It's the hour before the gates open. Someone is gluing rhinestones to someone else's cheekbone. Someone is holding up two tops and asking the whole camp to vote.
Then the cloak goes on. The hood goes up. And you're standing differently than you were a minute ago: taller, looser, a little more like the version of yourself you came here to be.
We're Magus and Lylyth Fawn, and we make clothes for exactly that moment. We've always believed what you wear to dance changes how you dance. So we went looking for what psychologists have actually found about clothing, costumes, confidence and color, including the famous study that didn't hold up. Here's the honest version.
Does what you wear change how you feel?
Probably, though less dramatically than headlines claim. In one experiment, people described themselves in terms that matched their formal or casual clothes. A 2025 review of 40 studies found real support for clothing effects in recent research, while flagging doubts about the earliest studies. Nobody has yet studied festival outfits and mood directly.
The self-description study is a neat one. Psychologists Bettina Hannover and Ulrich Kühnen, working in Germany, had people arrive in formal or casual clothes, then pick which traits described them. "Participants who were dressed formally used more formal adjectives than casual ones to describe themselves," they report (Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2002), and they responded faster to traits that matched their outfit.
The bigger picture comes from a 2025 analysis of 105 effects from 40 studies. It raises "concerns about the replicability of early enclothed cognition studies," and finds the evidence holds up better for studies published after 2015. Two of its authors coined the field's best-known term, which brings us to the lab coat.
What is enclothed cognition?
Enclothed cognition is psychologists' name for the idea that clothes affect the wearer's mind through two things together: the symbolic meaning of the garment and the experience of actually wearing it. It was coined in a famous 2012 lab-coat study. That study's headline result later failed a larger replication, though later research finds support for clothing effects.
In the 2012 paper, Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky introduced "enclothed cognition" to describe "the systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer's psychological processes." In their first experiment, students wearing a white lab coat made fewer errors on an attention test than students in their own clothes. In later experiments, the same coat described as a doctor's coat beat the same coat described as a painter's coat.
In 2019, a team of psychologists tried to repeat the first experiment exactly, with 200 people at four universities and a plan registered in advance. The lab coat made no difference to errors or speed. The original authors responded that the replication was "conducted competently, and thus the results cast doubt on our finding." That's science working the way it should.
The doctor's-versus-painter's coat result has never had a direct replication, so treat it as an idea rather than a finding. It's still the part we find most interesting: the suggestion that a garment's meaning to you is what does the work. A cloak is a blanket until you know what's printed on it and why you chose it.
Why do people dress up for festivals and raves?
To become someone, and to find their people. Researchers who spent years at clubs and festivals describe dance events as stages where dress lets people "experiment with and perform multiple identities" and signal which scene they belong to. A 2025 study of Tomorrowland found costumes and flags help festivalgoers express both their personal and shared selves.
The long-running fieldwork comes from researchers in Wales, Dewi Jaimangal-Jones, Annette Pritchard and Nigel Morgan, who studied dress at 35 events in the UK, including more than 30 club nights and five large festivals. Their 2015 paper in Leisure Studies describes dance spaces as places where "participants can experiment with and perform multiple identities," with dress as a key prop. They found that watching everyone else's costumes was one of the great pleasures of a big festival, and that festivals welcomed a wider range of looks than any single club.
At Tomorrowland in Belgium, where "most attendees are showing up with flags, accessories, and costumes," researchers Masset and Decrop identified seven festivalgoer profiles based on appearance and behavior, and described costumes as tools for building and expressing private and collective selves.
There's a social side, too. A 2023 review by Neil Hester and Eric Hehman argues that clothing is a fundamental part of how people read each other, from which group you belong to and what you intend, to your status and your taste. On a festival field, your outfit is a flare sent up for your tribe.
Why do costumes make you feel confident?
No study has measured costume confidence directly, but stepping into a character seems to help. In a 2017 study of 180 young children, those who pretended to be a hard-working character, with a prop like Batman's cape, kept at a dull task longest. And anonymity in a crowd tends to amplify the spirit of the setting.
The "Batman effect" study, led by Rachel White, asked four- and six-year-olds to work on a boring computer task while a fun game sat nearby. Some reflected on themselves, some spoke about themselves in the third person, and some pretended to be a hard-working character such as Batman or Dora, with a costume prop to help. "Children who impersonated an exemplar other … spent the most time working," the researchers found. The honest caveat: the costume wasn't tested on its own, so the role-play, the prop or the fun could each have done the work.
Older research on crowds adds a twist we love. A 1998 meta-analysis of 60 studies found that when people are anonymous or lost in a group, they don't abandon the rules: they "conform more to situation-specific norms." In a classic 1979 study, anonymity paired with a positive costume led to kinder choices.
Put that on a dance floor. A costume doesn't make you a different person; it turns up the volume on the room you're in. In a crowd built on PLUR, that's a lot of love, and it's why a festival in full costume can feel like the friendliest city on earth for one weekend.
Does the color of your clothes affect your mood?
People link colors with feelings in remarkably similar ways worldwide, yellow and orange with joy and pink with love, joy and pleasure. But those studies measured associations, not how people feel when they wear a color. The famous claim that red makes you more attractive has also shrunk under closer study. Wear color for the joy you associate with it.
A large cross-cultural study, led by Domicele Jonauskaite and published in Psychological Science in 2020, asked 4,598 people from 30 nations, speaking 22 languages, which emotions they linked with 12 color words. The patterns were strikingly shared across countries: yellow and orange with joy, pink with love, joy and pleasure, red with both love and anger. The authors are careful to add that people "may universally associate the concepts of red and anger, but may not universally feel angry when seeing red objects."
The red-attractiveness effect is a good cautionary tale. A 2018 meta-analysis found small effects that "may have declined over time." So we won't tell you a color will change your mood. We'll tell you the colors your heart leaps at are worth wearing, because that leap is the point.
Build an outfit that means something
If the research points anywhere, it's toward meaning. Choose pieces whose art means something to you, build around one statement piece, and make sure you can move and stay warm, so nothing pulls you out of the night. Magus Fawn's picks: two cloaks with stories in the art, a crop top in colors people link with joy, and a hooded blanket.
Our hero is the Liquid Melt women's festival cloak ($250). Fractal flames in orange, red, lime, cobalt and violet pour down both sides in perfect symmetry, a rainbow caught mid-melt that your friends will spot from across the field. Hold it open and you have wings, which is about as literal as enclothed cognition gets. It's micro-mink poly outside with a faux-fur lining in black or white, a full hood with heavy drawstrings, a double front zipper and four pockets, unisex XS to 5XL, made to order. Thomas, who bought a Liquid Melt cloak, wrote in December 2022: "Absolutely one of the best purchases I've ever made in my entire life."
For the one who dresses like a character from a story only they've read, the Enochian Vision Orange men's festival cloak ($250) sets panels of rust and olive-gold script on a dark ground, like the pages of an old illuminated grimoire. A pentagram in a circle sits near the hood, with an open book and a carved altar below: the warmth of desert stone at sunset and the mystery of a candlelit library. Same micro-mink shell, faux-fur lining and four pockets, unisex XS to 5XL.
For colors people in 30 nations link with joy, the Psy Swirl Orange one-shoulder crop top ($40) wraps magenta and fuchsia spirals around glowing peach-orange orbs, a sunrise you can wear before the sun is up. It's cropped and sleeveless with an asymmetrical one-shoulder neckline, in soft 230 g/m² stretch (80% poly, 20% spandex) with a body-hugging skinny fit, XS to 2XL.
And for the version of you that comes out after the last set, the Mushroom Flower of Life Pastel hooded blanket with ears ($150) dresses the forest floor in the softest colors we print: lilac, mint, pink and lemon swirls, pastel mushroom caps beneath a Flower of Life emblem and a column of orbs down the spine. It's 300 g/m² poly fleece cut as an oversized pullover with a cat-ear hood, front quarter zip and oversized front pocket, one size (4XL). Costumes are for the show. This one's for the drive home.
For a dance-floor take on getting lost in the music, see dancing as moving meditation. For the practical side, from fabrics to footwear, our guide to what to wear to a rave has the full rundown.
Dressed for who you came to be
Here's the short version. Clothes can shift how we see ourselves, and the meaning we give them may matter more than the fabric. Festivals are stages where dress lets people try on new selves and find their tribe. Being one face in a costumed crowd tends to amplify the spirit of the room. And colors carry shared emotional meanings worth playing with.
So choose the art that means something, put it on, and see who walks out of the tent.
Find your piece: women's cloaks · men's cloaks · hooded blankets
More of the science: is raving good for you? and why dancing together feels so good.
Frequently asked questions
What is enclothed cognition?
Enclothed cognition is the idea that clothes influence the wearer's mind through their symbolic meaning plus the experience of wearing them. Psychologists coined it in a 2012 lab-coat study. A larger 2019 replication found the lab coat didn't change attention, but a 2025 review of 40 studies found support for clothing effects in more recent research.
Does dressing up make you more confident?
It can help, though the research is indirect. In one experiment, people's outfits shifted how they described themselves. In a study of young children, pretending to be a hard-working character with a costume prop helped them persevere, though the costume wasn't tested on its own. No study has yet measured festival outfits and confidence directly.
Why do people wear costumes to festivals?
Researchers who studied 35 UK club nights and festivals found dance events work as stages where dress lets people try on different identities and signal which scene they belong to. A 2025 Tomorrowland study found costumes and flags help festivalgoers express both their personal and shared selves. Watching everyone else's costumes is part of the fun too.
Do bright colors make you happier?
There's no solid evidence that wearing a color changes your mood. A 2020 study of 4,598 people in 30 nations found shared associations, such as yellow and orange with joy and pink with love, joy and pleasure, but it measured links between color words and emotions, not feelings while wearing a color. Wear the colors you love.
Written by Magus & Lylyth Fawn, the Los Angeles artists behind Magus Fawn. Magus makes VR and digital visionary art and produces Psy EDM. Lylyth makes fractal digital art and runs design and customer care. We've been selling wearable art since 2020 (4.8★ from 147 reviews as of October 2026), and every piece is made to order here at magusfawn.com. Come say hi on Instagram @magusfawn.
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