Alternate Costume Tagging

Is it just me, or is this tag heavily misused? IMO, alternate costume does not mean alternate clothing. A costume is clothing that is distinctive of a class, profession, ethnicity, nationality, activity, etc, the keyword here being DISTINCTIVE.

I pulled a couple of examples for posts that I believe do and do not fit this definition that are tagged as such. I used the same character, Konpaku Youmu, for simplicity in comparison.

Search terms: Konpaku_Youmu Alternate_Costume

Alternate Costume

post #2342108 (Kimono, distinctive Japanese dress)
post #2335505 (Maid, distinctive profession uniform)
post #2323134 (China dress, distinctive Chinese dress)
post #2293875 (School uniform, distinctive activity uniform)
post #2272630 (Kendou gear, distinctive activity uniform)
post #2341747 (Lolita fashion, distinctive style of dress)

Not Alternate Costume

post #2363732 (Casual,Contemporary)
post #2363326 (Contemporary)
post #2277665 (Adapted Costume)
post #2322202 (Adapted Costume)
post #2346859 (Adapted Costume,Contemporary)

Adapted Costume

Those last three examples bring up another important distinction. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that alternate costume and adapted costume are mutually exclusive terms. Adapted costume is like having different shades of the same color, whereas alternate costume is like having different colors altogether.

As for post #2335505 I'd still use adapted costume here. Youmu normally wears a green vest and a green skirt. Here it is a green china dress. So if it were a red china dress, then I'd tag it as alternate costume, since adapted implies for me that the attire is different (i.e. not a vest and skirt in Youmu's case) but the color is the same. Or not that much different (i.e. even with dark green and she normally has a "normal" green" attire, it's still adapted costume (that's basically the same as the wiki says):

"For images of characters wearing costumes or outfits that are derived and patterned after the design of their normal outfit or costume."
Like here:
post #2358407 clearly falls under adapted costume.

The alternate costume wiki says:
"A character wearing a (typically fanmade/unofficial) costume other than the one they are typically depicted in."
I don't read here anything that it has to be distintive. And I agree here. "Distintive" is an awkward term. When does it start to be "distinctive"? I think that's up to the uploader and therefore not good for tagging where everyone should have the same standards. So I disagree with this idea.
But: I agree that adapted and alternate costume are mutually exclusive. Alternate costume speaks of any kind of other costume and has no specifications while adapted costume says that it is derived from the default outfit.

Provence said:

I don't read here anything that it has to be distintive.

"A character wearing a (typically fanmade/unofficial) costume other than the one they are typically depicted in." I added the emphasis over the term costume, which is where I got the distinctive aspect. A costume is not just clothing, but a distinctive style of clothing.

From Wikipedia, "Costume is the distinctive style of dress of an individual or group that reflects their class, gender, profession, ethnicity, nationality, activity or epoch."

I guess this is more of stomping over the term, rather it's usefulness.
Because you will get problems when you say that adapted costume and alternate costume are mutually exclusive because the post I quoted would fit both terms here.
So I guess this is more like colloquial usage here of the term like we often do here and here I don't see any real problem, because the distinction between those two is relatively simple.

For the one you quoted, post #2358407, I would only put it as adapted costume and not alternate costume, since it is an adaptation of her regular costume and not an alternative to it.

I meant post #2335505.

With post #2358407, we've the same opinion.

Ah, post #2335505 was my mistake. That's actually Yuyuko in an alternate costume (as a maid) and not Youmu. Were you talking about post #2323134, since you mentioned a China dress?

The usage of adapted_costume and alternate_costume sometimes confuses people (like me). For example, let's say that there's a pic of Remilia_Scarlet using swimsuit with same layout with her official clothing, which is pink dress. It's obvious that it's an adapted_costume, but when people think about the transition of pink_dress => swimsuit, they can't help but think to tag it with alternate_costume too. The distinction of when we use those tags sometimes is too vague.

BrokenEagle98 said:

Ah, post #2335505 was my mistake. That's actually Yuyuko in an alternate costume (as a maid) and not Youmu. Were you talking about post #2323134, since you mentioned a China dress?

No, I looked wrong at this image and the tags. I thought it was used a china dress on post #2335505, but there wasn't one. My mistake here^^.

What tag should I search for if I want to see a character wearing something, anything, that they have not worn canonically?

I think it's reasonable to want to search for a single tag for this instead of three different ones (possibly more if additional contrast tags along the lines of contemporary are ever created.)

I have to admit this gets messy when considering characters for whom wearing atypical outfits is the norm rather than the exception, though (for instance, most idols.)

7HS said:

What tag should I search for if I want to see a character wearing something, anything, that they have not worn canonically?

I think it's reasonable to want to search for a single tag for this instead of three different ones (possibly more if additional contrast tags along the lines of contemporary are ever created.)

I have to admit this gets messy when considering characters for whom wearing atypical outfits is the norm rather than the exception, though (for instance, most idols.)

Just throwing this idea out there...

Maybe we should create a supertag, something like "alternate outfit", with the casual, contemporary, adapted costume, alternate costume, and other tags having implications to it.

BrokenEagle98 said:
Maybe we should create a supertag, something like "alternate outfit", with the casual, contemporary, adapted costume, alternate costume, and other tags having implications to it.

I don't think casual and contemporary would be included in a hypothetical catch-all tag. Casual clothes can be the predominant or main outfit of a character. Also, "contemporary" isn't limited to clothing.

EB said:

I don't think casual and contemporary would be included in a hypothetical catch-all tag. Casual clothes can be the predominant or main outfit of a character. Also, "contemporary" isn't limited to clothing.

I'll agree with you on contemporary, but disagree on casual after reading both wikis.

Casual:

When a character who generally is depicted wearing a costume or uniform is dressed in modern day street clothes.