What do I wear?

People overthink this enormously, usually because it is the one part of the evening they feel able to control. The honest answer for a first session is that it barely matters, and the details that do matter are dull ones.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

For a first session, whatever you would wear to visit a friend. Nothing bought for the occasion, nothing you would be sorry to crease, and a jumper for afterwards.

The full version, including uniforms and what dress does to a scene, is on roleplay, uniforms and what to wear. This is the practical short answer.

The dull details that actually matter

• Layers you can lose and regain. Rooms get warm during, and everybody gets cold afterwards. A cardigan or hoodie you can pull on at the end is worth more than anything else you bring.
• Nothing with a heavy buckle or stiff waistband, on either of you. Belts and buttons dig in when someone is folded over an arm of a sofa for twenty minutes.
• Rings off, if you are the one swinging. A signet ring on a hand landing at speed splits skin, and it is the single most common avoidable injury I have seen.
• Hair tied back if it is long, or you will spend the session moving it out of your own face.
• Shoes you can get on quickly, and a coat somewhere you could reach in ten seconds. That is a safety habit rather than a wardrobe one, and it costs nothing.
• Something to travel home in that does not sit tight across the backside. Jeans on a train after a heavy session are a specific kind of misery.

What comes off, and when

This is the part worth agreeing beforehand rather than discovering in the moment. Sessions typically run over clothing first, then over underwear, then on bare skin, and the pauses between those stages are part of the pacing. That is a common shape rather than a rule.

You can stop at any stage of it. Fully clothed throughout is a normal way to play, particularly at the start, and there is no version of this where being undressed is required for it to count. If you want the whole thing to happen over a skirt, say so during negotiation and it happens over a skirt.

The other reason to settle it in advance is that being asked to remove something mid-scene is a hard thing to decline when you are already face down. Deciding it beforehand takes the moment out of a state where saying no is difficult.

When clothing is doing something

Past the first session or two, dress stops being logistics. A change of clothes marks a change of register better than almost anything else. Someone who arrives in work clothes and is told to change is already halfway into a scene before anything has happened.

The material genuinely changes sensation as well, and not in the direction people assume. Thin, tight fabric transmits a stroke almost fully and adds a sting of its own. Thick cotton absorbs a great deal. A summer dress does almost nothing to soften a strap. So "over clothing" covers a wide range, and which end you are at makes a real difference.

Uniforms, briefly

Some people like to play in a uniform. On this site that only ever means adult clothes for an adult role, such as a service uniform or formal office wear, and everything here is between consenting adults over 18.

Nobody has to. A good number of people find costume awkward and prefer the thing to happen in their own clothes as themselves, and that is not a lesser version. If you do want it, buy adult clothing that suggests a register rather than trying to reproduce anything literally, and do not spend money on it before you know whether you like the whole activity.

The short version

Comfortable, warm, easy to adjust, nothing precious. Then stop thinking about it, because nobody in the room is assessing your outfit and the anxiety you are putting into this is anxiety about something else entirely.