Which fictional character holds the most sway when it comes to fashion? According to a new study, it’s a secret agent — arguably the world’s best-known — who stands out as the biggest fictional fashion influencers from the world of TV and movies. His name is Bond, James Bond, and he’s outclassed all the leading ladies you’d expect to find in this kind of list, including Rachel Green, Blair Waldorf and Carrie Bradshaw.
In recent years, the movies, and especially TV shows, have become inexhaustible sources of inspiration for the fashion world, to the point of driving totally unexpected trends. This has been seen in recent months and years with the success of the shows Emily in Paris, Euphoria, Squid Game, Bridgerton, and Wednesday, as well as movies like Barbie and, more recently, Challengers.
Superdry study finds James Bond and Rachel Green are top fictional fashion influencers
And that’s without counting one of the top trends of 2023, namely quiet luxury, fueled by the show Succession. It’s easy to see why young people — but not only — are now drawing ideas from their favourite TV shows to transform their wardrobes.
In particular, it’s often the leading characters in these dramas who are the focus of fashion fans’ attention. Such is the finding of a study carried out and published by the ready-to-wear brand Superdry. Using data from various social platforms, namely Instagram and TikTok, it analysed the number of posts in which no fewer than 174 TV and movie characters featured in relation to their outfits. And the result is surprising: it’s not Carrie Bradshaw, the lead fashionista of Sex and the City (and its sequel And Just Like That), who tops the ranking, but a certain James Bond.
The famous British secret agent, whose impeccable style consists mainly of perfectly tailored suits, comes well ahead of his rivals, with no fewer than 59,546 posts on social media featuring terms relating to his wardrobe. He comes ahead of Rachel Green, the character played by Jennifer Aniston in Friends, who takes second place with 25,641 posts about her iconic looks from the 1990s — an era that regularly returns to the forefront of the fashion scene.
Another popular decade, the 2000s, saw Rory Gilmore — from the show Gilmore Girls — round out the top three, with some 12,000 posts devoted entirely to her famous preppy style. Surprisingly, while TV’s Gossip Girl resembles a non-stop onscreen fashion show, its two main female characters — Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen — are only ranked 4th and 5th, with 11,302 and 7,768 posts respectively.
Next in the list come Monica Geller (Friends) with 7,328 posts, Cheryl Blossom (Riverdale) with 6,619 posts, Elena Gilbert (Vampire Diaries) with 3,340 posts, Villanelle (Killing Eve) with 3,292 posts, and fictional fashion queen, Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and the City), who concludes this Top 10 with ‘just’ 3,181 posts.
Which of these characters have influenced your personal sense of fashion?
*This study was carried out by Superdry, and is based on the number of posts tagged with the character’s name and fashion-related terms. Posts featuring more than 170 fashionable characters from TV and movies were taken into account.
This article was published via AFP Relaxnews.
(Main images: Warner Bros., Nicola Dove/MGM, featured image: Nicola Dove/MGM)