Dreaming about
clothes

Clothes are the first thing other people notice about you, and the one part of how you look that you choose fresh every morning. So dreaming about clothes is usually about your public image, how you present yourself and how you think others see you. It often comes when that image is changing or under pressure, with a new job, a new relationship or a social situation that makes you feel watched.

What happened to the clothes changes the meaning. Washing them, buying them, swapping them and being caught in the wrong ones are four quite different dreams. And the clothes themselves matter, because a wedding dress, a school uniform and an old jumper of your father's each carry something of their own. Your feelings in the dream tell you most.

What dreaming about clothes means

Clothes do three jobs at once, even a plain T-shirt. They protect us, they show other people who we are (or who we'd like them to think we are), and they mark which role we're playing at a given moment. Clothes dreams tend to lean on one of those.

The face you show the world

The most common reading is about image. Smart clothes, a suit or a uniform in a dream often come when you're trying to make an impression, or worrying about whether you can. If people in the dream were admiring your clothes, you may feel confident about how you come across. If they were laughing or staring, look at where in your life you feel judged.

A change in who you are

People change their style when their lives change, after a breakup, a promotion, a move or a big birthday. New clothes in a dream are often a sign that you're trying on a new version of yourself. Did they feel like you? Clothes that felt right suggest the change suits you, and clothes that felt like a costume point to a role you're not sure you want.

Feeling exposed

The opposite of the right clothes is the wrong ones, or none. Clothes that are torn, see-through, too small or missing the one piece that matters are all about vulnerability, feeling that people can see more of you than you'd like. It's close to the dream of being naked in public, which has its own post.

Dreaming about washing clothes

Washing clothes is the most searched clothes dream, and it's about cleaning up. English tells people not to wash their dirty linen in public, meaning family rows and private shame, and a dream of laundry often comes when something like that is on your mind. If the stains came out, you may feel you can fix the situation, and if they didn't, however hard you scrubbed, the dream may be about a mistake or a reputation you feel is stuck to you.

Dreaming about shopping for clothes

Shopping for clothes is choosing who to be next. The dream tends to come when you're weighing up a change, like a new job, a new look or a new relationship. If you found something you loved, the change may be close. If nothing fitted, or everything looked wrong on you, you may not yet know what you want to become. Spending far too much can be about trying too hard to impress someone, so ask who the outfit was for. The shopping page covers buying things in general.

Dreaming about changing clothes

Changing clothes in a dream is usually about changing roles, which we all do every day, from work clothes to home clothes, and the dream often comes when you're moving between two parts of your life that don't sit easily together. Getting stuck halfway, or being seen while you change, points to feeling caught between who you are at work and who you are at home, or between an old self and a new one. If you kept changing and nothing felt right, the dream may be about restlessness, a sense that no role fits you at the moment.

Dreaming about poop on your clothes

It's an awkward dream to search for, and plenty of people do. Excrement on your clothes is usually about embarrassment or shame, something you fear will show or will stick to you, often a mistake you made in front of others. But it can also be about something you need to get rid of, the way the body does. Folk superstition in Britain, Russia and elsewhere says bird droppings landing on you bring luck, which is why some people read the dream as a good sign. Either way, how you felt (horrified, amused, relieved to clean it off) is the real clue.

Dreaming about wearing the wrong clothes

Turning up in pajamas to a meeting, jeans to a wedding or a swimsuit to a funeral is one of the classic anxiety dreams. It's about not fitting in, feeling that you've misread the situation or that everyone else knows the rules except you. These dreams are common before new jobs, family events and first dates. If nobody in the dream noticed, the worry may be mostly in your own head.

Dreaming about clothes that don't fit

Clothes that are too tight point to a role or a situation you've outgrown, a job that no longer stretches you or a relationship that feels small. Clothes that are far too big are about a role you don't feel ready for, a new responsibility or someone else's expectations of you. Wearing someone else's clothes is worth noticing too, since it can be about wanting to be like them, or feeling you've been put in their place.

Dreaming about clothes according to Jung and Freud

Clothes are one of the few everyday objects the classic dream theorists actually named, and each of them gives the dream a different job.

Jung: the persona you dress in

Jung's name for the self we dress up in for other people was the persona, from the Latin for an actor's mask, and he saw it turn up in dreams as clothes, uniforms and costumes.^[1] Read his way, a dream of being unable to take off a uniform, or of clothes stuck to your skin, is a persona that has stopped coming off, a role you've started to mistake for yourself.

Freud: nakedness, coats and hats

Freud wrote about the dream of being naked among strangers who don't seem to mind, one of his "typical dreams", and read it as a wish going back to childhood, when nobody was ashamed.^[2] He also counted hats and coats among the possible male symbols in dreams, so a coat or a hat that stands out in your dream might carry a sexual meaning in his reading.

Other readings

Calvin Hall, an American psychologist who called a dream a mirror of how the dreamer sees himself,^[3] counted what turns up in dreams with his colleague Robert Van de Castle. In the Hall and Van de Castle norms, built from about a thousand dreams by college students in the late 1940s and early 1950s, clothes made up 6% of the objects in men's dreams and 10% in women's.^[4] So clothes are an everyday prop, and the useful question is what yours were doing, whether fitting, tearing or being worn for someone else.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of clothes in dreams

Clothes carry some of the Bible's best-known stories about favor and envy.

Joseph's coat in the Bible

Joseph's coat of many colors, the gift from his father that made his brothers hate him, is the most famous garment in the Bible.^[5] If your clothes dream is about being singled out, favored or envied, that story is where many spiritual readings begin.

Questions to ask about your clothes dream

Clothes dreams are about how you're seen, so the questions are mostly about who was looking:

• What were you wearing, and was it right for the place?
• Were you washing, buying, changing or hiding the clothes?
• Who noticed, and how did they react?
• Is there a role in your life you're stepping into or out of?
• Where do you feel judged, or out of place, at the moment?

Oniri asks what you were wearing and who saw you before it reads your dream, so a wedding in pajamas and a laundry pile that never ends get their own readings.