From cool to homeless in 1 level...

[drachehexe]

What's with the homeless gear they give us to wear? I mean, you start in this cool looking outfit, dressed like you're a rich classy dude/lady and then *BOOM* you're wearing a burlap sack everywhere.

How freaking long does it take to start getting gear that actually doesn't make you look like a hobo living on the streets?

[Mimilu]

Level 50
That's also when you unlock Glamour

[Terrini]

Level 15 starts with some nice gear from dungeons that is very popular and has a higher levelled incarnation that is dyable.

[DSaint]

What's with the homeless gear they give us to wear? I mean, you start in this cool looking outfit, dressed like you're a rich classy dude/lady and then *BOOM* you're wearing a burlap sack everywhere.

How freaking long does it take to start getting gear that actually doesn't make you look like a hobo living on the streets?

Because fancy clothes dont protect you against squirrels and ladybugs.
Potatoes sacks does.

[Niwashi]

It kind of alternates the whole time you're leveling up, or at least that's how it seemed to me. Seems like every time you get a nice looking piece of gear, it's followed by something weird-looking or ugly in the next level range. (With Archer/Bard as the first class I leveled very far, the ones that bugged me most were those big DoW gloves that look like a cross between oven mitts and boxing gloves. Maybe that makes some sort of sense for a Pugilist, but ridiculous looking for an Archer.)

Whenever the best gear I had (in terms of stats) was ugly looking, I just set up an extra Gear Set, so I had one best-stats gear set for the class and one nice looking (and hopefully half-way decent stats) gear set for the same class. I'd use the best-stats gear in dungeons or any content that proved difficult, but a lot of open-world content could be done with less than optimal gear, so I could spend most of my time looking ok.

[Sessurea]

Gear from sastasha and brayflox longstop look ok. Then it's ugly again until 45 when u get af gear from job quest.

[Rev1170]

I think it is a really great idea what they did with the burlap sacks and over mitts. You start off as a basic adventure and climb the ranks from padded vest to AF gear and so on as you become more famous and get more experienced it fits great into the story.

[Niwashi]

You start off as a basic adventure and climb the ranks from padded vest to AF gear and so on as you become more famous and get more experienced

Except that the gear appearances don't climb the ranks like that. If you wear the best gear (stat-wise) for your level, you go from great looking gear to terrible looking gear to another set of great looking gear followed by more terrible looking gear and so on. It's a back and forth rather than progressing pattern.

(Though that back and forth pattern does at least make secondary better-looking Gear Sets more viable. If your current best gear is ugly, you can usually find something decent looking that's about 5 levels or so lower, and most open world content is doable with gear that's a few levels behind. That pattern of backing off on the stats to get better looks wouldn't be possible if the gear started out bad and got progressively better looking.)

[DawgPilez]

Because fancy clothes dont protect you against squirrels and ladybugs.
Potatoes sacks does.

I need a rez after dieing from my laughter XD.

But yeah OP, you will look like an ugly potato sack for a good while. You can dye your potato sack... Unless you get dungeon gear you won't start looking fabulous until after 20... like long after.

[Niwashi]

DoW have somewhat better options through the early levels. They get nice looking gear at level 5, level 14, level 16, level 20, but then in between they have particularly ugly gear (worse than anything the DoM classes get) at level 8, level 10, level 18.

DoM have less variety. They can get some nice looking gear as dungeon drops (provided they get lucky with the RNG), but otherwise they sort of just alternate between robes, cowls, and dalmatica. There are slight detailing differences (mostly just color swaps on the non-dyeable accent sections) and the robes alternate between short halfrobes and full length robes, but those three basic designs are all you'll see in normal gear for quite a while, and the three are more similar to each other than the basic patterns DoW gear alternates between.