You might think Schitt’s Creek is just a show about a wealthy family who lose everything and have to move to a motel they refer to as a “vomit soaked dump”, but I’m here to tell you that it is also a show about fashion. Not since Absolutely Fabulous has a programme used clothing with such humour and precision, deploying a drop-crotch trouser or a dramatic epaulette with the meticulous timing of an exquisitely crafted punchline.
The Rose family’s luxurious wardrobes are the last vestiges of their former lives, their outfits a continual source of hilarity for their checked-shirt-clad small-town neighbours. All four family members are overdressed throughout but it is Moira and David who make it an artform. Nothing says “fish out of water” like the Helmut Lang mohawk hooded sweater David (Dan Levy) wears to a Mennonite farm, or the $3,000 (£2,400) Alexander McQueen frilled mini dress Moira (Catherine O’Hara) wears to waft about in her mouldy motel room.
Moira’s identity is painstakingly curated through her clothes, combining attention-grabbing clashing patterns with armour-like jewellery. There is a sense of studied eccentricity which she adopts even at night, with only her husband as her audience, wearing tailored waistcoats over her pyjamas.
By day she dresses like a collaboration between Cruella de Vil and Balenciaga. A typical outfit might comprise a undulating Marni neoprene shirt decorated with silver swallows, paired with fingerless gloves and silver Wonder Woman-style silver cuffs and necklaces. It’s the opposite of Coco Chanel’s edict about elegance: “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” De trop is never enough.
Even weirder still is her vast collection of wigs, with which she will suddenly transform herself – with a pink Zandra Rhodes bob or a headful of orphan Annie curls – at moments of stress, the way the rest of us might smooth down our clothes before an important meeting.
Even the storage of these wigs, affixed to the walls in a corner of the Rose family’s small motel room, feels loaded. When she was wealthy, Moira would no doubt have had a walk in wardrobe for her headpieces; now they are permanently on show, like a collection of taxidermy guinea pigs or a macabre art installation.
But while I respect, and fear, Moira, it is David who has my heart. His wardrobe is a faithful recreation of a very idiosyncratic kind of fashion fan, dedicated to gender-fluid, streetwear-influenced shapes by cult designers such as Rick Owens. I can’t think of a sitcom character who dresses with such high fashion accuracy. He looks excellent in kilts and cargo skirts and is partial to directional hoodies with so many layers of complex folds that the uninitiated may not know which part to put their head in. Even David’s jumpers are funny. He has a ridiculous number of them, with many OTT knitwear moments include Givenchy dobermans, Valentino panthers, a giant hand print by Dries van Noten, and slogans such as “Icon” and “Nonchalance”.
It’s no surprise to learn that Levy is a real-life fashion nerd, who spent much of filming stalking resale sites to source the designer clothes within his limited budget, or that O’Hara based her character’s wardrobe on Daphne Guinness – the fashion icon best known for working with Alexander McQueen.
These people know fashion inside out, and their show celebrates the power of fashion and its futility. Their mad clothes are a constant reminder of their struggle to adapt to their reduced circumstances. In this town, their refined taste is not going to protect them. And yet, in ruched lamé Isabel Marant, and sequined Dsquared2, Moira and David continue, regardless of the derision of their neighbours, to dress doggedly for the life they once had and hope to reclaim.
It is a spirit we may find useful to channel in lockdown 2.0 – during the period formerly known as “party season” – as we dress to raise a glass of mulled wine with friends over Zoom, hoping for the best. Perhaps channelling Moira, and putting on a fancy frock, will help. Surely anything is worth a shot at this point? In any case, I can’t think of a pair of style icons more fitting for 2020.
