While every mutant hero has their own style, the X-Men and their allies often trade their distinct looks for uniforms when the moment calls for its. After they’ve split up or gone to war against each other over how to make Professor X’s dream a reality, the X-Men have often used fashion to convey unity to a scrutinizing public. Even heroes like Wolverine and Cyclops upgraded their iconic outfits to unite the X-Men as a team with a distinct uniform.
Now, let’s take a closer look at some of the most memorable uniforms from the X-Men and their mutant allies. While these looks may not all be identical, each uniform gave the X-Men a unified appearance through shared designs and colors while also letting the group’s members show off their personal style.
THE ORIGINAL X-MEN UNIFORM
When Professor X assembled his first class of students, he gave the X-Men matching costumes in UNCANNY X-MEN (1963) #1 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Apart from the frost-covered Iceman, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, and Angel wore identical yellow and blue uniforms throughout their early missions. With masks that partially covered their faces and concealed their identities, these costumes effectively served as school uniforms that visually tied the X-Men together and announced the group as heroes to the world. Although Xavier let the X-Men design their own costumes after they graduated, these uniforms established yellow and blue as the X-Men’s primary team colors, which many mutant heroes later incorporated into their own looks.
THE NEW MUTANTS UNIFORM
After the first two classes of X-Men became full-fledged heroes, Professor X recruited a new class of mutants in THE NEW MUTANTS MARVEL GRAPHIC NOVEL (1982) #1 by Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod. Recruits Danielle Moonstar, Cannonball, Sunspot, Karma, Wolfsbane, Magma, Cypher, and Magik all wore matching yellow-and-black uniforms reminiscent of the original X-Men uniforms. While this color combination identified them as X-Men-in-training, Magik and Moonstar added little touches to their uniforms that reflected their personalities. Although the heroes eventually adopted unique costumes, they returned to yellow-and-black uniforms with updated designs when the New Mutants reassembled. Even in a large crowd of X-Men, these uniforms gave the team a distinct visual identity.
THE ORIGINAL X-FACTOR COSTUMES
When Jean Grey resurfaced after being thought dead, the original X-Men reunited to form a new team called X-Factor in X-FACTOR (1986) #1 by Bob Layton and Butch Guice. Although they still quietly helped young mutants, X-Factor posed as a mutant-hunting force called the X-Terminators. Cyclops, Jean, Angel, and Beast wore full-length bodysuits that identified them as heroes and echoed their first costumes. The uniforms featured a giant “X” design that extended from their shoulders down to their hips, but each hero’s suit had a distinct color scheme.
X-MEN TRAINING SUIT
After the X-Men had been scattered around the world, they reunited with one of the team’s signature looks: the X-Men training suit. This blue-and-gold body suit featured a red belt with a large red “X” symbol at the waist. As an update of the original X-Men and New Mutants’ costumes, these uniforms also served as lightweight body armor. Once Forge and Banshee began wearing the uniforms on Muir Island, Wolverine, Storm, Psylocke, and the rest of the team began wearing them when the X-Men reassembled to help their ally Lilandra Neramani in UNCANNY X-MEN (1963) #273 by Claremont, Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, Michael Golden, and Larry Stroman. Although most of the team returned to their individual looks, some X-Men, like Forge and Cecilia Reyes, adopted this uniform as their primary costumes.
X-FACTOR GOVERNMENT UNIFORM
Once the original X-Factor split up, goverment agent Valerie Cooper brought together a new team to work for the federal government in X-FACTOR (1986) #71 by Peter David and Larry Stroman. As X-Factor, Havok, Polaris, Strong Guy, Multiple Man, and Wolfsbane all started wearing new uniforms, while Quicksilver kept his classic costume he wore on the Avengers. The uniforms were not identical, but they all featured the same yellow-and-blue color scheme, prominent diagonal lines, and a red “X” symbol with yellow backing. These common elements gave the government-sanctioned mutant team a distinct and immediately identifiable look.
GENERATION X UNIFORM
Once the New Mutants grew up and graduated from Xavier’s School, Jubilee and a new class of young mutants assembled in GENERATION X (1994) #1 by Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo. Known as Generation X, Jubilee, Husk, M, Synch, Skin, and Chamber began training with Banshee and Emma Frost at the Massachusetts Academy. They wore red uniforms with large yellow boots, blue “X” symbols at the waist, and optional wrist gauntlets. Several members of the team also added personal flourishes to reflect their mutant powers or individual styles. In the final days of the Massachusetts Academy, the team briefly wore redesigned suits before splitting up.
X-FORCE UNIFORM
Under Cable’s leadership, X-Force originally took a more militaristic approach to securing a future for mutantkind. While that often put them at odds with the X-Men, Cable and Professor X began working closely together in X-FORCE (1991) #44 by Jeph Loeb and Adam Pollina. As this new era of collaboration kicked off, Cable gave every member of X-Force a new costume. Sunspot, Siryn, and their teammates received slightly different looks that all shared a gold-and-purple color scheme. This color-coordinated look represented the team’s closer relationship to the X-Men, which they retained even after drifting apart from their allies. X-Force briefly replaced these uniforms with short-lived black leather attire.
NEW X-MEN BOMBER JACKETS
As the global mutant population boomed, the X-Men welcomed a massive new class of students to the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. Around this time, the team traded their colorful costumes for black uniforms with yellow accents in NEW X-MEN (2001) #114 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. While Emma Frost kept her signature all-white ensembles, Professor X, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, and Beast began wearing outfits built around bomber jackets branded with a large yellow “X” symbol. This look offered a stylish and modern update on the original X-Men uniform, while leaving room for individual preferences. Several other mutant teams like the X-Corps and Storm’s X-Treme X-Men also began wearing similar costumes, giving the X-Men and their allies a unified appearance. The teams kept these looks until a major mutant attack caused the X-Men to embrace their heroic public personas again.
ACADEMY X UNIFORMS
When the adult X-Men stopped wearing their black uniforms, the students at the Xavier Institute began wearing several colorful uniforms in NEW X-MEN (2004) #1 by Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Weir, and Randy Green. During this era, students were divided into small squads that studied under one veteran mutant hero, with each squad taking a distinctive look. Under Dani Moonstar’s instruction, the New Mutants Squad wore white and gold uniforms that featured an “X” symbol across the abdomen. Their friendly rivals, Emma Frost’s Hellions Squad, donned similar red and white costumes, while Wolfsbane’s Paragons Squad wore green and black.
THE YOUNG X-MEN UNIFORMS
Following the events of HOUSE OF M (2005), only a handful of students at the Xavier Institute still had mutant powers. Laura Kinney, Prodigy, Surge, and the other New X-Men merged into a singular team and received uniforms from Beast in NEW X-MEN (2004) #43 by Christopher Yost, Craig Kyle, and Skottie Young. An update to the New Mutants uniform, these bulletproof yellow-and-black costumes featured large boots and optional gauntlets. When Rockslide and another group of young mutants came together to form the Young X-Men, they wore a more streamlined version of this look, forgoing the chunky boots and gauntlets.
UNCANNY X-FORCE STEALTH COSTUMES
Under the direction of Cyclops, Wolverine formed a new X-Force team to take on the kinds of black ops missions that the X-Men could not handle in X-FORCE (2008) #1 by Kyle, Yost, and Clayton Crain. Every member of this team wore a black-and-gray version of their costume, giving the team a common color palette that underscored the secrecy of their missions. As X-Force evolved to include Psylocke and Deadpool, those heroes also traded in their usual garb for X-Force’s muted colors, visually distancing the kill squad from the colorful heroic costumes of the X-Men.
TIME-DISPLACED ORIGINAL X-MEN UNIFORM
When Beast brought the original X-Men into the modern day to try to change history for the better, the teenage heroes received updated suits from Magik in ALL-NEW X-MEN (2012) #18 by Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen. Each member of the team wore a similar white-and-black bodysuit, but their respective costumes featured a secondary color unique to each hero.
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In this article: X-Men,New Mutants,New X-Men,X-Factor,X-Force,X-Men ’97 Explained
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