“Gossip Girl” Spinoff Focuses on ’80s Fashion
Posted by bellastraniera - 11/05/09 at 12:05 pm
Excellent news today: “Gossip Girl” executive producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage are creating a spinoff show based in the ’80s, premiering this fall. The TV series will focus on the misadventures of a teenage Lily van der Woodsen (played by Brittany Snow) in ’80s NYC and LA, where she’s a preppy Blair Warner type with a naughty older sister (Krysten Ritter) whose style is more Desperately Seeking Susan.
With Los Angeles-based Meredith Markworth-Pollack working magic as the costume designer, the as-yet-untitled spinoff promises to be a fashion feast for those of us whose appreciation of ’80s fashion stops short of actually buying and wearing neon paint-splattered leggings. (If you were old enough to wear them the first time around…)
Markworth-Pollack, the assistant costume designer of “Gossip Girl,” watched dozens of ’80s movies to prep and worked with Andrew McCarthy, who also stars in the new show, to develop the looks.
It seems very apropos that the ’80s spinoff is set in LA: What with all the hype recently around Marc Jacobs’ ’80s-club-inspired FS09 collection, we’re forgetting that much of the fashion of this era came out of movies and television series based in LA, Madonna’s New York influence notwithstanding.
Imagine way, way back in a time when there was no internet, blogs, fashion sites, Polyvore, or online boutiques. Outside of magazines like Vogue, Marie Claire, Seventeen, and Glamour, which only came out once a month, the only access teenagers had to fashion was TV and movies – and the mall (where seminal ’80s fashion film Valley Girl is set). In a world where fashion was as cliquey as a cafeteria table in a John Hughes movie, the only way to see what someone outside your social set was wearing was through TV and the movies.
Up next: ’80s Fashion: Most Influential Movies and TV
WWD: “Gossip Girl” Does the Time Warp
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bellastraniera
a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.
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