First, let me start by saying I was really bored and made this for jokes. Anyway, this is a comprehensive fashion guide that will be built up as TF2 evolves, solely based on art principles of my own expertise and various other sources. A plethora of matters will be addressed, from composition to KS effects to make your classes look vogue. This guide is crafted to give you the bases of how to create loadouts with precision. Not only cosmetics will be discussed, but paints, killstreak effects, unusual effects, and skins will also be touched so that you can incorporate everything into a stylish, head-turning loadout. If there is anything in this guide that happens to be overlooked, we can always arrange a time to discuss so that it may be added in for future reference. Enjoy this ride into the depths of fashion, using TF2 classes as a basis.


In no way, shape, or form is this guide telling you to abide to its fashion laws. This guide is made from a single person's experiences with both art and fashion in real life. For obvious reasons, I would not want you to think that the opinions and options stated in this guide should represent the entirety of the TF2 community and your loadout choice for that matter.

So in edition to using the resources of this guide, I encourage you to think outside the box because your mind isn't constricted to one digital guide.

Without further adieu, keep this in mind, and let us move on to the findings presented in this guide.

In order to tackle what we are talking about here, let's consider what composition really is.

Composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements in a work of art.

You may be wondering how we will apply this quite outlandish art concept to TF2. All hats aside, a large role in completely transforming your look is to make sure that your elements (in this case cosmetics) are evenly distributed onto your character. A key to changing your look is to cover up some explicit (obvious) stock elements of your character. Examples are provided below.





This is our first example of bad composition. The arrangement of cosmetics are unevenly distributed across the character. Look how bare Soldier is. Although these cosmetics are general and do compliment each other, there is no other representation as to who soldier really is other than a pathetic drill sergeant with a visible smoking problem.



This is another example of bad composition. Though these cosmetics do take up a reasonable amount of space and do compliment each other, the subject is horribly asymmetrical and all cosmetics are centered on his left leg.





This is an example of good composition. Remember that drill sergeant? Look at how these cosmetics compliment his hat. The Veteran's Attire and Attack Packs cover up the general G.I uniform and convey the message that he is really good at being a drill sergeant.



Going back to our engineer, this is another example of good composition. All of these cosmetics are distributed evenly onto Engineer. The Roboot is balanced out with his Gunslinger.

Originally posted by Wait What?:

Got the Vietnam war scout set accompanied with a mercenary badge (Good or not,need opinion)

So generally speaking, badges are very very tiny and do take up a cosmetic slot. Usually, they are not convenient enough for pairing with cosmetics. However, if you do a themed loadout and have a hard time finding colors, badges are usually neutral colored and MvM badges are the way to go, as they are bigger than traditional merc badges and also neutral.

The spirit of giving is also a nice badge if you wanted to make a futuristic / robotic type loadout.

Coordination is a vital part to making your loadout look presentable. We will be going over how this principle can be applied to your character, cosmetic-wise. This is a no-brainer, as too many conflicting elements will confuse your audience as to what tone you want your character to give off.

For those of you who don't exactly know what coordination means, shame on you.

Just kidding.

Coordination is the organization of the different elements of a complex body or activity so as to enable them to work together effectively.

I will provide you with examples of good coordination and bad coordination, however you must decide for yourself what theme you are going for with your character. This is unfortunately where the differences between good and bad get a bit hazy, as a counter aesthetic, camp, is also a beauty to some. Yeah, i just used a cringy Met Gala reference.




This is an example of bad coordination. Though Heavy's composition is exceptional, there is lots of confusion as to who he is. Is he a knight? No. An augmented robo-dude? Nah. Is he going through the Everglades in those booty shorts? The world may never know. Bad composition makes a loadout look excruciatingly sloppy. If you can't walk the walk, might as well not talk the talk.



This is another example of bad coordination, all because someone decided to slap a bunch of cosmetics onto their class from their backpack with no regard for your eyes.

How about that? The list of painful combinations go on and on, however I would much rather teach you how to remediate these atrocities - or prevent them.


Before we get into the whole discussion of how to coordinate your mercs, you must figure out what you want to center the look on. For instance, you could do many things with each class's look. However, these matters will be sorted out in a different chapter. See Themes



Notice how the outfit coordination of this heavy does represent that he's an augmented super soldier or a safari mann? Now he can certainly walk the walk and talk the talk. The loadout looks much more organized and more centralized to a certain aesthetic.



Here are other examples of pretty solid coordination with Scout. You can tell right off the bat what he is, and that's an example of stellar coordination. You can visibly see that he is an astronaut, and then has a vintage 60's aesthetic going on in the other image.



There are a bunch of other examples that I could jot down representing coordination out there, but I will refrain from doing so because this is where things start to open up for interpretation. So with that, I shall provide two more examples of good coordination.

In the fashion world, clipping is either the maker of breaker of your TF2 loadout look.

Clipping is a problem results in hidden areas being visible, and objects that don't overlap correctly.

By looking at this definition, you may say to yourself Why is this a good thing? Below we will be discussing about when to clip and when not to clip, and how to coordinate successful clipping with paints.


You shouldn't clip when you see vertices of one cosmetic protruding through another. Here's some examples of don'ts.




This is an example of a bad clip. The vertices of Spy's Chicago Overcoat clip through his Stealthy Scarf. This is a type of clip that cannot be pulled off.




Here is another bad clip, now with Sniper's Rifleman's Regalia and Final Frontiersman.


Now, this part is kind of awkward to wrap your head around, but there is a good side to clipping too. In my terms, we will be taking cosmetics of the same body region and putting them together (which also work in TF2). The overlapping of vertices is almost seamless, as these don't appear to be clipping at all.



This ever so happens to be my Spy cosmetic loadout because I'm a pilot. The Sky Captain clips seamlessly with the Lurking Legionnaire



This is another example of almost seamless clipping. The vertices of Sniper's Down Under Duster and Guilden Guardian do collide, however no colliding vertices are seen.


This is where it gets slightly more complicated because it is such an unspoken, rare occurrence. When it happens, it makes cosmetics look all-the-more seamless, and you could surely bluff a few unusuals with it.

I will provide my loadouts as an example to show you what I mean.



This is my Sniper. No paints applied. Notice my Atomic Universal Translator and Hazmat Headcase clipping tremendously. Not a good look.



However, when After Eight is applied to both cosmetics, they unite to look like one. Seamless, right?





Here's another side by side of my heavy. I removed the effects so you could see it better. Notice how After Eight seamlessly blends the Universal translator and Arkham Cowl together.


These really make a TF2 loadout eccentric. However, it is recommended that you test these combos out in Loadout.TF before purchasing things that you may want to go together. Sometimes, these combinations don't look as good as you expect or they are simply not compatible.

This chapter will discuss the basics of color coordination. These are basic do's and don'ts as to how your mercs could be coordinated. These are also golden guidelines in executing an effective aesthetic.


There are two types of color coordination - good and bad.





Take a look at this heavy. He has terrible color coordination. There is no organization with his colors at all. A navy blue hat simply just doesn't go with a pink hawaiian sweater and a lime green camera.



Another example of bad coordination. The colors distributed across scout are not unified. Neither are they unified with his uniform. Makes for a confusing aesthetic though he has good outfit coordination.



This is often overlooked in terms of coordination. Conflicting hair colors simply don't make sense. logically speaking, you cannot have two different hair colors going on at the same time. A big no no.






This is an example of good color coordination. His Killer Exclusive matches his bullet belt. His Heavy Tourism Polaroid compliments the Gift bringer. Exceptional color matching.



This is what good hair coordination looks like. There are no conflicts of color, and the facial hair and head hair blend together seamlessly.

This section will have its plethora of unpopular opinions, but still stick around for it. This also builds upon the previous section. This part of the guide is not telling you how to color your mercs, but it is giving insight into how you can color your mercs better according to proven art techniques if you are struggling.





We've all seen this before, right?


Some paints that are extremely hard to coordinate and oftentimes aren't a good look are:

- A Bitter Taste of Defeat and Lime
- Pink as Hell
- Deep Commitment to Purple
- A Color Similar to Slate



Some neutral, calm toned, versatile paints are:

- Ye Olde Rustic Colour
- Radigan Conagher Brown
- Cream Spirit
- Noble Hatter's Violet
- Drably Olive
- Peculiarly Drab Tincture
- Aged Moustache Gray
- Dark Salmon Injustice
- A Mann's Mint
- Color No. 216-190-216
- A Distinctive Lack of Hue
- Zepheniah's greed


Easily blendable colors:

- Value of Teamwork
- Team Spirit
- Air of Debonair
- Waterlogged Lab Coat
- An Extraordinary Abundance in Tinge
- Balaclavas are Forever
- Operator's Overalls
- After Eight
- Muskelmannbraun
- Mann Co. Orange
- Australium Gold



You're probably wondering why these paints are sorted into such absurd tiers. These paint tiers are based off of basic color theory.



Remember this?

Paints organized in the hard to coordinate tier clash too much with your reds and blues, the colors of the mercenaries. You can visibly see that your cool colors like purple will not go so well with your warms like red, and vice versa. However, blue pairs amazingly with orange as does red
and green.

Neutral colors are easy to incorporate into any loadout. Your beiges, tans, browns, whites, and blacks are much more versatile with reds and blues than lime greens are. Olives also blend well with reds and blues, since greens are analogous to blue and is a compliment to red.

Lastly, the team paints are perfect compliments with almost any set, the reason being that these mercs also have these colors on their stock uniforms. Australium Gold is in this tier because it's in the Primary trifecta with Red and Blue.

For visually sound loadouts according to color theory, your neutral, toned down colors are amazing compliments to your mercs.






Medic sporting a Radigan Conagher Brown Scourge of the Sky and Radigan Conagher Brown Baron Von Havenaplane. Very natural compliments to a desaturated blue uniform (excluding gloves).



Yellow and orange pair well with engineer because of his glove, knee guards, extension cord, and helmet. These colors also compliment red and blue.



Sniper sporting a Ye Olde Rustic Color Tundra Top and Radigan Conagher Brown Marksman's Mohair. The brown elements bring out the blues in his uniform and blend together seamlessly.



Demoman sporting a Zepheniah's Greed Frag Proof Fragger and a Zepheniah's Greed Juggernaut Jacket with a Warhawk Grenade Launcher.



Pyro with Charred Chainmail and After Eight Crusader's Getup with an After Eight firefly.


As stated before, you don't have to follow these conventions if you don't want to but they are strongly recommended.

Now that you know the general concepts to TF2 fashion, let's proceed to themes. A stepping stone in where to start your loadout.

This section will somewhat contradict with coordination, as people follow certain conventions by mimicking outstanding characters through TF2 hats. These are mostly exclusive, and come with a great deal of inside jokes to those who know the characters. This section will also assist in making your loadout and give you steps.

Many conventional TF2 themes that every player can say they've seen are:
- "i buy expensive hats and don't know how to dress"
- Edgy Sniper / Spy
- Hitler themed medic
- Skater Dood Scout
- Gaelic Warrior Demoman
- Counter culture aesthetic friendlies



Themes that TF2 supports:
- Superheroes
- Retrofuturism
- Space
- General Military Aesthetic
- Dystopian Concepts
- 60's fashion
- Retro technology
- Winter tones
- Summer tones
- Modern military aesthetic
- 1800's fashion
- Robots
- Aviation
- And many more

This section will not include any specific visuals, as it is solely made to make you visualize what you want your mercs to look like. There are also no right or wrong ways to making a theme, hence why it contradicts with coordination. Themes can be really specific to a person or very broad to a group of people that one would like to mimic.





Before you start, most of these principles apply to mimicking a person, however it is important that the principles we already discussed should be applied to a general type of look that you're going for unless you follow classic TF2 memes and friendly counter aesthetic. Also, grab a reference. These are very useful. Here is a reference above. We will be applying this to Scout.






Understand what elements in your reference stand out the most. focus on applying those to your loadout. Does TF2 have hats that support your theme? Figure out what cosmetics go with your desired look in accordance with a reference. Narrow these cosmetics down to a top three.



You now have a themed loadout.

Now that the loadout is complete, we will be getting into optional elements. Skins are often overlooked in making a TF2 loadout coordinate. There are certain ways to display skins in a loadout.
Listed below are some ways that you can display your skin.





Unlike hats, you generally have more room to tinker with skins. A common way is to emphasize the skin is by coloring surrounding cosmetics to match that of merc's stock colors, and picking an explosive color to bring eyes to your weapon.




Perhaps you want to have your weapon blend with your loadout as a whole. Doing so, you can choose a weapon skin that fits in with the paints of your hats or vice versa.




You can also use neutral toned weapons to bring out the look of your cosmetics. Generally, these weapons are mercenary to civilian grade weapons.

This is where fashion gets pricey. You're dabbling with the Pradas, Guccis, and Ader Errors of TF2. Unusuals cost a pretty penny, but they are more of a centerpiece to your look than your actual hat. Tiers will be absolutely disregarded, as you must find an unusual that fits your loadout.



We will apply an unusual to our reference loadout, Scout.



Since you have your loadout, you can choose an unusual effect that best encapsulates the environment that your reference thrives in. You must be thinking that TF2 fashion doesn't go this deep, but it in fact does.

Also, keep in mind that Color Theory will play a big role in choosing which effect you desire.




Do not choose effects that conflict with the color scheme of your loadout. Purple looks ugly when put next to drab olives.



Don't choose high tier effects to flex your spending capabilities. This is the unusual equivalent of wearing a Bill's Hat, Buds, and Bruiser's Bandana all at once. Terrible composition.





Find an effect that compliments the loadout color-wise. This smoke can also be symbolic.



Find an effect that conveys the environment that your reference thrives in. Most of the time, these effects will coordinate perfectly with your loadout.



Here are some examples of good unusual / loadout combinations.



For a beekeper, the Massed Flies Hive Minder is a good piece.



For a winter look, Blizzardy Storm looks great.



Sunbeams compliments this look both color-wise and in symbolic terms

Killstreak Effects are complimentary to your loadout and / or unusual hat. Few visuals will be provided in this section since these guildelines are straightforward enough.



Three golden KS rules are that the effect color must compliment the loadout's paints, skins, and/or unusual effect.

If not, Manndarin, Yellow, and Team Shine are good neutral effects that go with any loadout.

Generally, the type of KS effect does not matter when applying it to a loadout. Most effects are very versatile.





Yellow compliments the Sunbeams of the Mighty Mitre.



Manndarin compliments the Sulphurous Rusty Reaper and Fire Glazed Powerjack as well as the Mann Co. Orange Lunatic's Leathers.

Now that you've learned some concepts, let's apply these to some loadouts. This section also serves as inspiration and may keep on growing as users insert their loadout ideas in the comments based on this guide's principles.



- Zepheniah's Greed Frag Proof Fragger
- Zepheniah's Greed Juggernaut Jacket
- The Hurt Locher
- Factory new Warhawk Grenade Launcher
- Ullapool Caber


- Peculiarly Drab Tincture Scot Bonnet
- Peculiarly Drab Tincture Double Dynamite
- Peculiarly Drab Tincture Sub Zero Suit
- Cardboard Grenade Launcher


- After Eight Firefly
- After Eight Crusader's Getup
- After Eight Atomic Universal translator



- Value of Teamwork Bedouin Bandana
- Blizzard Breather
- Hot Case


- Cammy Jammies
- AWPer Hand
- Down Under Duster
- Conspicuous Camoflauge



- Team Spirit Cold Killer
- After Eight Hazmat Headcase
- Peculiarly Drab Tincture Rifleman's Regalia



- Peculiarly Drab Tincture Jungle Jersey
- Team Spirit Transparent Trousers
- Ye Olde Rustic Colour Forest Footwear


- Mann Co. Orange Airborne Attire
- Long fall loafers
- Aged Mustache Gray Transparent Trousers
- C.A.P.P.E.R



- Operator's Overalls Barnstormer
- Australium Gold Dog Fighter
- Life Support System
- Team Shine Lugermorph



- Team Spirit Law
- Mann Co orange Holstered Honcho
- Team Spirit Cop Caller
- Red Rock Roscoe Pistol


- Operator's Overalls Battle Boonie
- Australium Gold Vitals Vest
- After Eight Surgical Survivalist



- Peculiarly Drab Tincture Snowcapped
- Value of Teamwork Heat of Winter
- Value of Teamwork Gaiter Guards
- Neo Tokyo Medigun



- Warhood
- Combat Slacks
- Siberian Tigerstripe



- Patriot peak
- Commissar's Coat
- Team Spirit Borscht Belt
- Geometrical Teams Shotgun


- Lumbricous Lid
- Zepheniah's Greed Veteran's Attire
- Attack Packs
- Mantreads



- After Eight Skullcap
- Peculiarly Drab Tincture Dead of Night
- Veteran's Attire


- Showstopper
- Dapper Disguise
- Big Topper



- Peculiarly Drab Tincture Upgrade
- Air of Debonair Belgian Detective
- Peculiarly Drab Tincture Lurker's Leathers

As you can see, I kept these inspirations very very general so that you can tailor them if ever you wanted them.

Here are some hand picked loadouts.....


Courtesy of ShellShotty

If you have any suggestions on what to add into this guide, leave it in the comments below.

if you wish to discuss these matters more in depth, refrain from commenting and add me so that we can directly talk about it. Proper credits will be given to those who had these ideas. More sections will be made in the future as TF2 evolves.

This document is not made to sway your opinion on the TF2 economy, but it is made solely for the purpose of aesthetics. Fashion usually has a disregard for economics.

Do what you will with this advice.

This is also my first guide, so improvements are sure to come along as I get better at making these.

A lot of people have been reaching out on this guide to inquire about their loadouts, and I'm glad because I enjoy helping.
If you need one on one counseling with hats, I'm more than happy to help.
I love fashion and art, so I wouldn't mind diving into the depths of virtual hat fashion with you.
Feel free to shoot me a request and message me {Click here to go to my profile}.

- Updated visuals done by Summer Mouse
- Default visuals, research, and writing done by Bri

Your dumb art pal,








Updates that are coming soon:
- talks about badges [✔] See Composition
- series 2 of loadout inspiration [✔] See Loadout Inspiration Using These Principles
- a little head's up [✔] See An Introduction
- special visuals [✔] See Guide
- version 2 of paint list [✔] See Advanced Color Coords and Color Theory
- unusual pairing