TV shows have really been stepping up in terms of styling, with shows such as Gossip Girl, Sex and the City, and Mad Men featuring flawless style that is being imitated by designers and consumers alike. Here's some key points from recent article in USA Today that assessed the success of Mad Men in today's culture:
- Its audience is considered modest even by cable's lesser standards (averaging 1.5 million viewers). But the story of the turmoil behind the work and family lives at a New York ad agency is extending its influence over fashion, design and even libations, with leading man Don Draper (Jon Hamm) raising the status of the Old Fashioned. (That's bourbon, bitters, sugar and soda water, with a twist, on the rocks.)
- "I do think that culturally, if not ratings-wise, our show has a pretty significant footprint," says Hamm, whose sharply dressed Draper has become iconic in his own right.
- Promotional tie-ins include one with Clorox for the Season 2 DVD and another for Season 3 that features Mad Men at more than 400 Banana Republic stores (Mad About Style!). Heavy response to a contest that offered a walk-on cameo jammed the network website's servers this week..
- "It has such a specific style, that it's easy to do this parody and that parody," says Elisabeth Moss, who plays young copywriter Peggy Olson. "I think at first people were fascinated by the style and the '60s and the costumes and the smoking and drinking. If it were only that, it would have failed very quickly. There's so much more underneath. That's why it survived."
- Media and fashion tastemakers have been drawn to the style and themes of the show, says Robert Morse (Bert Cooper), who won a Tony in 1962 portraying a young ad man in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. "A television show with this reach to people who are in creative work for all the magazines, they are astute enough to say, 'We've got to bring back the fashions of Mad Men,' " Morse says. Designer Michael Kors says on his website that his 2008 collection was partly inspired by the series.
- "It's more a cultural than a commercial hit, yet it clearly outperforms a standard movie AMC would put in its time slot," says John Rash, senior vice president at the Campbell Mithun advertising agency.
- "It's a story about the American Dream."
- It has presented a cavalcade of fashion, its primary viewership of teenagers and young women tuning in not only for the plots, but also to render judgment on the clothes. The extravagant wardrobes of the stars — a clash of piped blazers, tiny kilts, dueling plaids and festoons of jewelry — have inspired countless posts on fan Web sites, and magazine features about the female leads.
- Now the show’s sense of style is having a broader impact, in the retail marketplace. Merchants, designers and trend consultants say that “Gossip Girl,” which is in summer reruns on the CW network before returning Sept. 1, just in time for back-to-school shopping, is one of the biggest influences on how young women spend.
- “The show has had a profound influence on retail,” said Stephanie Solomon, the fashion director for Bloomingdale’s, adding that it appeals not just to teenagers but also to women in their 20s, the daughters and the younger sisters of the generation that made “Sex and the City” requisite viewing for aspiring glamoristas.
- ...in stylistic terms it “may well be the biggest influence in the youth culture market,” said Stephanie Meyerson, a trend spotter for Stylesight, a trend forecasting company. The show has given an unexpected mass appeal to patrician staples like crested blazers, layered polo shirts and kilts. When cooler days approach this fall, some retailers are predicting a run on argyle sweaters, knee socks and high boots.
- Now some fall designer collections will also bear a “Gossip Girl” influence, a trend first seen in February on the New York runways, when the series ignited “a pretty huge resurgence of ritzy, preppy and collegiate looks,” said Amy Astley, the editor of Teen Vogue, citing punky school-girl styles from Marc by Marc Jacobs and Henry Holland, and crested blazers at Ruffian, among others.
No comments:
Post a Comment