How TV shows influence our wardrobe choices

StyleSnap or Wornontv are examples of such websites. How do these websites work? Well their functioning is pretty self-explanatory. You type in the name of your favorite TV show, and immediately dozens of results pop up allowing you to find the dress, pants or shoes that will make you look like your heroine. Application developers went as far as trying to create ‘a shazam of fashion’ who would listen to your series, identify it and then proceed to tell you the exact items of clothing shown on camera at that moment. Unfortunately, you might have to wait a few years for this kind of futuristic application to be properly operating.

Euphoria, the ongoing HBO success, has pushed that trend even further, as the costumer of the series, Heidi Bivens has decided to ‘democratize’ the fashion of the show. Bivens has managed, through different ranges and styles of clothing, all easily accessible, to replicate the current fashion phenomena. She went further by referencing certain items shown on the show, directly linking them to affordable secondhand websites, such as Etsy or Depop, thereby sparking a rush movement which resulted in every item being completely sold-out, both online and in-stores.

Maddy’s revealing dresses or Jules’ colored miniskirts are both completely sold-out; they are more accessible than ever since they’re relatively similar to clothes actual teenagers wear today. Granted, you would probably not adopt the outfits worn by certain Euphoria characters in your everyday life. But the explosion of trends on social media and especially TikTok aimed at reproducing various styles of the series, demonstrated the impact the latter had in term of fashion trends.

This is a contrast for example to the trend set by Gossip Girl, of displaying rich teenagers constantly dressed in name brands. But even if Gossip Girl tended to display brands out of reach of many of its viewers, the series had a strong fashion influence, as characters were not only associated to brands but also to some characteristics that was theirs and theirs only, such as Blair Waldorf’s signature headbands.

This phenomenon of wanting to look like your favorite characters has been amplified with the democratization of internet shopping, but already existed at the time of the first wide-audience sitcoms, such as Sex and the City or Friends. The personality of Carrie Bradshaw for example, one of the main characters of Sex and the City, was partly defined by her obsession with shoes, creating (a previously non-existent) fascination for Manolo Blahnik, who saw his sales radically increase when the show aired.