The article is addressed to the poetics of costume in Chekhov's prose. This aspect of prose has not been studied and gives material for research, which adds relevance to the article. The author shows how in anecdotal plots the costume is represented as a characterological ("Once a year"), "metaphysical" ("The Station") and psychologically stressed detail ("Man"). Dynamics of the costume is indicated by a change in its semantics and functions. The romantic shawl in "The disgraceful story (something like a novel)" encompasses a coiled story about the peril of a "bookish" concept of life. The metamorphoses of the characters changing their clothes turn an archetypal plot upside down ("Living Goods"). Intertextuality item allows you to turn the story into a parody ("Green Spit"). In Chekhov's later prose a complication of costume features can be observed: in the novel "My Life" the costume, while existing in a tangle complex of the visual, the acoustic, the tactile and the olfactory, traces the story in the interplay of text overtones.