Comment on this storyComment
In the higher stakes dealmaking and backstabbing of “Selling Sunset,” the Netflix reality tv show that tracks the drama of the Los Angeles residential actual estate firm The Oppenheim Group, 1 of the most significant characters does not speak. It cannot kind a believed. It cannot even make a deal — even though based on how you use it, it may enable you land 1.
We’re speaking, of course, about the clothing.
On the show, whose sixth season landed final week, the realtors have stunned (and flummoxed) audiences with cocktail dresses that lace up the front, glass bustiers, huge blazers that somehow also reveal a lot of skin, and tiny leather gloves. Memes extol the outlandishness of the clothing. “Selling Sunset agents turning up to a broker’s open home at two pm,” posted one user alongside three images of actress Megan Fox in ultra-revealing cutout gowns and heavy makeup.
“You believe you know what clothing appear like,” another Twitter user said. “And then you watch Promoting Sunset.”
“We all recognize how significantly style plays into our roles and how vital it is that we, as the public say, serve appears,” says Chelsea Lazkani, who joined the show final season.
For viewers who are utilized to switching in between sweatpants for Zooming and streaming on the sofa and tame separates worn for halfhearted returns to the workplace, the clothing on “Selling Sunset” appear to defy every little thing such as weekend put on and enterprise casual.
Bre Tiesi, the newcomer (and paramour of Nick Cannon), regularly seems on the show in a Thierry Mugler blazer with huge, almost villanish shoulder pads that cuts off to reveal the bottom quarter of her breasts. “It tends to make me really feel edgy, but attractive, but classy,” Tiesi says.
The show’s stars normally seem for a day of function in neon cocktail attire, like a fitted neon green David Koma dress Davina Potratz wore in the middle of season six that has a lace-up cutout at the chest. “I believe if you reveal also significantly skin, you take away from your beauty,” Potratz says. “So I attempt to concentrate on 1 portion of my reduced physique or upper physique.”
Some of the cast members’ outfits even appear to resist the pretty logic of clothes itself. In 1 scene, Emma Hernan wears a black gown whose bodice is a lattice of silk straps. She puts a shot in the bust of the dress and a fellow cast member drinks it from its perch in the silky grid as Hernan obligingly leans forward. In yet another scene, Lazkani arrives at the workplace in a white suit jacket and matching trousers — and underneath, a white bikini leading whose cups are two huge white flowers.
Amanza Smith, who normally wears cornrows or Bjork-like buns, weeps in a nude tattoo leading that extends more than her whole hands, awkwardly wiping away her tears with her nude tattoo leading-covered fingers. In truth, a quantity of cast members go about their days inexplicably wearing gloves — in Los Angeles! In the midst of record temperatures! Lazkani says she wears them “when I want to be in my masculine era.” When you see a person wearing gloves on tv, she says, “they’re normally about to be messy.” Undertaking surgery, committing a crime — or merely having their hands dirty with drama.
The show’s elaborate wardrobing also marks a departure from the style of producer and creator Adam DiVello’s earlier shows, “The Hills” and “Laguna Beach,” whose stars are extensively credited with ushering the cliché “basic girl,” with boot-reduce jeans, leggings and stretchy T-shirts.
Rather, flashy designers like Versace, LaQuan Smith and Dion Lee are the cast’s favorites. Neglect “quiet luxury.” These clothing command consideration — encouraging lingering, even distracting stares — and refuse to apologize for it.
The group behind the show has encouraged the outlandish clothing, cast members say. “I believe the production [started to] concentrate a small bit additional on the appear and style, and they would do slow-mo entries into scenes and definitely type of function the people today that had been wearing additional bold or outrageous outfits,” Potratz says. “So we, of course, noticed that as nicely. All of us want to appear fantastic and stand out, and everyone’s stepping it up and going additional and additional and additional and attempting to see what type of exciting style they can experiment with.”
Potratz also points to the influence of Christine Quinn, who left at the finish of final season beneath a cloud of murky ethics. She dressed “above and beyond,” Potratz says, and even appeared as a celebrity guest at a quantity of style shows in New York this previous style season. (Quinn declined to comment for this story.)
But maybe no one’s outfits stretch the limits of plausibility additional than Lazkani’s. In an early episode, she arrives at a broker’s open — primarily a cocktail celebration for brokers to show off a new home, exactly where the show’s drama regularly crescendos — wearing a white porcelain bustier dress with a leather handbag whose front is sculpted to resemble female anatomy. That piece was by artist Stef Van Looveren Lazkani says she wanted to use the show to spotlight independent designers.
In yet another scene, she meets a fellow broker for coffee in a leather wrap belt skirt by Diesel — an item that went viral on higher style social media this year, when purchasers realized it was practically implausible as a skirt — and struggles to sit down. (She at some point does so, even though the angle of her chair blocks her beneath the hips.)
But wait a minute — are not all these people today in the enterprise of promoting multimillion-dollar actual estate? Lazkani says displaying her character via her clothing assists her customers see her as a actual individual. Tiesi says her suiting assists her really feel like a boss. “You dress for the job you want,” she says.
Maintaining up with the Oppenheim colleagues is no straightforward activity. Practically all of the cast members use stylists, quite a few mentioned in interviews. The stylists can charge anyplace from $800 to $two,000 per appear, on leading of which the cast members spend to rent the clothing, which is commonly 20 % of the retail price. Some function with showrooms that lend or enable them to rent samples. (Some, like Lazkani, do not use a stylist and purchase all of their clothing.)
Does the show enable the cast with all these charges? “Absolutely not,” Tiesi says. “They do not enable us with something.”
Cast members say they generally spent two hours or additional in hair and makeup — there are spray tans and manicures and pedicures to be accomplished, right after all — and some, like Tiesi, have told production they will film just 1 scene a day to hold their wardrobe preparation to a minimum. (Cast members say they do certainly dress like this even when they are not filming, dressing down only on uncommon occasions. “It’s to the nines,” Tiesi says of her sense of style.)
Other individuals describe a relentless chase to have adequate outfits: Probably you commence the day filming in the workplace — there’s 1 outfit — and then you need to have yet another appear for a birthday dinner that evening. And let’s say a person gets in a fight at dinner (Did you attain out to my client behind my back? Did you inadequately confront a person at a celebration 3 scenes ago?!) and you may obtain oneself getting to film a scene the subsequent morning, to confront or comfort a person — that is yet another outfit. “You type of have to have some stuff prepared to go,” Potratz says.
“It can be exhausting,” she says, “because you have to do all the having prepared, and then you have the actual drama taking place, and then you have to strategy for the subsequent outfit.”
But it is not that tiring. “I could by no means be exhausted of style,” Tiesi says.
Alexis Williams contributed to this report.