View the fashion of Wisteria Lane
The camp mothers of Wisteria Lane
Desperate Housewives, like Sex And The City before it, is one of those programmes that one could watch with the sound off. This is not only because, as with SATC, it is lamentably reliant on slapstick. It is also on account of the clothes: so much luridly lit, sartorial eye candy makes you wonder how any woman could be that desperate with such a wardrobe.
The question is, whose idea of eye candy is this? For, as an urban myth sprang up that SATC charted the adventures of a cabal of gay men, so Desperate Housewives provides the camp mothers such men always dreamed of. Moreover, the gap between fashion fantasy and reality is still more extreme. For where Carrie and co were single New Yorkers and thus could legitimately throw their earnings at bags and shoes, so the adventures of Susan Mayer and her ilk are predicated on their being moms — yummy mummies to be sure, but moms nonetheless. And as anyone who has ever clawed dried breast milk off their sweatpants knows: fashion and suburban parenthood don’t really mix.
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As with Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and the prim one, we are talking of allegorical types come cartoon cutouts. And the types are identical — ditzy heroine, business-orientated mom, the slut and the priss — only Housewives adds a Latina sex-bomb to make it less Wasp.
As Teri Hatcher’s role is the most tedious, so her outfits are the most bland. Sappy Susan Mayer is the poster girl for Californian casual: vest tops, designer jeans and flip-flops. In stills for the second series, Hatcher is more glamorously attired: swathed in a red evening dress, centrally and prominently enthroned. Perhaps the image contains a mocking reference to the reported bust-up over centre stage and a Fabucci swimsuit in their 2005 Vanity Fair shoot?
Newly working mother, Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman), veers between J Crew sweater and slacks combos and corporate skirt suits. Eva Longoria’s minxy Gabrielle Solis is young and lithe enough to parade about in minis, although motherhood may curb some of her froth. While Nicolette Sheridan, aka the neighbourhood slut Edie Britt, is all Daisy Duke hotpants and engorged bikini cups, flaunting the ladyboy physique so beloved of gay Hollywood.
Were the camp insufficiently obvious, female No 5 comes signposted. Bree Van De Kamp (exquisite Marcia Cross) is the hospital corners matriarch every mummy’s boy longs for.
Season two has her trading pastel twinsets for black widow chic. Episode 1 featured possibly Bree’s anal apotheosis: interrupting her husband’s funeral to exercise her fashion choices (exchanging the corpse’s old school tie for Ralph Lauren), before ascending into a spotlessly-bleached white light.