These words all refer to covering worn on the body. Dress is the outer covering for both men and women, especially when suitable for a formal occasion: evening dress , court dress . Dress may be used specifically to mean the skirt and bodice, usually in one piece, worn by women and girls.

Clothes and clothing are more general terms. Clothing denotes the entire covering taken as a whole.

• In winter children need warm clothing ; Natives in hot climates tend to wear little or no clothing .

Clothing need not be limited to the persons wearing it, but may suggest the manufacturer or retailer: a factory that makes children’s clothing ; a second-hand clothing store; a sale of winter clothing . Clothes and garments , one the other hand, suggest that coverings worn on the body are made up of separate parts. When one speaks admiringly of a woman as having beautiful clothes , one means that everything she wears ?coats, dresses, suits, shoes, hats, etc. ?is in excellent taste and of high quality and is also very becoming to the wearer. Clothes may also be designed especially for various activities or for persons in a certain condition or time of life: sports clothes ; school clothes ; maternity clothes , but it may also be a piece of underclothing with a distinct function: a foundation garment . Garment may also apply as an attributive to clothing in general, and especially to its manufacture: the garment industry.

A costume is the characteristic clothing worn by the people of a given region, time or group: the national costume of Bavaria; Elizabethan costume ; cowboy costume . In this sense, dress is sometimes used interchangeably with costume : T. E. Lawrence often wore Arab dress in the desert. In its second sense, costume can also refer to the clothing worn by an actor during the playing of a role or by a person posing as an imaginary character in any situation.

• As Hamlet, Olivier wore a costume of black velvet and a long gold chain round his neck; My cousin went to the party in a pirate costume .

Garb , a rather literary word, is used chiefly with reference to the clothing characteristic of a profession or rank: the garb of a priest; kingly garb .

Apparel and attire are chiefly used of complete and elegant outer clothing , although dress has largely supplanted them in this sense. Apparel (which is often rendered as wearing apparel ) is a somewhat formal word for both clothing and clothes . It carries more of the suggestion of a collection of separate garments in which a person is clad than does attire . Attire often stresses the impression that one’s clothes may make upon others: the rich attire of a Renaissance pope; the strange attire of the eccentric old woman.

Gear and togs are much more informal words for clothes . Togs is rather old-fashioned and, when used, refers in nearly all cases to swimming costume . Even in this swimming sense, gear has largely taken over from togs , and as well as referring to clothing in general, can be specific: Modern gear does not suit stout or older men; riding gear .