Rarity

Rarity is a unicorn pony who resides in Ponyville, and one of the main characters of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. She is the older sister of Sweetie Belle and has a pet cat named Opalescence, also known as Opal for short. Rarity works as both a fashion designer and as a seamstress in Carousel Boutique. She represents the element of generosity.

Development and design
Rarity's design evolved from that of Sparkler and Glory, ponies from the original line of My Little Pony characters. She looks like the unicorn Majesty, who came with the first-generation castle set, except her hair is purple instead of blue. Rarity uses Glory's color scheme and Sparkler's cutie mark and appearance, with the personality of third-generation Rainbow Dash, as they both speak with dignified dialects: G3 Rainbow Dash speaks in a British dialect, while Rarity speaks in a mid-Atlantic dialect, and both also have tendencies to flip their manes and say "darling". She shares her name with a G3 pony who was voiced by Cathy Weseluck, who currently voices Spike in the new series.

Rarity's eye design is less frequently-used than most other designs: the two spa ponies from Green Isn't Your Color share the same eye design as Rarity's, including color, shape, and design of upper and lower eyelashes. A very uncommon background unicorn pony in Applebuck Season, who appears at about the 2:14 mark, has the same eye shape as Rarity as well.

Rarity's dressmaking shop, the Carousel Boutique, is designed after a toy of the My Little Pony line sold by Hasbro. In Lauren Faust's "pitch bible" for the show, the boutique was named the Carousel Couture, and it specialized in carousel-inspired designs.

Love of Beauty
When Rarity meets Twilight Sparkle for the first time, she is busy decorating Ponyville's pavilion for the Summer Sun Celebration. As soon as Rarity turns to look at Twilight, she expresses concern for Twilight's messy hair and practically forced on her the first of many makeovers.

Rarity cares for her own beauty as well. She attempts to show up Trixie in Boast Busters by making herself a dress from Trixie's curtain, but Trixie retaliates by ruining Rarity's hair, making her burst into tears and run away. Rarity is particular about her cleanliness: she panics while trying to avoid getting muddy in Look Before You Sleep, and tries to keep herself from getting soaked in the rain. This causes some conflict with her friend Applejack, who is, by contrast, not at all bothered about getting muddy or wet. Her fashion-consciousness extends even to times of peril: in Dragonshy, she wears a scarf on the way to the dragon's lair, wondering if she should carry a tiara to match. She indulges in a full spa treatment with Fluttershy, in Green Isn't Your Color as part of their "weekly get-together", and she's shown putting on eyelash extensions as part of her gala preparations in The Best Night Ever.

Love of the Spotlight
Rarity expressed admiration of Fluttershy's grace and poise during Green Isn't Your Color, and implored Fluttershy to model her clothing, despite the fact that Fluttershy doesn't enjoy putting herself in front of others and only asked her because Photo Finish is scheduled to come photograph her work. When Rarity loses the spotlight to Fluttershy, she attempts to overcome her envy and remain very supportive of Fluttershy. However, the same could be said of Rainbow Dash and herself in Sonic Rainboom. After Rainbow Dash expressed disappointment that the others would not be able to go to Cloudsdale to cheer her on in the Best Young Fliers Competition, Rarity insisted that they all find a way to go there and support her, and had Twilight test a spell on her that would allow her to fly in Cloudsdale. Rarity gained a lovely pair of wings thanks to this spell, but steals the spotlight when she shows them off to everyone and even enters the competition herself, sending Rainbow Dash into a nervous breakdown. Rarity eventually falls from the sky after burning her wings from flying too close to the sun, much like Icarus of legend. Rainbow Dash spots Rarity as she plummets, and flies to save her, performing a sonic rainboom in the process. Rarity apologizes to Rainbow Dash for her behavior and calls her the greatest flier in Cloudsdale.

Rarity's personality is similar to that of Scarlett O'Hara, the histrionic antiheroine of Gone With the Wind. Many of Rarity's lines are rephrased from lines Scarlett says in the 1939 movie.

Mannerisms
Rarity is perhaps the most well-spoken of the main six ponies; her vocabulary tends to be more formal, and she is prone to use complex words and more sophisticated, refined phrasing than the others. She speaks with a cultivated trans-Atlantic dialect, and shares some mannerisms with similarly accented Hollywood actresses, such as Grace Kelly.

However, Rarity sometimes gets carried away with her attention to detail. In Look Before You Sleep, she has difficulty tearing herself away from fixing a messy bookcase, despite the much bigger problem of a tree that crashed into Twilight's bedroom. In Winter Wrap Up, she becomes so preoccupied with fixing Twilight's messy bird's nest that she spends nearly the entire day on it, when she was supposed to be making hundreds of other nests.

She shows herself to be quite tough and resourceful in dealing with the Diamond Dogs in A Dog and Pony Show. Even though the others are worried she would panic over how dirty the underground was, Rarity takes control of the situation quite well, manipulating the Diamond Dogs to release her, and even letting her have several cart-fulls of gems. Rarity's properness and aversion from messiness clashes with Applejack's brashness in Look Before You Sleep. They bicker throughout the episode about each others demeanor, but finally unite in the face of adversity, which takes the form of a tree crashing into Twilight's library. They work together and eventually come to enjoy each others company, which is apparent in more recent episodes. In Over a Barrel, Rarity is baffled at the level of care Applejack bestows on a tree that she named "Bloomberg". who is being taken to Appleloosa for planting. Rarity complains that the tree received a private coach, however Applejack takes this in stride and takes no offense at Rarity's complaints. Rarity later provides Applejack with much appreciated support in their attempts to protect Appleloosa from a buffalo stampede. Rarity even comes to compliment Applejack's manners when she doesn't charge Rarity for food from her stand at the Grand Galloping Gala, in The Best Night Ever.

Generosity
While she cares about her appearance quite a bit, being averse to stepping in mud or risking getting herself messy, Rarity is not above getting her hooves dirty when it comes to helping her friends or creatures in need. She slices off her own tail to calm down the sea serpent in Friendship is Magic, part 2, willing to sacrifice her beauty to help restore the distressed serpent's "fabulosity". This action earns her the element of generosity, and later, when she activates the element, her tail is restored. She has been out on rugged pursuits such as in Dragonshy and Over a Barrel in aid of her friends. The episode Suited For Success heavily revolved around Rarity's generosity, as she was willing to not only make 5 unique dresses for her friends for the Grand Galloping Gala, but additionally re-work and redesign them as her friends desired. The overworking ran Rarity ragged and despite her friends' designs being horrible designs fashion-wise, she continued making them in order to satisfy her friends' desires. At the end of the episode, Rarity's friends realize that her original dresses were beautiful and perfectly matched for each of them, and that they should not have taken advantage of Rarity's generosity.

Rarity is hypnotized by Discord into believing a large boulder is actually a giant diamond in The Return of Harmony Part 1. For a short moment she resists the temptation, but soon she becomes corrupted, obsessively protecting her "diamond" and refusing to let anypony near it, as she was no longer remotely as generous as she was in the past. In fact, she was much more possessive and greedy. This continues in The Return of Harmony Part 2, where she refuses to part with the boulder and names it "Tom", while additionally hoarding other items she sees as valuable, such as the jewelry of the Elements of Harmony themselves. After the corruption is undone, she throws the boulder away and tells her friends to "never speak of this again".

Career
Rarity works as a fashion designer at Carousel Boutique. Rarity's work ethic and dedication to her customers is depicted in Suited For Success. She initially sews dresses of her own design for her friends, but when they're not satisfied with the result, she sews them brand new dresses under their direction.

Rarity stresses herself into making a new set of dresses the way her friends want them, going as far as following all their instructions instead of her own instincts. She is unhappy with the results, even though her friends are the very satisfied. When these dresses are devastatingly criticized by "the bigwig fashion hotshot" Hoity Toity, she locks herself in her room, lamenting her ruined career; luckily for her, her friends had been able to convince Hoity Toity to hold another fashion show, this time with her original dresses.

Her work is so important to her that during the parasprite crisis in Ponyville in Swarm of the Century, she yells in panic and rushes to her boutique once she realizes the parasprites might get there and eat her work.

Rarity is quite willing to let Spike help her out with her work, and shows some concern for his welfare. They go gem-hunting together in A Dog and Pony Show, and she rewards him for his assistance with "the finest reward", a gem, which he holds very dear to him simply for being a gift from Rarity. At the end of the episode, once she has several cart-fulls of gems, she lets Spike indulge on a great number of them. He willingly gives himself as a pin-cushion in Green Isn't Your Color and says he "can't feel a thing" thanks to his thick scales. There's a brief shot of Spike wearing a t-shirt with Rarity's head emblazoned on a heart, as a gag about the overt nature of Spike's "secret" crush.

Rarity wears a pair of reading glasses while sewing, but there is nothing to suggest that they are for anything more than allowing her to see her stitching much more closely.

Magic
As a unicorn, Rarity can use magic, and while it may not be up to the standards of Twilight Sparkle or Trixie, she uses it in connection with making things "fabulous", like gem-finding, dressmaking, and topiary art. She puts on an impressive light display for the fashion show she holds for Hoity Toity in Suited for Success. She uses sewing and cutting tools through telekinesis with the precision needed to make her dresses, manipulating multiple items at once. Her telekinetic ability has a quite extensive range and strength: in Lesson Zero, she is able to pull a couch from her home within a matter of seconds in order to dramatically recline upon it. She is able to magically attach her sheared tail hair to the sea serpent's mustache, and also re-attaches a large branch to a tree in Look Before You Sleep and magically trims its foliage into topiaries.

Rarity can also use her magic to expose underground gems, which is a major plot point in the episode A Dog and Pony Show. This spell is copied by Twilight in the same episode, as Rarity had taught it to her some time before. Unlike Twilight having to learn it, Rarity's gem-finding ability developed on its own: her story in The Cutie Mark Chronicles show this ability activating by itself without her knowingly casting a spell.

Close combat
Like the other ponies, she gets into physical conflicts throughout the series: she delivers a kick to the manticore's face in Friendship is Magic, part 2, knocks away Twilight with a whip of her backside in Sonic Rainboom, and delivers a flying kick with a martial arts stance to Applejack in The Return of Harmony Part 2.

Miscellaneous
Rarity displays a lack of skill in tic-tac-toe. She plays several round with Pinkie Pie in Dragonshy while they wait for Fluttershy. She loses "thirty-five games in a row", then asks for "best of seventy-one".

History
In Sweet and Elite, Rarity states she was born in Ponyville. During The Cutie Mark Chronicles, Rarity retells her story of her life as a filly to the Cutie Mark Crusaders. The flashback starts on an outdoor theater near the Schoolhouse, where some fillies were practicing for a school play, dressed as various foods. The teacher complimented Rarity on her costume design, but the perfectionist Rarity insisted that the dresses didn't meet her expectations and tried to create new ones to no avail. Almost immediately, a light ignites in her horn, and it shoves Rarity leftward until it stumbles into a very large, geode-like boulder. Rarity, having thought her horn would help her find "[her] destiny", is deeply unsatisfied. Then, Rainbow Dash's sonic rainboom occurs, causing the boulder to split in two, revealing the boulder to be filled with gemstones. Rarity decides to add these to the existing costumes to snazz them up, earning both the admiration of the crowd, and her cutie mark.

Rarity is responsible for the decor during the Summer Sun Celebration. When she sees what Rainbow Dash accidentally did to Twilight's hair she is compelled to give Twilight a makeover. She also develops a fascination with Twilight when she hears she is from Canterlot. Twilight flees the Carousel Boutique (Rarity's shop) in fear of the thought of Rarity dying her coat a new color.

Rarity daydreams in episode three about meeting Princess Celestia's dashing "nephew" at the Grand Galloping Gala, with her fantasy culminating in marriage and induction into royalty. Upon attending the Gala in The Best Night Ever, she spots a stallion, depicted with the same character design as the one in her fantasy, who is identified as Prince Blueblood. Although handsome, and initially charming, Blueblood turns out to be conceited, rude, and narrow-minded. He expects Rarity to care for him while doing nothing in return. Rarity tries to be patient with the Prince's manner, but his selfish ways finally exhaust her patience when Blueblood uses her as a shield from an incoming cake. She gets caked with cake, and angrily declares him to be a "royal pain" then splatters frosting all over him.

Sweetie Belle is introduced as Rarity's little sister in Stare Master. Her clumsiness, paired with an insistent willingness to "help", tests Rarity's patience, and she eventually asks Sweetie Belle to let her work in peace. Sweetie Belle "borrows" important supplies from Rarity in Stare Master and The Show Stoppers, using her most expensive fabrics to make amateurishly-stitched costumes for her friends. Although Sweetie's eagerness to help often unintentionally causes messes, Sweetie and Rarity truly do care and love for each other. At the end of Sisterhooves Social they agree to embrace and love each other's differences, and send a letter to Celestia describing how being sisters is mainly about having fun, but that it also requires compromises and work to keep a strong relationship.

In Sisterhooves Social Rarity's and Sweetie Belle's parents make a brief appearance. In Secret of My Excess it is shown that she has an affectionate relationship with Spike and is aware of his feelings towards her to some extent.

Rarity keeps a cat, Opalescence, who is a supportive in Suited For Success, but in Stare Master, Rarity seems to have trouble with her and asks for Fluttershy's assistance.

Hasbro.com description
''Rarity could possibly be the most beautiful pony you've ever seen. As she prances down the street, her coat gleaming pure white and her royal purple curls bouncing, everypony's head is turning--- and boy does she love it! A talented fashion-designer, her biggest dream is to one day design for Princess Celestia. At first glance she may seem like a typical debutant, vain and entitled, but it's simply not so! Generous to a fault, she's believes so badly that the world should be beautiful she's all too eager to simply give away the designs she's worked so hardly on and to offer anypony a custom Rarity makeover. And should you make it through one; you'll learn that Rarity's greatest beauty is her heart.''

Hubworld description
''With her gleaming white coat and royal purple curls, Rarity is the most beautiful unicorn in Ponyville. And she knows it. After all, heads turn when she prances down the street. A talented fashion designer, Rarity loves to give the other ponies makeovers, and her dream is to design for Princess Celestia''

Teacher for a Day description
''Finding another unicorn pony as beautiful as she would would be a rarity for sure! This talented fanshionista almost always turns heads - and she loves every minute of it!''

''She dreams of one day designing a beautiful dress for Princess Celestia! Until then, she continues to prance around Ponyville like the belle of the ball.''

''This pretty pony is just as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside - and as generous and caring as she is talented! She loves to help her friends look and feel the best!''

My Little Pony magazine description
''She's a beautiful unicorn and wants every pony to be beautiful, too. Rarity's fab at giving makeovers, hates getting dirty and faints at the sight of a bug!''
 * Creative
 * Fashionable
 * Stylish

Appearances

 * See also character appearances

Rarity appears in all season one episodes except the episodes Call of the Cutie and Feeling Pinkie Keen. In Fall Weather Friends, Rarity only appears briefly without any speaking roles. In season two, she has appeared in all episodes so far except Luna Eclipsed.

Quotes
"I-de-a!"

- Multiple episodes

"It. Is. On."

- Boast Busters and Look Before You Sleep

"No, I DON'T like it... ...I LOVE IT!"

- Suited For Success

"Whining? I am not whining, I am complaining, do you want to hear whining?"

- A Dog and Pony Show

"Out of all the things that could happen, this is THE! WORST! POSSIBLE! THING!"

- Lesson Zero

Gallery

 * Rarity image gallery

Trivia

 * She was going to appear in Luna Eclipsed but her scene was cut.