When we first meet Nikki, she’s grungy and boot-clad, but that look shifts to something more domesticated; it’s around the halfway mark, the viral top appears, just as Nikki’s erratic behavior makes clear the utterly bleak situation she’s in. “The party scene called for a different aesthetic,” James explains. “I wanted it to feel very jarring so when you think back to that first scene, you’re like, This is not the same girl.”
While there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to own statement pieces from our favorite films, the rise of micro-trends has changed the way we interact with media—namely, the speed at which trends develop now means clothes can be divorced from the contexts from which they originated. And with the cyclical nature of trends happening faster and faster these days—4.4 times faster than they were seven years ago per internal data from Pinterest—our participation in these culture-gripping phenomena becomes more passive.
“There is a very thin line between observing and consuming, and social media is the catalyst blurring those lines,” says Judith Omoregie, a TikTok creator and fashion commentator. “Any trend can start with great intentions, but as it gets co-opted, it gets diluted.”
This is hardly new, and scream queens, in particular, are often left to the whims of the internet. Katia Stano’s costume design for Jennifer’s Body was intended to explore female rage from a desexualized angle—the more sinister Jennifer got, the more feminine she was dressed—but nearly 17 years later, her sartorial prowess has been flattened into sexual stereotypes. Rosana Norton’s satin blush prom dress in Carrie, meanwhile, endured a similar fate; internet-fueled Halloween costumes now supersede a nuanced portrait of teenage desperation.
“There’s been a really long history of people being inspired by the clothing of real and fictional people who have done bad things or had bad things done to them,” says Laura McLaws Helms, a fashion and cultural historian. “We have this innate ability to push aside those moral qualms.” Obsession’s story, like Carrie and Jennifer’s Body before it, is merely the latest trade-off.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to own on-screen fashion. Something is refreshing about audiences emotionally connecting to a character through their wardrobe. But as crowds flock to buy the Obsession top, or partake in any other trend or film-inspired look, for that matter, we should consider the contexts from which it came. Lest it fall into that same intention-less cycle.
