Recently, I read an article about how series could present certain clothes as “wearable” by everyone, where cinema usually just makes them appear desirable, as if only the people in the movies or the celebrities can wear them. TV shows being longer than movies follow the everyday lives of its characters, and people can identify more to those characters’ routines. However, even though people can relate more to characters in TV shows because they have more time to get to know them than in movies, the fact that the outfits you see in different episodes are accessible to everyone is an illusion. In fact, in TV shows just like in movies, outfits and clothes in general are symbolic and don’t really translate their accessibility in real life. They are meant to show a character’s personality traits.
Gossip Girl, a TV show, which follows “the scandalous life of Manhattan’s elite”, offers an exact translation of our previous analysis. Serena Van Der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf, two of the main characters, belong to a world of luxury and excess: their wardrobes are filled with designer clothes that are obviously not accessible to everyone yet, it has been noticed that their styles inspire most, if not all of the shows’ viewers in their own personal styles. The example of Gossip Girl is similar to the principle on which high end brands, even though rather inaccessible, still arouse the desire of people to own what they can’t really have. Gossip Girl solves the issue of viewers actually feeling discouraged and aware of the fact that they may never get to have what the characters have in a smart and wicked way, by presenting an image of a soap opera” that is considered by most as “cheap”.
SERIES AND LUXURY PRESS 