Little House Fans Agree Mary Ingalls Was The Best-Dressed Character In The Original Series

There's something about ensemble casts that always has us picking a favorite style star. For instance, are you team Blair or team Serena on "Gossip Girl?" Are you more of a Rue or a Cassie from "Euphoria?" With the original 1970s "Little House on the Prairie," the question is, are you more of a Mary or a Laura? The online consensus for that last one seems to be Mary.

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These days, Melissa Sue Anderson, who played Mary Ingalls on "Little House on the Prairie," looks like a chic blond beauty. But on the show, she was always dressed in era-appropriate costumes. On websites and boards devoted to the topic of "Little House" costumes, there's an overwhelming preference for the eldest Ingalls sister's dresses, and several of Mary's costumes seemed etched in fans' memories. In particular, the mint green gown (a hand-me-down from her mother) that Mary wears to a cotillion ball in season 4is cited by many as one of the character's best looks. One of the reasons it was so notable is that the Ingalls family rarely got dressed up, so this was one of the few occasions when fans got to see one of the girls in their finery.

Sadly, many of the "Little House on the Prairie" costumes will never be seen again, but fans can still reminisce about their favorites from the family-friendly prairie drama — and reminisce they do, especially when it comes to Mary. Another look that gets mentioned frequently is Mary's blue church dress (her sister, Laura Ingalls, was dressed identically). Cottagecore devotees are all about it, with one Redditor writing, "I loved the blue Sunday dresses that Mary and Laura wore when they were young, how they matched blue ribbons with it and smart leather-type boots."

Another peak fashion moment for "Little House on the Prairie" was the white outfits worn by the Ingalls clan in a season 2 dream sequence where Laura fantasized that her family had inherited money and could afford fancy clothes. Though all of the Ingalls' white outfits from the fantasy get attention (and a completely different "Little House on the Prairie" dress even sold for thousands at auction), it's Mary's bell-sleeve frock that would look right at home with today's fashion trends. On a montage of dresses from the show, one TikToker jokingly wrote, "Owning this dress would fix me." 

The white costume scene was a rare moment of fantasy where audiences got to see the girls in something more extravagant than their usual frontier clothes. However, fans who rank Mary's looks above all others now have to decide: are Mary's simple prairiecore dresses her best, or do her fancier looks take the cake?