Good thing she has a Fairy Godmother as a backup.
“Wow-ie, do I look sharp! Just in time for tonight's big dance. But I'd better be careful not to get anything on my expensive new tux.”
— Chuck, Chuck's New Tux
So, you just bought some new clothes. It's a nice day, why not put 'em on and go for a walk? So there you are, ambling along, maybe even whistling.
This won't end well. You will trip into a puddle, get caught by a splash of mud from a passing car, get soaked by a sudden downpour or the like. In extreme circumstances you will suddenly be passed by a hero chasing a villain and accidentally knocked into a pond or covered with rubble. Extra points if the dress was a Pimped-Out Dress.
And shoes? Well as Ben Elton once said, “Nothing opens a dog's bottom quite like the sight of a new pair of hand-stitched Guccis!”
Clothing Damage is a more extreme version, as is Naked Freak-Out (which is more titillating than either). See also Wardrobe Wound, Watch the Paint Job, Tempting Fate, The Precious, Precious Car, Priceless Ming Vase, Ill-Fated Flowerbed and Forced into Their Sunday Best. Contrast Bullet-Proof Fashion Plate, where fine clothing seems impervious to damage, no matter what happens to the wearer. May be caused by a fashion-specialized Status Quo Is God to preserve the Limited Wardrobe, along with The Law of Conservation of Detail — they're not going to call attention to new clothes and then do nothing with that information.
Interestingly enough happens quite often when villains are out shopping.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- One chapter of Cat's Eye had Hitomi buy Toshio a new and more elegant suit, only for it to be soaked and lose the jacket on the first day of use. While Hitomi gets angry, various other characters call her out for this and the choice of clothes, as the elegant suit was delicate to be kept dry and Toshio, being a cop, would have damaged it in short order anyway.
- The fate of Asaka's Yukata in the anime Dokkoida?!.
- The new outfit Lucy gets during the middle of any given Fairy Tail arc will almost inevitably end up more shredded than the one she'd been replacing due to damage.
- Great Teacher Onizuka: To celebrate being made a permanent member of the teaching staff, Onizuka buys an expensive white suit, which gets covered in dirt from a passing car as he's heading to the school to show it off. To make things worse, the car is driven by the new principal, who rescinds his permanent status.
- In Hayate the Combat Butler, the titular character is at one point given a new cashmere coat to wear while out in town doing errands. Cue lampshade hanging en masse by everyone he meets. He does a spectacular job of dodging hazards, but then ends up jumping in a pond to save a friend of his master.
Oh no, I just spilled a can of paint! The kind that stains cashmere!
- Taken to "Shaggy Dog" Story levels in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Elma's OL Diary. Elma spends an entire chapter trying to buy a new outfit, only for it to get destroyed before she even leaves the store. By her own boobs, no less.
- The Transformation Sequence in Moldiver causes the user's clothes to get shredded if they don't undress first. When we see the main character buy some expensive new clothes, their fate is inevitable.
- In Naruto, the titular character started sporting a badass longcoat to go along with his new level of badass. After the start of a decent showing, he promptly got his ass kicked, which climaxed in the destruction of the coat, among other things.
- In PandoraHearts, Oz gives his wibbly little servant, Gilbert, a nice new set of white clothes to wear at Oz's coming of age ceremony. Oz himself is wearing a splendid white outfit just for the occasion. During the ceremony, both Oz and Gilbert (mostly Gilbert) end up bloody (shows up nicely on white) before Oz takes a tumble into a very special hell.
- Pokémon the Series:
- Pokémon Heroes: During her first fight with the heroes, Annie is knocked into a canal and angrily yells about how they've ruined her expensive new dress.
- Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire: In "Sharpedo Attack!", May wears a one-piece swimsuit she just bought and goes swimming in the ocean, but a school of Sharpedo show up and attack her, putting a few rips on it. May then gets mad and yells at the Sharpedo that her swimsuit was brand new and very expensive.
- Ranma ½: Akane is very proud and very happy. She has grown up a little bit, enough to make her buy a new bra. Unfortunately, she never even gets to wear it — Happosai steals it off the hamper at the bathhouse and tries to force female Ranma into it. Problem is, Ranma is significantly more grown up than Akane, and the bra is stretched out and ruined. Cue Akane's wrath.
- In The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You, Mimimi buys Rentarou a whole new outfit upon meeting him for the first time. It gets stained with bubble tea when he saves her clothes from the guy who threw it at her.
Comic Books
- An early 1960s Archie comic had Veronica wearing a fashionable Chinese silk dress. She gets increasingly angry when everybody (Betty included) thinks the slit skirt is a rip. Then, when Big Moose, of all people, knows what it is and compliments her on it, she's so gobsmacked that she doesn't look where she's walking, and falls down a long gravel embankment.
- In the story "Big Payoff" from Betty and Veronica issue 150 (1968), Betty goes over to Veronica's house to show off her new dress, which Veronica is determined to ruin. First she removed the "Wet Paint" sign from the front door, resulting in Betty leaning into it to open it. Betty then took off the paint-stained old dress to reveal the actual new one underneath, as she knew Ron's track record. Then Veronica spilled nail polish onto a vinyl record player (honest!), splattering Betty with the stuff. Sure enough, Betty prepared for two “accidents”, but once the real new dress was revealed, she was out of there!
- This was a regular problem for She-Hulk, due to being considerably larger as She-Hulk than as Jennifer Walters she wrecked whatever she was wearing unless she was willing to fight in the buff. Eventually she was able to get a wardrobe consisting mostly of outfits made of unstable molecules, averting the issue of destroying her clothing when she hulked out.
- Francine from Strangers in Paradise and there's nothing she can do but change into some trampy clothes a friend dug up. Fortunately it turns out real happy for her. Well, for a while.
- In an 1980s issue of X-Men, Rogue spent the better part of the morning looking for missing teammates Nightcrawler and Rachel, after the team's fight with Nimrod, to no avail. Once the stores opened, she treated herself a new outfit. Um, then the Mutant Massacre happened.
- Happened to her again in the Fantastic 4 Vs The X-Men story arc. She bought a new outfit in Latveria while staying at Doctor Doom's castle (long story). When she returned, a fight broke out and she absorbed the Human Torch's powers. Her outfit was not made of unstable molecules, so…
Fan Works
- Bandit's Belt: Hazel the teenage waitress spills booze on Wendy’s expensive dress. She does think she will be able to wash it out, but that it would be hard.
- In the Death Note AU Those Who Stand for Nothing Fall for Anything B murdered Light's new suit:
“Where are my clothes?”
“They're in the sink,” he says with a pharmaceutical smile.
“What? No,” I gasp. 100% rare breed wool from the Shetland Islands. Woven by nuns. “They're dry clean only, you bastard!”
“Oh. That explains the strange colour of the water. I rinsed them through with boiling water and now they're soaking in cold water. Is that ok? I put ice in it. It's like suit mojito in the kitchen.”
“You cunt.”
“Light, I'm sure that he just overlooked the washing guidelines,” L sighs, putting his trousers on under the sheets. “You have other suits.”
“Other suits? Other? Suits?”
B pulls my cigarette holder and lighter out of his pocket and holds them out to me. At least he didn't put them in the sink. “Here,” he says. “Give yourself cancer.”
“What time is it?” L asks.
“Just after ten.”
“It was one of a kind. Only virgins can make suits like that,” I moan while lighting a cigarette. “Do you know how hard it is to find a virgin these days? Let alone a virgin who's dedicated herself to God and weaving. There are no 'other suits' like that… And I looked fuck amazing in it.”
L stares at me with a blank expression. He stares at me for quite a long time. I almost feel stupid after ten seconds. “Cry me a river.”
Fine. No sympathy. No support. My suit's been destroyed and he doesn't give a shit. Fine. - During The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, Ringo sees several of his outfits get trashed within a day or two of purchasing them or of borrowing them from George. And he has Paul destroy his Guardians togs for him.
- George also has some of his clothing trashed, but most of it wasn't new.
- In The Loud House fanfiction Don't Say, "Dannit", Rita wears a new sweater and skirt, only to get sprayed by a car.
- In Kill Them All, Taylor doesn't get attached to any clothes as they're usually destroyed in one battle or another. As such she's rather upset when she realizes the attack she just casually tanked also destroyed the brand new red Armani she was rather fond of.
- The King Nobody Wanted: Averted as a plot point when one of Khal Drogo's companions points out to him that some Volantene aristocrats wore their old, out-of-style clothing during an important meeting where their respective companions got into a fight. It is almost as if they expected something to happen and were afraid of getting blood on their good clothes.
- One episode of The Simpsons: Team L.A.S.H., "The Heiress Diaries", has a B-plot in which Liv signs a deal with Skein (a notorious Real-Life fast-fashion company) to create a line of Sideshow Liv-themed clothes, and to promote her brand, decides to wear clothes from that line on school picture day. However, as she goes through the school day, her clothes begin falling apart and getting damaged, until she's left with ripped pants, a tunic that was torn in a fight with a classmate, a sneaker whose sole fell off, two broken earrings, and a headband without a decoration on it.
- In Run to You
, Starscream buys some lingerie in preparation for his tryst with Skyfire. It gets destroyed during his struggle with the DJD.
Film — Animated
- The future Anita Radcliff in the animated version of 101 Dalmatians. Clearly she spent hours ironing her new spring suit, but there she goes into the pond! Note that when you combine Meet Cutes and new clothes the probability of catastrophe increase exponentially.
- Anastasia: After Anastasia meets up with Rasputin on the bridge for the final battle, he proceeds to mess with her by using dark magic from his reliquary to rip her new ballgown for her reunion ball to tatters and rags. She also loses the tiara Marie gave her.
- Played for Drama in the Disney version of Cinderella (pictured above). When the title character shows off her new pink dress made by her mice friends, her stepsisters recognize the articles they had thrown away and aggressively tear it to pieces.
- Twice in Cars 3. Lightning McQueen first shows up with a paint job slightly different than his usual Rust-Eze look, which he loses following his life-altering crash. Then once he gets to the racing center, he trades his traditional look for a new "contemporary" electronic suit which he wears for most of the movie; he loses such when racing through the woods with Smokey.
- Frozen:
- Anna has to swap out her grand dress, made for her sister's coronation, for a still pretty, but winter friendly dress, after the former falls into an ice cold river, and the skirt quickly freezes solid once Anna stands up.
- It's downplayed, but Elsa's coronation dress doesn't last, sort of. It gets converted into a slinky, blue ice-themed dress.
- Thumbelina (1994): Thumbelina's tacky wedding dress, worn when she's forced to marry Mr. Mole, gets completely ripped up as she flees through the underground to reach the surface. Even the ribbons she was wearing in her hair came undone as she was carried on the back of the swallow, Jacquimo.
Film — Live-Action
- Babe: Pig in the City: After Esme Hoggett's dress gets drenched in billboard glue and rips from the back, the Landlady lets her borrow her uncle Fugly Floom's clown costume as they begin to search the city for their missing animals. However, when the ballroom staff try to catch her and throw her out as she attempts to rescue Babe, they end up unintentionally tearing the costume apart, especially the baggy clown pants.
- Marty is given a "Western" outfit and a new pair of cowboy boots by Doc in Back to the Future Part III. A bear eats the boots. Similarly, his ancestor gives him a new hat, only to have it lost and probably trampled by Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen's horse. The outfit gets torn up as Buford drags Marty down the street.
- Played with in Blazing Saddles, when bandits overrun the town of Rock Ridge early in the film. A well-dressed dude is lassoed and dragged behind a horse through the mud. He simply notes: "Well, that's the end of this suit!"
- In Can't Buy Me Love, the cheerleader captain Cindy shows up at the Back to School party with an expensive suede dress from her mother's closet, and she and a friend remark on how their mothers say suede is too hard to clean. About ten seconds later, one of the jocks accidentally spills his wine all over it. The plot kicks off when nerd Ronald buys her a replacement for $1,000 in exchange for her pretending to be his girlfriend for a month.
- Carrie (1976): As you can guess, all the teenagers who are killed in the gymnasium are wearing brand new tuxedos and dresses. Carrie reveals that her dress was self-made just for this occasion, and it, too is ruined by the end of her rampage.
- The Cat in the Hat (2003): Cat wipes up the purple cupcake stains with Conrad and Sally's mom's dress. They scream at him that she was going to wear it that night and he ruined it. He argues that "It was ruined when she bought it".
- In The Death of Stalin, Mikoyan complains bitterly about getting Stalin's urine all over his new suit — which had required three fittings — as they carry Stalin to his bedroom.
- In Dogma the angel Metatron seems to complain about his clothes getting ruined. When it happens one time, he reaches over and uses God's dress to wipe something off his clothes. She's not too happy about that. (Yes, it's a comedy).
- Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer: Johnny is frustrated that he must destroy his new suit to chase the Silver Surfer. One wonders why Reed didn't make an unstable molecule tuxedo.
- The Haunted Mansion (2003): Jim Evers squishing through wet and swampy ground in a nice suit and shoes in a creepy Southern Gothic cemetery outside New Orleans:
Jim: Crap! These are my brand-new shoes! Hey, kids, watch your step.
[His son Michael then copies his mild cursing when the same thing happens to him a moment later.]
Michael: Oh, crap!
Jim: Hey, Michael, don't say "crap". - The Hit List: Just before going into an important meeting with his boss, Allan spills coffee over his pristine white shirt, forcing him to borrow a shirt from a coworker.
- In The Incredible Hulk movie we see Banner buy new clothes and know that those clothes are gonna be toast. Although the pants survive.
- Judy Garland in In the Good Old Summertime. It's not bad enough that she's carrying a parasol on a windy day, she has to get knocked over by a guy as part of a Meet Cute as well. Note that this can cross over with the old umbrella-getting-turned-inside-out gag (which should have its own trope) for added pathos.
- Crossover with Fur and Loathing in the film It Could Happen to You. The bitchy wife, who just became a Rich Bitch, buys a fur coat, and as soon as she gets out of the store, her coat gets hit with red paint by activists (though the coat does get cleaned up later).
- Ordell references this trope in Jackie Brown when, before leaving the two of them alone, he asks Melody to avoid ripping the new clothes off of Louis (he knew they'd have sex, his only concern was not wasting the money he spent on the new clothes).
- Not quite new clothes, but still: Thorndyke wears a freshly-pressed driving uniform in The Love Bug. Too bad the Irish Coffee-inebriated Herbie projectile-coughs whipped cream all over him. Thorndyke's fault for doping him with the Irish Coffee in the first place.
- Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris: This is the fate of Mrs. Harris' brand new Dior dress that she spends her life savings on after she lends it to a neighbor and it catches on fire.
- In My Cousin Vinny, Vinny gets in trouble for wearing basically street clothes when he's supposed to be acting as a trial lawyer. After he gets an appropriate suit, it falls in the mud. Unfortunately the dry cleaners isn't open in time to wear the suit to the next court date, so he has to wear a gaudy suit, that looks like Lounge Lizard wear, to court that day.
- On the Buses films:
- Mutiny on the Buses:
- Arthur has his new busman's cap for less than a day before Little Arthur poops in it.
- Stan's new safari tour uniform is ripped by a lion's claws.
- In Holiday on the Buses, Olive's new bra gets soaked and covered in mud when the suitcase it is in falls into the river.
- Mutiny on the Buses:
- Pan's Labyrinth: Oh, Ofelia. "Here's your new dress, shoes, and hair ribbon. Be sure to keep them clean, you must look good for your father's party tonight." To give the girl credit, she tries to take some care of her clothes by taking her fancy dress off and hanging it on a branch before she goes hunting for a magic toad under a long-dead fig tree. However, it doesn't work, the dress gets lost, and by the time she finds her dress and wanders home again, the poor thing is covered head-to-toe in mud.
- Susan in The Parent Trap. There she is, having a nice conversation with a boy on a porch, and her new dress gets cut up as part of a feud with her lookalike and as-yet unknown sister Sharon.
- In Patriots Day, Dun Meng is seen taking pictures of his new car to send to his family. It gets stolen when he's taken hostage by the Tsarnev brothers and he later escapes from them, them destroyed when they get into a shootout.
- Elizabeth Swann's father gives her a fashionable new dress in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Cut to ten minutes later… she's fallen off a cliff and the dress, which was weighing her down, is at the bottom of the bay. From her corsetry comments during the rest of the film, we can assume there were no regrets.
- Playing with Fire (2019): Lampshaded. When Zoey is getting her diaper changed, Jake uses a spare shirt to wipe her butt. The shirt is Mark's and while it isn't new, he says it's his favorite. Unfortunately, Zoey poops more during the change. Mark, realizing the shirt is beyond ruined, tells Jake he can keep it.
- Raiders of the Lost Ark: Marion's dress from Belloq gets dirtied from being in the Well of Souls, and Indy tears up most of the skirt.
- Raising Arizona's main character buys some new shoes then chases after his perverted boss and ruins them.
- Singin' in the Rain:
- Lina Lamont wears a new dress (hey, she's a famous actress at a movie premiere, of course it's a new dress) to a party celebrating her newest movie. She ends up covered in the cake that's been specially made to honor her.
- Don Lockwood ends up having his new suit literally torn to shreds by fangirls. This is immediately followed by a Meet Cute, following the pattern noted above.
- Song of the South: The dress that Ginny intends to wear to Johnny's birthday party gets dirty when her older brothers push her into the mud. To make matters worse, it used to be her mother's wedding dress.
- Though Troop Beverly Hills doesn't indicate if Phyllis's white mink coat is brand new or been stored in her closet, but it's clearly inappropriate to wear when taking your Wilderness Girls troop camping. We can surmise that she will have to pay the dry cleaners a pretty penny after the coat gets covered in rain and some mud.
Literature
- Anita Blake: This is a running gag in the series, whether it be a fancy dress, rented tux or just nice work attire, Anita's cloths will end up ruined before the night is out.
- Biff, Chip and Kipper:
- In "Mum's New Hat", Mum's hat blows off in the strong wind and is successively blown into a puddle, a cyclist's path, and into a freshly painted bench.
Mum: (holding up a now dirty hat) Look at my new hat!
- In "New Trainers", Chip and Dad both buy a pair of new shoes, only for Chip to get his new trainers wet and muddy from playing football. Dad becomes cross that Chip got his new trainers dirty so soon… only for him to immediately step into cement at a nearby construction site.
- In "Mum's New Hat", Mum's hat blows off in the strong wind and is successively blown into a puddle, a cyclist's path, and into a freshly painted bench.
- Doom Valley Prep School: Petra can't seem to keep her new clothes intact for more than a few hours. First transformed from a boy into a girl, she needs to get a whole new wardrobe. During a test her nightgown is ruined. She manages to burn the skirt of her school uniform on her first day of class. A fancy red dress is ripped in half during a cafeteria food fight. And another school uniform is destroyed while in detention. All told, she's lost one set of clothes for each day of class so far.
- In the second Dragonriders of Pern novel, F'lar and Lessa are wearing new outfits to a wedding. F'lar ends up in a duel with T'ron, during which he gets his suit cut up, and Lessa has to rip up her dress to make bandages.
- Due to Fashion being Serious Business to fire demons in Lonely Werewolf Girl, when Malveria wears one of her new outfits to a human club before having to go to a fire demon week-long ball, she is rather upset that the club turns out to be the setting of a pitched battle between werewolves' cliques. Thankfully she manages to convince the other Fire Demons that the bloodstained wreck is "battle chic".
- Margin Play by Eric Plume: Amber buys a whole new outfit — shoes, dress, hose, undergarments, the whole works — in order to infiltrate a high-society party during her investigation. By the end of the evening, the dress is in shreds, the shoes have been broken and thrown away, and she has to hike back to her hotel barefoot and tattered. Fortunately, she can charge the cost to her (very deep-pocketed) client.
- The McGurk Organization: In one of Edmund Wallace Hildick's novels about Kid Detective Jack McGurk, the hero, who thinks he's close to solving his case, puts on his best clothes to mark the occasion… only to faceplant in a compost heap.
- The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: Grace Makutsi loooves shoes. You can probably guess that any new pair she's particularly excited about will either tear up her feet or get destroyed.
- R.C. Sproul's allegory The Priest with Dirty Clothes is about a priest who ruins his new clothes while falling in the mud on a rainy day.
- The Railway Series: In "James and the Top Hat", James is so excited to be pulling passengers he lets off steam, accidentally drenching Sir Topham Hatt's hat. Later, Sir Topham Hatt warns James if he can't behave then his red coat will be removed and replaced with a blue one.
- In A Song of Ice and Fire, Sansa Stark receives a beautiful ivory silk gown from her future mother-in-law, Cersei Lannister. Unfortunately, it gets stained when her little sister Arya throws an orange at her during a fight at breakfast.
- Hagar in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon buys new clothes and makeup in order to impress Milkman Dead, but since she was in such a hurry to get home and try out the stuff, she has to deal with the rain and her bags tearing on her way there. By the time she does get home and put all that stuff on, Pilate and Reba see that her new clothes suffered major damage, to say nothing about her smeary makeup and wet hair.
Live-Action TV
- One bit on The Abbott and Costello Show has Costello hired to just take some straw hats from the maker to a retailer. He thinks he looks good wearing one, and by the time he gets to where he's delivering them, they're all destroyed and he has to pay for them.
- An episode of Angel had the gang buy new clothes to go out to the ballet. When Fred points out that they're broke, Cordelia assures her that they can tuck in the tags and return the clothes tomorrow. Of course, that was before they had to do battle with a group of demons.
- The Brady Bunch: In Season 4's "Law and Disorder", Bobby ruins his best suit when he trespasses into an abandoned house to retrieve a classmate's beloved kitten… and then attempts to launder the dry-clean-only garments in the washing machine to cover up his tracks. Mike and Carol find out anyway.
- In CASUAL+Y Zoe wear a brand new, pair of shoes to work one morning, on the same day that Holby City Emergency Department is inundated with norovirus sufferers. And it's her turn to be in charge of the isolation area for those vomiting patients. Her shoes make it all the way through the day unharmed, thanks to the use of surgical booties to protect them… and then, on her way to her car at the end of the day, she's walking past a massive puddle just as an ambulance drives in at high speed.
- El Chavo del ocho: An episode has El Chavo and La Chilindrina trying to invoke this on Quico, who had bought a new sailor costume and was set to attend a party that day, so they want to splash it with baby powder only to end up failing every time. At the end of the episode, Doña Florina finds out what they're doing and takes the powder bottle only to end up accidentally splashing it over Quico who right then walks behind her.
- Happened to three of Larry's new, identical shirts in one episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (from his own blood, makeup, and tearing the last one in half as he and a friend raced to claim it, in that order).
- In an early episode of Degrassi, Emma has been feeling moody lately so her mother takes her out to buy some new clothes to cheer her up. The very next day we realize why Emma's been so moody when her first period coats her new skirt in blood.
- In Derry Girls, the prom dresses Michelle buys on her mother's credit card, hoping to return once the prom is over? Hers gets splattered with tomato juice when someone tries to “Pull a Carrie”.
- In Eureka, Alison is in the middle of trying on her wedding dress when she gets called to deal with an emergency. She doesn't realize until she gets there that the emergency is a mud volcano.
- Averted in Firefly when Kaylee gets a voluminous pink dress and Mal warns her to take care of it. Despite ensuing duels and Kaylee's propensity for getting her engineer garb dirty, by the end of the episode it is hanging up in pride of place in Kaylee's room as pristine as ever.
- One Episode of Full House had eldest daughter D.J. receiving an expensive sweater from her father as a gift. The very first time she wears it, it gets ruined after she took it off to play soccer and a lawn mower rode over it reducing it to shreds.
- Game of Thrones: Subtly invoked by Margaery outside the orphanage in "Valar Dohaeris". She is definitely projecting for the bystanders when she says she has other dresses and deliberately steps in the mud.
- In The Inbetweeners, Simon wears brand new trainers to a club but ends up having to loan them to a homeless person. When he gets them back, they're filthy.
- On an episode of Kate & Allie, Kate buys an expensive white dress for her date at the ballet, with the intention that she'll return it the next day. After the ballet, Kate strives to avoid potential disasters (including a kid with a chocolate ice cream cone) but falls into one of the ballerinas, getting the ballerina's stage makeup all over the dress.
- Lizzie McGuire had this happen on the day she was trying for Best Dressed in the yearbook. Of course, buying new clothes she couldn't really afford and planning to return them for a refund later was just asking for it.
- That's So Raven had an episode with a similar plot, but she was wearing the dress for a party.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Halbrand does not get more than one episode to enjoy his new Numenorian armor after the garbs he worn most of the time before getting destroyed in the eruption of Orodruin.
- In The Musketeers, after D'Artagnan was officiated as a Musketeer, he wanted to keep his uniform as clean as possible. Naturally, Athos and Porthos did their best to get scratches and dirt all over it during a practice fight, much to D'Artagnan's dismay.
- The Professionals. In "Blackout", Bodie brags about his new and expensive Heuer Manhattan watch, only to end up breaking it while smashing down a door to rescue a hostage.
- Running Point: In first season episode "Beshert", Isla Gordon is dressed for her engagement party by designer Law Roach in a floor-length white gown. By the end of the night, she's in the swimming pool, in the dress, wrestling with two of her brothers. Dry-cleaning costs are mentioned, but the dress is likely beyond that.
- Seinfeld: In "The Jacket", Jerry buys a suede jacket that apparently costs a fortune. By the end of the episode, it is ruined because he wore it in the snow.
- The opening credits of Sex and the City feature Carrie walking down the street in a nice dress, only to be splashed by muddy water from a passing bus.
- True Jackson, VP: After Doris selects True's wedding dress for her marriage to Max, a series of disastrous events lead to True, Lulu and Amanda tackling Doris into Ryan's glue-decorated fake wedding cake, and after accidentally pushing a server onto one of the tables, Doris has the back of her wedding dress completely destroyed after Ryan hastily pulls the fake cake off. Luckily, the gang had Amanda's wedding dress as a spare.
- In A Very Peculiar Practice the suit Bob gets as a bribe for skewing a drug trial needs cleaned, again and again.
- Played for Comedy in Wizards of Waverly Place where the family wizard gets a set of special wizard robes. Unfortunately, it seems when the youngest son gets it from the eldest, it turns out it is fake. He wore them no less than five minutes before covering them with paint, mud, cake, and ripping it to shreds. After it is repaired, he gives it to his brother, who proceeds to similarly rip it up by getting stuck in a horrific traffic accident, also within minutes of putting it on.
Newspaper Comics
- Toyed with in a Calvin and Hobbes strip: we see Calvin checking out a mud pit, adding water to get just the right consistency… next thing we see is Calvin at Susie's house, inviting her to “Put on some nice clothes and let's go for a stroll!”
- Crabgrass: Miles gets new shoes in the June 26, 2020 strip (after purposely destroying his old ones), and tries to keep them in mint condition. But then his dad finds out how much the shoes cost, and has Miles work them off. When Miles is done with his chores, the shoes are ruined.
Radio
- Our Miss Brooks:
- In "Easter Outfit", Miss Brooks' wears a new dress for the Easter Parade. Unfortunately, Connie was forced to go to the parade in her old dress. She had worn the new dress to Easter Breakfast and landlady Mrs. Davis's Easter Egg Hunt. However, Mrs. Davis' Easter Egg hunt goes wrong when Mrs. Davis forgot she hid two eggs under the chesterfield… and didn't hard-boil them!
- "Friday The Thirteenth" sees Mr. Conklin proud of his new black suit, black hat, black vest, black shoes and midnight blue tie. During the course of the day it gets torn and dirtied.
Video Games
- In episode 4 of Back to the Future: The Game, Emmett is seen wearing a suit that belonged to his girlfriend's grandfather. Not only does the suit get destroyed, but Marty has to engineer its destruction personally.
- The player can get Loader Bot a new paint job (with enough money, of course) in episode 3 of Tales from the Borderlands, but regardless of the player's input, it gets badly charred and scrapped when he loses his legs.
Web Animation
- In the Strong Bad Email "hremail3184", Strong Sad plans to stand around in a tuxedo “with a vengeance”. Of course, Strong Bad has rigged his Pop-Tart to explode, getting goo all over the tux.
- Chuck's New Tux by Harry Partridge which involves Chuck wearing his new (white) tuxedo for the big school dance and dodging various messes along the way, eg. a woman carrying lots of drinks. Eventually he ends up being sent flying towards a giant wedding cake but he misses and gets horribly impaled on the pointed fence just beyond the cake.
Webcomics
- In Girl Genius the fashion conscious Tarvek finally gets an outfit he doesn't hate after being limited to and forced into several he couldn't stand and it is quickly filled with holes and stained with blood after he gets attacked by poisoned throwing knives in an assassination attempt.
Web Videos
- Stampy's Lovely World: In the episodic arc 678–680, Stampy makes and enchants a new set of armour, and finds a new enchanted diamond chestplate in an End City chest. He loses all of it by falling into the Void.
Western Animation
- The Scrappy Cartoon, Sunday Clothes (1931), has the titular Scrappy struggle to protect his Sunday clothes. He successfully dodges a man spitting tobacco, evades a gang of bullies, and rides over a mudhole on a sewer worker's head. But in the end, after escaping the bullies by sliding down a rope of dogs, he ends up falling in a pig trough filled with mud.
- Veronica Vreeland in Batman: The Animated Series. There she is, buying a new dress for her date with Bruce Wayne and along comes a spooked Harley Quinn. Her car gets ruined, too. Considering that Veronica actually got taken hostage by Harley, she probably wasn't too concerned about the car at first.
- In Danny Phantom, the start of Valerie Gray going from Riches to Rags is her new top accidentally getting ruined by Danny.
- In The Fairly OddParents!, Veronica shows off her new outfit (which looks 100% like her everyday outfit) in front of a fountain, saying that it's made out of tissue paper, sugar and powdered milk. Three guesses what ends up happening.
- Horseland: Exploited in the first episode when Sarah and her horse Scarlet first came to Horseland, and Molly, Alma, and Bailey didn't want to befriend her because they were worried she would be like Chloe and Zoey. When Chili, Chloe's horse, attempts a Frame-Up by biting Alma's horse button and blaming Scarlet for it; while attaining to them, Sarah quickly comes to Button's aid by wrapping her new and expensive jacket around Button's wound, effectively ruining it in the process. This shows that Sarah cares more about her friends' needs than her clothes, and Molly, Alma, and Bailey realize their suspicions were wrong.
- An episode of Jimmy Two-Shoes has Lucius show off his new nice hat that has a big target painted on it. Jimmy is around with a snowball. You can guess the rest.
- In one short from The '40s, Mickey Mouse gets dressed to the nines to meet Minnie for a date, but his outfit is completely trashed on the way. Lucky for him, when he meets Minnie he finds she's similarly dressed, as they're going to a “hard times” party.
- One of the running gags of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, is that Rarity, the fashionista of the group, often has her nice clothes get messy, dirty, or destroyed.
- Special mention goes to "Swarm of the Century", where the parasprites, after turning Extreme Omnivore, eat the very clothes Twilight had complimented Rarity on making the previous day.
- She successfully defied this during the brunch in "A Bird in the Hoof".
“Nobody move, and my dress won't get hurt!”
- My Life as a Teenage Robot
- At the start of "Call Hating", Tuck walks home with a fresh haircut and a white tuxedo. He manages to dodge a number of mud puddles, but then gets slimed by a giant Blob Monster.
- "The Great Unwashed" features a mix of this and Watch the Paint Job for Jenny, who got a new outfit/paint job for Don Prima's party, only for the Crust Cousins to hire the Mudslinger, a guy who specializes in both literal and figurative mud-slinging to attack her for the sole purpose of ruining it. The Crust Cousins succeed and when the Mudslinger confesses their scheme as an angry Jenny prepares to pulverize him, she quickly warms up and gives him her party invitation so he can do the same to them!
- In the Recess episode "One Stayed Clean", the Recess Gang have to get all dressed up for their class picture. However, after they realize that they were getting their grade's photo taken last because their teacher, Miss Grotke, believes that all the other grades should go first, the gang go through desperate measures to keep their clothes from getting wrecked, mainly Gus's, as this would be his first class picture due to his family moving around all the time before he can get a class photo. The effort ultimately proves futile. After a moment of indecision, Gus throws himself into the path of a handful of cheese sauce thrown by Lawson, sacrificing his own outfit to protect TJ's. After learning of this, his father shows the resulting photo to another soldier, and proudly says the boy has never looked better.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- The titular character falls victim to this trope several times in the episode "Picture Day", in which he attempts to stay clean while avoiding (among other things) being mistaken for a trash receptacle and being dumped into Patrick's peanut butter and jelly taco…
- During "Doing Time", SpongeBob destroys a fruit punch truck with his unruly driving, causing the red liquid to spill into a nearby retirement home.
“All right, seniors. Let's open these windows so the world can see your nice, white clothes.”
- A Running Gag in The Replacements is Valley Girl duo Jennifer and Claudia complimenting on each other's nice outfits, only to get ruined quickly with whatever antics Todd and Riley are in.
- The Simpsons:
- In "Bart's Dog Gets An F", after Homer sees that Ned has the sleek and stylish "Assassins" sneakers, he gets his own pair. Unfortunately, the untrained Santa's Little Helper tears the sneakers to shreds.
- In "Scenes From The Class Struggle In Springfield", Marge gets a Chanel suit from an outlet store and starts tweaking it to different settings. However, on one such occasion, she gets so annoyed at Lisa that she accidentally shreds the dress through the sewing machine.
- Lampshaded in "Little Girl In The Big Ten":
Principal Skinner: Normally I wouldn't go near a giant chocolate cake in my dress polyester, but with Bart Simpson safely encapsulated, I'd be delighted to pose.
- In an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward, Raphael tears his own (rented) tux to shreds as he draws his laser-sais when a fight broke out.
- Thomas & Friends:
- In "Lady Hatt's Birthday Party", Sir Topham Hatt promises to attend his wife's birthday spic and span in a new suit he bought for the occasion. Things go smoothly until his car's tire is punctured by a pothole, forcing him to ride in Caroline, then George the steamroller. While onboard George, his suit gets splashed with oil, then George goes out of control, flinging the Controller into a muddy puddle. Thomas' driver offers to give Topham a lift, as long as he substitutes for the fireman, who has taken ill. Topham's suit gets covered with dust and soot, but by now he's focused on getting to the party on time. Fortunately for him, he arrives just before 3:00, and the guests are quick to make good humor of his adventure.
- In "Thomas and the Royal Engine", Sir Topham Hatt buys a new top hat in preparation for meeting the Queen and receiving an award. It gets crushed by a suitcase.
- Wonder Pets!: In "Save the Reindeer", Ming Ming's Christmas Eve present is a purple woolen sweater that fits her perfectly; she ends up stretching it out and ruining it when the pets use it as a net to save the baby reindeer from the cracking ice.
Real Life
- Many a schoolboy knows that the very first day he wears a brand new pair of shoes to school, his enemies (or even his friends), will say “Oooh, are those new shoes?” and then proceed to tread on his toes repeatedly, thereby completely destroying the toe-caps. On the upside, it probably does make the shoes a little more comfy to walk in… once your toes stop throbbing.
- When acting in the Doctor Who episode "The Seeds of Death", Wendy Padbury liked her costume so much that she bought it — and BBC bureaucracy required her to pay before shooting started. Then the paint on one of the sets turned out not to be completely dry.