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And despite being the punchline for a joke about an unimaginative Valentine’s Day gift, Jennifer Meyer’s engravable 18-karat gold nameplate necklace caught viewers’ attention. Several hundred pieces sold after the episode aired, the designer said, confirming that it was not a paid placement but rather an organic one, because she and Foster have been friends for years.
“The whole point was to show LA in the way we love our town,” says the show’s costume designer, Negar Ali Kline, who has featured brands high and low, including Elder Statesman, Amiri, Jesse Kamm, Reformation, and Anita Ko. “I have so many DMs,” she adds, from brands eager to participate. “There was a time when people weren’t so interested in loaning clothing for TV. But I feel like that has shifted.”
Fashion designers are not just paying attention to what’s on-screen — they’re building relationships around it. “It’s the new runway,” says Meritt Elliott of LA clothing brand The Great.
Last year, Elliott and her co-founder Emily Current hosted a cocktail party at their West Hollywood store for Shrinking costume designer Allyson Fanger and cast members.
“Allyson reached out to us saying people were chattering about our pieces on the show, screenshotting them and stuff, and said we should really talk about this because there’s not only a craft behind it, there’s a whole business,” Elliott says. “It turned out to be this love fest… Now, she works with our team, and we’re sharing sample pieces with her so that product will be available in-stores when it shows up on-screen,” she explains of eliminating the pain point for viewers not being able to buy into their favorite shows because of the traditional lag time from store to screen.
Costume designers, in turn, have become more fluent in the fashion business, breaking down looks on social media, launching ShopMy accounts, and turning on-screen influence into a modest-but-growing revenue stream with brand collaborations and capsule collections.
The impact is measurable. Shrinking designer Fanger pointed to the rise of Liz — the show’s “cool, LA 50-something mom’’ — whose mix of slogan tees and Greg Lauren fatigues has made her an unlikely style star. After she wore Clare Vivier’s “Maman Je T’aime” sweatshirt, demand surged. “We remade the sweatshirt at our local factory, and sold several hundred as soon as it was back online,” Vivier says.
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