Style-conscious shows like The White Lotus and The Studio are inspiring viewers to seek out the on-screen looks, creating opportunities for brand placement, collaborations and organic fashion trends.
By Booth Moore
Artwork by Drake Carr
The chicest source of fashion inspiration right now isn’t on the runway, the red carpet or the street. It’s streaming on your TV. This season’s most stylishly costumed shows feature a raft of recognizable labels, in part because so many of the stories chronicle the lives of the rich and famous.
Viewers care—a lot—about what their favorite characters are wearing. (Consider the uproar over the early photos from Ryan Murphy’s American Love Story of Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.) They are treating shows as personal fashion mood boards, using Google Image Search to track down even the most obscure vintage items and taking to TikTok to re-create the looks.
The fashion brand bonanza on Season 3 of HBO’s The White Lotus included many memorable designer pieces in the show itself and extended off-screen to licensed capsule collections from H&M and Banana Republic, among others. Fashion hounds even pounced on IRL moments, like Parker Posey taking her character’s Gucci Bamboo 1947 bag out on the town multiple times (who knows about the lorazepam that her TV alter ego, Victoria Ratliff, kept there).
But not a single fashion brand paid to be on screen, according to The White Lotus costume designer Alex Bovaird, who had plenty of access to borrow top looks following the popularity of the first two seasons. Bovaird set up her own makeshift showroom on set in Phuket, Thailand, for the nearly 100 brands that sent pieces for consideration.
To make it easier for viewers to find the Gucci logo sun hat worn by Michelle Monaghan’s Jaclyn, the Valentino bag toted by Leslie Bibb’s Kate and the Ortiz dress on Carrie Coon’s Laurie, Bovaird launched her own storefront on ShopMy, the online platform that lets influencers earn affiliate income for items they recommend and sell. “I was kind of jumping on my own bandwagon,” she says of organizing the looks by character.
Resort-loving French fashion designer Simon Porte Jacquemus was such a fan of The White Lotus that he reached out to Bovaird asking to collaborate. Cut to Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) sporting sheer sarong over a gorgeous pastel pink high-cut one-piece bathing suit with a wide-brimmed straw hat, while holding court on the yacht of her boyfriend, Greg (Jon Gries). That look was custom-made, so not available at retail, but the partnership did come full circle when Jacquemus tapped Gries for its racy summer ad campaign.
Meanwhile, Apple TV+’s Your Friends & Neighbors is a luxury brand’s wet dream, peppered with pop-up explainers about the heritage, craftsmanship and dollar value of the One Percent’s most potent status symbols, including Patek Philippe Nautilus watches and Hermès Birkin bags, blurring the line between content and commercial.
Now that people point their phone at the TV when they watch something to Google ‘What is that car,’ ‘What is that dress,’ it feels like a springboard for a fashion company.” Sirens Costume Designer — Caroline Duncan
But the products appearing on screen weren’t ads, according to the show’s costume and prop designers, who used rental services to source the loot and paid for goods from Zegna, Tom Ford, Loro Piana, The Row and others to outfit the characters of Westmont Village. Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm) sports a Tom Ford sweater and Nili Lotan jeans, even when he’s stealing form his friends and neighbors, and his off-duty finance-bro luxe has resonated with viewers. “There’s a lot of wives reaching out for their husbands,” costume designer Jacqueline Demetrio says. “They even want to know who makes the tennis and golf gear.”
For the second season, brands are clamoring to be included. “When Hermès said we’re going to loan, I said, ‘Oh, my God,’ because they’re so tricky. And Cartier. There are a lot of brands on board now—it’s almost like it’s an ad for them, too.”
It’s no wonder brands take notice of stylish shows, because powerful storytelling on TV can ignite trends in real life. Erik and Lyle Menendez, or rather their on-screen alter egos, became unlikely fashion icons with Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, when TikTokers began tracking down the brothers’ killer 1980s country club looks, including a Lacoste varsity sweater with an “L” for Lyle that costume designer Paula Bradley sourced from the crocodile-loving brand founded by French tennis champ René Lacoste. “The 1980s was the last great decade of swagger and style,” she says.
While blue-chip tech, beverage, food and car brands are major players in the product placement space, alongside mass-market clothing labels with recognizable logos like Nike, Adidas, Ralph Lauren, Lacoste and Levi’s, few high-fashion brands are paying to be in TV shows, according to Stacy Jones, CEO and founder of Hollywood Branded, a Los Angeles-based agency for influencer marketing, branded content and product placement. “[Fashion] is one of the least paid partners out there,” she says, explaining that some brands are willing to lend garments to help costume designers and get the chance to be featured on screen, but that more often costume designers have to shop to build looks—sometimes in multiples, with enough pieces on hand for numerous takes and stunts.
There’s typically no money exchanged even for verbal mentions, such as the nods to Brunello Cucinelli on The Studio and Tory Burch on Season 4 of Hacks. (Reps for the brands and the costume designers of both shows confirm it.) “A lot of it is because there is a fan in the writers’ room, there is a fan in the costume department, there is a fan on set,” Jones says. In the case of The Studio, star and co-creator Seth Rogen often wears the Italian luxury label’s suits on red carpets, though costume designer Kameron Lennox bought the tuxedo he wears during the Golden Globes episode. “We wanted him to look like that man you meet who has butter hands,” says Lennox, adding that Rogen’s ‘70s-looking Cutler and Gross glasses were also part of his throwback Hollywood mogul style.
Even when a brand isn’t cutting a check for on-screen placement, the exposure can have a big impact on the bottom line. Austin-based menswear brand Huckberry has sold “thousands” of its $288 Flint and Tinder Waxed Trucker jackets since zaddy Pedro Pascal first stepped out in one on the first season of HBO’s The Last of Us, according to a rep for the outfitter. That’s why many brands are willing to be collaborative.
Netflix’s Sirens has helped sell Lilly Pulitzer dresses, Nantucket basket necklaces and J. Press “Yale” sweatshirts, according to costume designer Caroline Duncan, who sees potential in co-designing with fashion brands to integrate their looks into future shows. “Now that people point their phone at the TV when they watch something to Google ‘What is that car,’ ‘What is that dress,’ it feels like a springboard for a fashion company.”
The fashion-costume ecosystem could further evolve as streamers grapple with how to generate more revenue. “Apple is getting into the space,” Jones says. “Netflix is tightening its approach to integrations, requiring a lot of media buys on the backend that are expensive. Amazon is getting into shopping features and giving caveats that brands need to pay to unlock opportunities to their biggest [shows]. So they’re all going to get there.” She predicts that more series will start to follow films like Barbie and F1 in using brand partnerships to extend marketing, build awareness, create a buzz, and ultimately lure more viewers. “Right now, [streamers] are going after the biggest brands with the biggest pockets, but they need to be looking at luxury designers who could do cool collabs, produce a limited collection everyone is going to want. That will be a conversation point.”
