To be fair, fashion has had its glorious moments captured on film via motion pictures, courtesy of the Edith Heads, the Ruth Morleys and all the other costume designers who have given the public crash courses on period pieces, the most flattering cuts and the correct color palettes. And this glory has its own glorious ripple effect, making depressing eras suddenly look more romantic, actors and actresses instantly style-savant even for just two hours (Diane Keaton, we’re looking at you) and the viewing audience more willing to suspend their disbelief in the face of such a meticulously executed diverting tactic (because really, sometimes, fashion is the only saving grace of dismal characters and plot development). In fact, so closely tied has fashion been to film that moviegoers, after queueing up and forking over their hundred-plus bucks, sometimes expect to see no less than one aesthetic display of clothes after another. In fact, filmmakers take great pains to underline the authenticity or the mood or the theme of a movie that they leave no stones unturned, least of all costume design. A step further and one gets to see the fashion world being mocked in flicks such as Prêt-a-Porter and Zoolander – and mockery is the greatest form of underhanded flattery.
In the smaller, more accessible world of television, though, fashion walks the thin line between good and bad. Gone unnoticed as part of the mise en scène, such as the tailored trench coats and black turtlenecks prevalent in cops-and-robbers series or the preppy knits and layers favored by the Gilmore Girls, fashion borders on good. It’s also good if it pops out as part of a kitsch storyline or characterization, such as Bree Van de Kamp’s wardrobe. But when fashion is force-fed to become an implausible element of a show, couture becomes cou-torture. A classic example is Grace Adler of Will and Grace. Not the funniest character, neither the most endearing, this shrill, deceitful and immature moocher never seemed stable enough to toil long enough at her work, yet she sashayed all over New York in her no-doubt-expensive Marc Jacobs coats and even got married to Harry Connick Jr. in a Vera Wang. In a show where the plot is built on the ridiculous minutiae of daily life and some of the characters are too close to real life to be lovable, an elaborate wardrobe thrown in the mix suddenly becomes a jarring note that tries too hard. Carrie Bradshaw may have gotten away with it, despite a dubious source of income for all those Manolos, because she personified almost every girl’s dream of being preternaturally well-dressed, single, confused and baby-voiced, even when pushing 40 (not in that particular order). The O.C. cast also pulls it off, as being well-dressed in that trendy, youthful, sometimes slouchy way is totally within their well-moneyed characters (besides, the whole show is kitsch). Yet with Grace Adler, despite the designer duds that mysteriously get thrown her way, she was no competition for Karen Walker, who undeniably stole every scene she was in, wearing her rarely-altering figure-skimming dark frocks. If anything, the show’s effort to make Adler a TV fashion plate, albeit a neurotic one, just made her more hateable. Unlike Bradshaw or The O.C. kids, Adler is hardly someone to aspire to; she’s already someone’s annoying mother or neighbor or seatmate back in high school. For her to be slightly upgraded from her plebeian counterparts through expensive wardrobe… it’s hard to suspend that much of disbelief.
And so it seems the moral of the story is this: everything is magnified on the big screen, especially fashion. The amount of effort poured into films, from the conceptualization to the production to the no-choice-but-to-sit-this-whole-thing-out screening, is directly proportional to the role that fashion plays in them. All that money and labor call for nothing less but the grandest, the biggest than life, and fashion itself becomes an attraction. But in the comfort of one’s home, where the remote is always on hand and the channels to surf are just too many, fashion gets a smaller place – and role – to play: it’s tailored enough to fit what the show needs, either as something to momentarily catch a viewer’s eye or as part of a seamless background. Anything else and it becomes a desperate call for attention and an attempt at a People magazine’s best-dressed level of pretension. For a potential TV life of one season or 13 episodes, fashion seems not enough of a diverting tactic for a series to completely rely on.
Who knew that great storytelling and writing could possibly trump great clothing?