At first, you might not think anything of Materia’s dress. It’s white, simple and covers her body. But when you see it, it’ll blow your mind. There’s nothing there, except patches. Obviously, Materia represents “Order” so it would make sense her dress would represent a grid. 

But that’s about all that makes sense about what she’s wearing. Everything else is either superficial or confusing. Is she wearing a birdcage? Maybe it makes sense; seeing that the theme of her character is technology and time, this could subtly indicate a cuckoo clock. But she’d have to be cuckoo in order to wear this.

What’s holding up her dress? I guess maybe the part around her breast that morphs into a bra. What’s holding up the blades behind her back? The barebones dress? Is there a secret gear in the back? She’s a literal god so maybe she can suspend gravity around her?

Nomura gained a reputation as the belts, buckles, straps and zipper guy. But he decided to switch things up with gears, cogs, wheels and clock hands. I think it’s kind of cool she has blades for wings. But does everything else have to be a clock metaphor? She’s the god of technology, I get it already. Does it really need to be this blatant?

Her crown is a flower pot with two spinning wheels. The scepter has a gear in it. Her high heels ARE gears. This is just too much. Everything on her dress spins and moves mechanically. She represents technology, yet dons herself in clock fashion that’s so 19th century. But is she also the goddess of clocks?

Materia’s design is sleek. She has a very minimalist approach to fashion. But it’s a bit too barebones. She has a skeleton structure to her dress. It’s almost as if someone meant to come back and fill the missing pieces in later. But she got impatient and decided to wear mesh wires. The goddess has no clothes, but none of our characters want to tell her this.

The one thing that draws me her design is her angel, or goddess, wings. But it’s the only thing that seems to make sense from a technological standpoint. Why wear a see-through dress when she could don armor? Why wouldn’t her entire dress rotate to show movement and constant progress? Or doe she needs to show skin?

The biggest questions still remain: why would a self-proclaimed goddess wear this? Cosmos’ dress was simple in comparison: a long, white, free-flowing, yet form fitting. And she represents the order of the universe. Her dress didn’t need to look like a planetarium to represent her character. But for Materia? A wire-mesh birdcage with rotating cogs. Why would anyone wear this? It’s isn’t stylish, nor is it respectable. I can’t take her seriously. Her dress leaves very little to the imagination. You can see her legs, her cleavage, her…bloomers? Both her top and her bottom have gear coverings. Oh, and I just noticed the gear patterns on her dress.

I can only imagine this would be hard to cosplay.