Guys in slick suits worn over graphic T-shirts and girls in Kitson-style shrunken hoodies and skintight, pencil-skirted “office” dresses. The CW’s redux of ’90s apartment-complex drama, Melrose Place, features fashion with an authentically L.A. feel (including the d-bag looks sported by the city’s stubble-faced CAA agents.) Resident bad girl Ella Simms (Katie Cassidy), dresses the part, “mixing power during the day with very sexy looks at night,” said wardrobe stylist and costume designer Emma Trask, a former celebrity and editorial stylist.
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Sweethearts Riley Richmond (Jessica Lucas) and Jonah Miller (Michael Rady) personify the show’s pristinely coiffed aesthetic. “She’s very boho-chic, while Jonah is more quirky and eclectic,” noted Trask, adding that each character is meant to embody a certain L.A. archetypes: surfer dude, sexy working girl, boho chick, etc.
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“The show is a very stylized version of L.A.,” said Trask, who pulls heavily from hometown brands including Michelle Mason, Lloyd Klein, Erica Davies, Ghita and Louis Verdad, whom she works with to create custom pieces—mixing them with marquee labels such as Yves Saint Laurent, Roland Mouret, Chloe and Balenciaga. “We’re trying to make it more editorial because that’s my background. It’s a lot about the clothes.”
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Serial drama One Tree Hill’s family-friendly plots and small-town setting—along with its crazy, soapy twists—seem designed to appeal to an audience that wants to relate to the characters. And the fashion, concedes costume designer Carol Cutshall, “is more about what that character would wear than what’s on the runway.” Even Brooke Davis (Sophia Bush) and Millicent (Lisa Goldstein), who run a fashion company in the show, play it consistently tame.
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Cutshall, who launched her TV fashion career working as a wardrobe assistant on The O.C. aims for a high-low mix. “I’ll pair an H&M tank top with an Elise Overland jacket or something from Kimberly Ovitz, with a necklace from Urban Outfitters,” she said. A smiling Alex (Jana Kramer) shows off the sartorial medley.
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The pretty young things of 90210, the 2.0 version, work a pantheon of typical Young Hollywood looks – from the va-va-voom, i.e. sexy cocktail dresses and cut-off jeans paired with vests and sky-high heels (as worn by villainess Naomi, center), to the fashion-forward (alt-chick Silver, left, once wore a checkerboard-print top and flouncy skirt teamed with a wide, studded 80s-style belt.) Costume designer Frank Helmer looks to fictional characters from the past that have “iconic style,” he said, citing campy 80s teen movie Heathers as “a great example.”
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Helmer and assistant costume designer Kime Buzzelli strive to exhibit “the epitome of Southern California style” on the show, said Helmer. “What Gossip Girl tries to be for New York, we will be for Southern California. I’m into making these people have real style.” In terms of brands, “I like to go high-low,” said Helmer, so Rag and Bone, Grey Ant, Band of Outsiders and Herve Leger mingle with H&M and Urban Outfitters on set.
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“’Hyper reality’ is the word people use in TV,” said Gossip Girl costume designer Eric Daman, explaining the teen show’s high-styled fashion aesthetic. The Emmy-winning costumer caused a stir the first season by draping the show’s young cast in J Mendel fox boleros and Burberry frocks and the like—but has recently rolled out less threatening, more accessible ensembles that mix high fashion with cheapie finds from mall shop including Charlotte Russe. As Jenny Humphrey, the Taylor Momsen—whose edgy look hearkens back to a fresh-faced Courtney Love—has made the pretty-punk look ubiquitous in every U.S. high school.
Glamour girls Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Jessica Szohr and Michelle Trachtenberg are always festooned to the gills with jewelry and miscellaneous accessories—designer bags, thick headbands and enough thick, ropey chains to give Mr. T pause (see Lively as the hyper-styled Serena van der Woodsen.) It may be overkill, but at the end of the day, said Daman, “We’re trying to set our own trends.”
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But Daman insists, “I do not want the girls at home to feel alienated and left out by the fashion. In the beginning, we were filling this niche that was left after Sex and the City—we needed to give that punch in the beginning and take it to an elevated place. Now we can bring it back to a place that’s a little more accessible.” The impossibly put-together Blair Waldorf (Meester) would suggest otherwise.
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