy" or "80s" or whatever, you know: a completely developed and finalized everyday fashion style. In contrast anyone who, as you said, literally wears photo1 ("child's fancy dress") in normal circumstances is profoundly bizarre and unusual ... way beyond merely iconoclastic!"
Jano - is there a chance that Photo1 is, quite simply, not actually representative of what you genuinely meant, on further consideration? If so click edit and remove it.
It's almost unbelievable that nobody has pointed out
cosplay
SO, this person (may) be a "cosplayer".
If the person truly dresses literally as in your photo (in normal settings .. lunch, work, coffee shops etc) I'd really go with "Eccentric" as Christopher said.
The person in the particular photo is not, I would say,
iconoclastic
(another word you may be looking for, Jano). Dressing like the mad hatter is just .. silly, eccentric, "truly quirky". Iconoclastic is, well, check a dictionary, but it's different from that. For example, I often show up in my pyjamas to shake up a board meeting - that's precisely iconoclastic; casual to a wedding or a tux to a rock concert is "iconoclastic". This is something else, you would have to describe it as "conceptually iconoclastic", or some such!
The word paradigm would possibly come in to play. "This person lives and dresses by a whole other paradigm."
Going back to "cosplay", it is very specific - the person either is or is not a cosplayer (I guess this would be determined epistemologically by "asking them").
That style is not, really am cosplay theme (which leans more to anime or furries).