During the orientation week most wear a respectable pair of jeans/kakhis w/ either a polo shirt or a nice t shirt. Think what you would wear on a first date: try to strike that perfect casual balance between looking anal retentive and looking schizophrenic.
After that classes start and assuming your school doesn't have a dress code (*shudder*) 'clothes' rapidly degenerates into pretty much the bare minimum to keep you from getting arrested for indecent exposure. That standard may have been a tad lower than the national average for those of us who went to school in New Orleans. You will need to keep a single shirt/kakhis/tie combo in reserve for occasional days of shadowing, team based learning, fake patients, or whatever.
Somewhere around second year you'll probably stop showing up at all except on test days. Scare yourself by realizing you're only doing laundry twice a month because you're only getting dressed half as often.
Then third year hits you like a dump truck and you'll somehow find yourself standing on wards in an asinine short white coat , kakhis, a shirt, and depending on your clerkship director's preferences, maybe a tie. I strongly recommend investing in respectable looking, stain resistent fabrics that come out of the dryer ready to wear. Ironing is not an acceptable use of your time that year.
Fourth year the coat gets covered with your own unique pins and buttons, to show your individuality, and is then hidden within 5 minutes of your showing up to work, so that you can better pretend to be an actual doctor and not a worthless student. Ties are gone unless its a rotation interview. This is also when you get to find out who bought the clothes you don't need to iron, because no one is ironing their clothes at this point.
Then you graduate. Party naked until residency starts.
