How TV changed the way we dress, from Succession to Killing Eve
telegraph.co.ukTess of the D’Urbervilles. (Who can forget her delicate sprigged cotton blouses?)The appetite among viewers for beautiful style was implicit in the primetime slots given to period dramas such as Downton Abbey and Cranford.
Clothes were a big part of their attraction –hence the ‘costume drama’ appellation – and could be as extravagant as budgets allowed.
That shows no sign of abating: Bridgertontakes clothes watchers to a whole new floor of escapism – and few seem to care that some of the costumes and sets may be outrageously anachronistic because it all looks so psychedelically pretty.Yet, until recently, you’d have been hard-pressed to find this sort of pleasurable surface beauty in a contemporary drama unless, that is, you were watching US television.
There, even a moderately successful cable show like legal drama Suits dressed its ambitious, attractive female stars in clothes from The Row, the uber-luxe label designed by the Olsen twins. (One of the show’s stars was so enamoured by her character’s wardrobe that after she left and became the Duchess of Sussex, she continued to wear a couple of those pieces.)In France too, on-screen fashion is aspirational: far less flashy – of course – than on American TV, but sleek.
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