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written by Sam Greenspan

Some things can’t be explained by mortal choice. A greater force must be at play.

My wife often makes fun of me because I have a vision of us, one day in the future, going to Disneyland with our entire family wearing matching outfits. Look, now that I’m a parent, I’m all in on corniness. I’ve been trying to be hip (with severely mixed results) for far too long. Now I just want to throw the family in matching track suits and un-ironically use words like “magical” and “fun.”

This list is only tangentially related to all of that, but it WAS the inadvertent inspiration. As I was really driving home the point to my wife by sending her random photos of families dressed in matching outfits, I stumbled onto something even better: Photos of STRANGERS dressed in matching outfits.

Here are 11 pictures of people whose wardrobe (or other aesthetic) choices are so coincidental that they can only be explained though the intervention of unseen forces greater than us all.

1 | Early bird special in our best pinks and greens

I hope one of these four people recognized this moment was a *perfect* gateway to swinging. “Well, I’m in a pink shirt, and your husband is in a pink shirt, and you’re in a green shirt… anyway, should we head to a Red Roof Inn?”

2 | Fine, I’ll take the picture, but I’m covering my face

As cliche-ly mortifying as it is to show up at a party wearing the same outfit as someone else, I’d have to imagine it’s several degrees worse to show up wearing the same outfit as the floor.

3 | Perfectly inverted outfits

I like that the colors are inverted all the way down to the shoes.

4 | Under construction

This photo either demonstrates a hilarious and tacky coincidental wardrobe choice… or this guy is really repping hard for local construction.

5 | Hey, Sharon!

Who knew the day this guy wore his Basic Instinct shirt he’d bump into Sharon Stone on the street? I assume she’s smiling that genuinely because the shirt didn’t feature a still shot from about 14 frames later in the movie.

6 | Carpet camouflage

If one ever needed evidence that grandmothers will do anything for their grandkids, this woman agreeing to get down on the floor for this photo is Exhibit A.

7 | The standard IT uniform

I’ve worked in similar departments with similar unwrittendress codes. On some level, EVERY day is “Wear Your Dark-Colored-and-White-Striped Shirt to Work Day.”

8 | Can I borrow that?

This could be used in an elementary school math textbook to vividly demonstrate the potential power of addition.

9 | Who wore it better?

I love that the woman’s shirt even has the exposed upper back part that mirrors the cut-out in the phone case for the Apple logo.

10 | Bad life decisions

I really hope these guys realized what was happening and got married. Neither will ever find anyone else who understands them more.

11 | Separated at birth?

This is about as close to a glitch in the matrix as I’ve ever seen in real life.