Hollywood has long fretted the loss of production to other, less expensive locations. But several of today’s hit TV shows are not only shooting in Los Angeles, they’re positioning the city as a fashion engine with a distinctly local point of view.
The sexy grit of Euphoria, which premieres its third season on April 12 on HBO Max; the Y2K vintage-loving swirl of I Love LA, the Eastside ease of Nobody Wants This, the sunny suburban casual of Shrinking, and the nostalgic menswear elegance of The Studio are doing more than telling stories. They’re dressing their characters in a way that’s accessible, covetable, and crucially tied to a place.
While fashion’s relationship with Hollywood is nothing new — luxury’s investment is only intensifying — what’s different with these shows is the feedback loop. Costume designers have become influencers who aren’t just starting trends, but are also moving product, supporting local businesses, and reframing LA as a style capital in a different way. Budgets per TV episode can soar to $100,000 if the characters are wearing high-end pieces, and many shows require multiples for stunts, which adds up to millions a year in spending.
Policy is playing a role, too. California’s tax incentives reward productions for spending locally — including on wardrobe — further embedding fashion into the production economy.
“The financial support that the entertainment industry brings to local designers and department stores is unparalleled,” says Natasha Newman-Thomas, costume designer for the third season of fashion-favorite show Euphoria, which secured a $19.4 million credit from the California Film Commission. “Being here, if you need a Louboutin, you go to the store and buy it, or you go to Saks or Neiman Marcus, or maybe you’ll find them at a vintage store.”
Season three of Euphoria jumps five years into the future, focusing on the characters’ lives as 20-somethings wearing a mix of contemporary and vintage clothing sourced from local stores such as Replika, Aralda, Scout, Wasteland, Crossroads, and even Goodwill. Rue (Zendaya) has entered “her Hunter S. Thompson” phase, as the costume designer called it, with Hawaiian shirts to match, while Jules (Hunter Schafer) continues her run of high fashion looks such as a darkly romantic vintage black Yves Saint Laurent bodysuit paired with a wrap skirt from up-and-coming brand Unnamed.
Local clothes, locations, and indeed, food, do equal work in building a character. “LA is so expansive and has so many facets to explore. This season, instead of homing in on one world, we were able to show a studio backlot through Lexi’s [Maude Apatow] storyline and some of the grittier outskirts through other storylines,” Newman-Thomas says.
Netflix’s Nobody Wants This is set in LA and created by a local, Erin Foster, who is also the co-founder of LA-based fashion brand Favorite Daughter. “I didn’t want it to feel heavily styled or like a TV wardrobe. I wanted it to feel like real LA women I know — my friends, myself — effortless, a little undone, unique, a little chaotic at times,” says Foster.
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“That authenticity, both in the locations and in the clothes, is what really makes the world we’ve built feel so believable,” she says. “Season two got some slack for what people thought were branded partnerships, but a lot of them were actually small, local, or female-owned businesses that we wanted to highlight, companies like [chili sauce brand] Fly by Jing and Jennifer Meyer Cheap Replica Handbags.”
Still, there has been a blurring of lines between costume and commerce on the show when it comes to how Favorite Daughter has featured. The brand’s $358 Morgan dress was worn on the show by its character of the same name (Justine Lupe), going from screen to sell-through and eventually spawning an entire Favorite Daughter Nobody Wants This capsule collectsion. (The brand said the placement drove “strong sales” on its website and at Nordstrom, but declined to share specifics.)
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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 collectsions.
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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Much of the momentum is powered by proximity. Working with local brands allows costume teams to pull directly from designer studios and warehouses on tight timelines.
“Sometimes you don’t have that lead time to have something shipped,” says Nobody Wants This designer Kline, noting that scripts can land on a Friday with fittings scheduled for Monday.
Feeding into the costume-commerce loop, more TV shows have applied for — and won — California production tax credits that will have them spending more locally, including the next season of I Love LA. But overall, despite the recent increase in filming subsidies, the state and the city are still suffering from production leaving the area, with retailers, costume houses, and even dry cleaners having closed because of it.
The contraction of retail has also meant the shuttering of many department stores’ studio services (Neiman Marcus Beverly Hills recently closed theirs), even as being able to borrow clothing for fittings without a huge outlay of money remains a key resource for costume designers, who typically pull three or more options for each look that ends up making it on-screen.
Still, LA’s infrastructure is set up better than elsewhere in the world for entertainment, says Euphoria’s Newman-Thomas, reflecting on the current moment. “I hope we’re having a golden era and that it will stay golden for a long, long time.”
