The Style Files: Fashion in Television 

Fashion has moved with the times and  television is the on-screen catwalk that really matters, Hollywood glamour is getting left behind. Saturday nights are spent on the sofa, watching a character wearing the same shirt she wore in a previous episode. Fashion and television have gone hand in hand since the days of black and white programming. With millions of people settling down at the end of their long days to watch their fave show, TV has become one of the most influential visual mediums in fashion.

Some shows have truly taken this premise and incorporated fashion as the hook to gain more viewers, and the show’s fashion is as vital to success of the show as the plot to their story.

Real women/men have become the new screen goddesses/gods. It is probably significant that almost all the small-screen style icons who matter / we love are in complicated, multi-episode programmes, rather than in one-off dramas. Their lives have ups and downs and contradictions. They have talents; they have faults. They have love lives in which the narrative loops well beyond "fall in love, negotiate adorable/dramatic mishap, get married, the end" – and their wardrobes reflect this.

Sex and the City, one of the most popular shows of all time was beloved not only for its liberation of sex but also for its liberation of the wardrobe. Patricia Fields showed us how to clash patterns, scoot in heels and generally just be bold in our sartorial choices. Between watching current characters like Claire Underwood on “House of Cards”  and Olivia Pope on “Scandal” use fashion as a powerful tool, obsessing over the meticulous sartorial details on period shows like “Mad Men” and “Downton Abbey” and drooling over Liev Schreiber in Ray Donovan (who wears the best suits ever) it’s abundantly clear that clothes play just as important a role as writing when it comes to a hit TV show.

Sadly Hollywood style has displayed a fatal reluctance to move with the times. It is telling how often "old-school glamour" is referenced in descriptions of red-carpet dressing. Today, we like our icons a little more real. The style crush on Stella Gibson in “The Fall” played by Gillian Anderson, has quite a bit in common with interest in the wardrobe of the Duchess of Cambridge. (Note, for instance, how the duchess "recycling" a dress for a second outing is a news story that gets more hits, these days, than her wearing a new one).

Small-screen style icons capture our imagination because clothes are part of character. These wardrobes are about a sense of self, not about adhering to trends. Real style is intimate, psychological and complex – just like good TV.

By Minoli Ratnayake