The Netflix effect: from Princess Diana’s fashion in The Crown to Lily Collins’ outfits in Emily in Paris, how streaming TV, not the red carpet, affects the way we dress
- The relationship between streaming services and luxury fashion brands has turned into a full-blown love affair, in part because of the lack of red carpet events
- Searches for the brands Lily Collins wears in Emily in Paris went up over 200 per cent and The Crown’s popularity brought back trends from the 1980s in the UK
This was the year that costume designers became the new celebrity stylists, and dissecting red carpet style meant talking about the Cinderella-blue Bruce Oldfield gown that Diana wore on the Australia episode of The Crown.
The relationship between streaming services and luxury fashion brands has turned into a full-blown love affair over the course of 2020. Clothes from Emily in Paris have had French fashion lovers up in arms (too short, too matchy-matchy and far too many berets) but demand for many of Emily’s most memorable sartorial choices has grown exponentially this winter.
Styled by Patricia Field, the costume designer who oversaw the fashion on Sex and the City, the series centres around Emily Cooper, a 20-something American played by Lily Collins who becomes a social media guru at a Paris-based marketing agency. According to fashion search platform Lyst, searches for some of the brands she wears went up over 200 per cent in the weeks after the show aired.
Chanel was one of them. The august French house may not have had any official input on the series, but because Emily is rarely seen without one of her seemingly endless double C handbags slung over her shoulder, visits to the Chanel website skyrocketed around the series’ release.
Meanwhile, searches for bucket hats – Emily is rarely seen bareheaded – increased by 342 per cent when the show came out, and the terms “beret hats” and “berets” collectively rose 41 per cent on Lyst, compared to September.
Netflix may soon be more powerful than Vogue when it comes to influencing how we dress. In another one of its star shows – The Queen’s Gambit – chess champion Beth Harmon’s hemlines get higher as her winning streak gets longer, no doubt one of the reasons sales for short skirts relative to longer ones are up by 35 per cent globally year on year.
Set in the mid-1960s with costumes designed by Gabriele Binder and clothes inspired by miniskirt co-inventor Pierre Cardin, The Queen’s Gambit is filled with swishy navy blue mini-kilts and snow-white short skirts worn with low-heeled ankle boots and pretty pumps.
They are, to my eye, more fashionable than anything Cooper wears, but both characters’ wardrobes feel joyful in a world currently lacking in fun.
In praise of Princess Diana’s ugly jumpers
And then there is The Crown , which this season charts the ups and downs of the British royal family in the 1980s and has single-handedly ushered in a new form of dressing. I live in London, and the oversized piecrust collars, brogues and Alice bands that were terribly naff a year or two ago have become ubiquitous this winter.
I found myself falling back into a Diana fashion hole while watching The Crown. The outfits actress Emma Corrin wears chart the Princess’ growth beautifully, illustrating how she goes from roller-skating teen in gingham trousers and raspberry knitwear to a woman with the world at her feet when she wears a beaded ivory gown by Victor Edelstein a decade later in New York.
Giuliva Heritage, meanwhile, has a jacket inspired by the outfit the princess wore on her honeymoon in Balmoral, while Batsheva Hay, founder of her namesake New York-based label Batsheva, has released a collection of Lady Di dresses.
As we tuned into the show, we simultaneously fell back in love with Diana’s clothes while knowing that the sailor bibs, pussy-bow blouses and puff-sleeve dresses – and the novelty knitwear – were rather ridiculous. And yet, we still wanted all of it.
After a difficult retail year, the explosion in interest in the clothes from a few Netflix shows should make the fashion industry sit up and take notice.
It is notable that when Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele was looking for a socially distant way to present his collection last month, he thought of the streaming platforms we have all become addicted to, choosing to show his designs via a seven-part miniseries (sound familiar?) directed by Gus Van Sant.
Ultimately, the pandemic has ensured that television and fashion are now inextricably entwined. Yes, the “Emily effect” and the “trying to be Di” obsessions are already fading as hype from the shows dies down, but the relationship between streaming services and fashion brands is clearly only getting started.
