Costume

A Costume is the identifying outfit that marks out a Hero, a Villain, or a Vigilante. For Hero Course students and Pro Heroes alike, it doubles as battle wear that strengthens the Quirk it was built around, cuts down the risk the wearer takes, and raises what they can accomplish in the field. It also does simple branding work, letting the public tell one Hero from the next at a glance.

Designs cover an enormous range, from plain outfits and bodysuits to skinsuits, spacesuits, and full plate armor, all dictated by what the Quirk needs and what the wearer likes. Mirio Togata's suit is the clearest illustration of tailoring: Permeation would strip him naked every time he used it, so his costume is lined with fiber spun from his own hair and phases out alongside him.

U.A. pays for its students' costumes and revises them as the students learn more about their own Quirks. Small adjustments happen at the school's Development Studio under Power Loader, who is licensed to make costumes and need only file a report. Substantial changes require a formal application through a support company and a government inspection, usually about three days.

Alternate versions exist for conditions and assignments. Winter variants range from Katsuki Bakugo's tall-collared black jacket, cut so his nitroglycerin-like sweat still works, to Momo Yaoyorozu adding a cloak over a costume kept deliberately exposed so Creation has room to work. Prosthetics fall under the same umbrella; Ectoplasm fights on replacement legs built for combat. A full eight years past the Final War, some costumes fold down into carryable cases, as Tenya Ida's does.

Nothing forces a student to source from industry. Izuku fought a practical battle session in a homemade suit his mother sewed, and only upgraded once it was wrecked. All Might spent his American years working in street clothes, and the beating those took is what drove him to the costumes that could survive him.

Villains have no legal path to support items, so a costume mostly buys them anonymity rather than recognition. Exceptions carry meaning: Spinner dresses as a tribute to the man he idolizes, Stain the Hero Killer. Their gear moves through the black market via brokers like Giran, who outfitted the Vanguard Action Squad, most dramatically Himiko Toga, whose equipment harvests blood for Transform. Industry serves that side anyway at times, since Re-Destro runs Detnerat as President and CEO and arms the Meta Liberation Army's executives from it. Quirk-boosting drugs like Trigger remain a common substitute for proper gear.

Vigilantes hide their faces for the plain reason that their work is illegal, as the Naruhata Vigilantes do. Cut off from support companies, they improvise: The Crawler goes out in a face mask and a hoodie branded with All Might. Others go shopping in the underworld instead, Knuckleduster among them.

Mei Hatsume, U.A.'s tireless Support Department inventor, founds her own firm called Lightly Labs after graduating and later helps build Izuku's mechanized suit. Power Loader teaches at U.A. and runs its Development Studio. Giran supplies black market costumes and gear to Villains, the League of Villains chief among his clients. Kyudai Garaki, All For One's private doctor, rebuilt his employer's body after All Might broke it and produced his breathing masks.

David Shield ranks among the most celebrated designers alive and made all four costumes of All Might's reign as the top Hero, gear that let him fight without wrecking himself or his clothes. His daughter Melissa Shield, Quirkless and determined to follow him, contributed to Endeavor's No. 1 Hero costume and designed the Armored All Might worn during the Final War. Sasori Nimaru came to Hero costumes from fashion and dressed both Katsuki Bakugo and Ochaco Uraraka.

Detnerat built its business on clothing for people with unusual bodies before entering the Hero market; it also feeds the black market with equipment that harvests combat data, then self-destructs so nothing traces back. Regulation shapes results too: after Midnight debuted, the government capped how much skin a costume may expose, which is the only reason Momo's is not more revealing. Toru Hagakure's gloves and boots slip the rule because she is invisible.