When lower or middle-class characters on TV or in a movie are wearing suits, are the suits the typical J.C. Penney or Value City brand that people of that income level typically wear, or do they wear expensive, tailored suits that look better on TV? I guess this question could be extended to all clothing in general, but good suits specifically are tailored to the wearer, requiring energy and expense.
I ask because lower or middle-class homes in TV/movies are generally depicted nicer than their real-life counterparts, since the set needs to be pleasing to the eye and set a particular mood for the scene. In contrast, buying a cheap suit for an actor is much more budget-friendly.
Which is more important to Hollywood producers: a suit that makes a character look good, or a suit that makes a character realistically appear to be from a less-than-wealthy income bracket?
Actors who portray lower middle class characters don’t usually wear suits as part of their role. If you look, the clothing is generally chosen to more closely match the income level of the characters.
Sets also aren’t that much nicer; the primary difference is that things aren’t broken or threadbare. They’re things someone of that class would buy, just newer.
The sets are often larger, if not “nicer.” But the realities of shooting a TV show demand room for the cameras.
How many middle class (& lower) TV characters actually wear suits? (Guess I need to pay more attention to the shows I usually skip.) But the trick to making any suit look better is alteration–which is really not out of touch to most suit wearers. They just need to take the trouble…
If I want “reality” I’ll turn off the TV! Heck, Wear Sherlock is Tumblr dedicated to the better-than-average clothes worn by the characters (& actors) in my favorite show–& set dressing. (Warning–possible spoilers for the series that will show on PBS in May.)
Let’s take cop dramas, for example. Det. Robert Goren of Law & Order: Criminal Intent worked for the Major Case Squad of the NYPD. NYPD cops aren’t paid great… he likely wasn’t pulling in more than $50-60,000 a year. If you take into account the cost of living in New York City, there’s not much left over for expensive suits. And he wore suits all the time.
Look, I agree lower- to middle-class characters don’t wear suits often, but it does happen. And when it does, did the suit come from Sears or Armani?
Most blue-collar/middle-class types who didn’t need to wear a suit at work have maybe one suit, and it’s a few years old and out of style.
Archie Bunker was a blue collar worker who had made his way up to foreman. He occasionally was shown wearing a suit to church or a funeral or something. The suits looked to be an appropriate style, although they fit much better than the typical off the rack suit Bunker would have bought at a department store.
On Cheers, Sam Malone had a couple of sports coat/slacks outfits that looked exactly like mine. Of course, he also had a killer tux right out of GQ.
Chandler and Ross both occasionally wore business suits on Friends. I often thought they looked better than their incomes would normally permit.
A better Law and Order example would be Joe Fontana or Ed Green, both of whom wore suits out of their paygrades and were occasionally mocked by the other guys about it.
On a related note, I often notice that regardless of the income level (well, above grinding poverty anyway) people at funerals on TV are almost always depicted as dressed in suits and dresses in black, dark blue or gray. In reality the funerals that I’ve been to in the last ten years, suits and formal dress in dark colors are the exception. I’m working class and most of these were the same or lower-mid middle class. I see lots of jeans and short sleeve collared shirts at the pre funeral events and at funeral themselves maybe a step up from that with still a few jeans. What most people wear to a regular church service, maybe. The immediate family usually dresses a notch higher but definitely not the all black afffairs usually seen on TV.
I was at a funeral yesterday, for the father of a friend of mine. It was in a small town about 50 miles SW of Chicago, and definitely largely a working-class crowd. Given the age of my friend’s father (81), a lot of the attendees were older, as well. I didn’t see too many (if any) people in jeans, but a lot of casual shirts on the men (polo shirts, etc.). I was one of the few men, outside of the immediate family, in a suit. I do suspect that many of the male attendees did not own a suit at all.
It’s my understanding that it’s fairly common for the costume people working on a TV show to do some tailoring of the clothing worn on-camera so the actors will look better. I would guess that a suit would be purchased that looked about right for the income level of the character, and adjustments would be made as needed.
There’s an oddly fascinating blog called Fashion of Glee dedicated to identifying and cataloging the various items of clothing worn on Glee. With the exception of the costumes for the one fashion-obsessed character on the show, most of what the teen characters wear does seem to be from mainstream clothing stores that middle to upper middle class teens might actually shop at: Target, Urban Outfitters, Forever 21, American Eagle, etc.
Thinking specifically of suits, I remember reading in the IMDb trivia section for the movie Burn After Reading that, for the scene where Brad Pitt’s small time fitness instructor character wears what is probably his only suit, the costume designer got a cheap suit and wound up altering it to make it look worse on Pitt. Apparently she felt Pitt looked good enough even in an actual cheap suit that it didn’t look realistically cheap enough.
As my dad got older, and as the lung cancer progressed, he lost weight and would wear his one good suit until it was just too big for him. He knew there was nowhere he would need a suit anymore, so he didn’t buy another one. For the occasional wake he would just dress neatly in what fit.
I read an interview years ago with one of the people who did The X-Files where they mentioned this. He or she (I think it was Anderson or Carter) said that FBI agents would likely wear clothes from JC Penney but the actors wore designer clothes simply because it looks better.
I’d guess comedies are more likely to dress the actors in off the rack clothes and dramas are more likely to dress them up.
If you’re talking about middle-class men who regularly wear suits to work then Men’s Wearhouse or an outlet, or Burlington Coat Factory or some other off-price store. I didn’t even know Sears and Penney’s sold suits , but I suppose my father might have bought his wedding-and-funeral suit there.
Chandler and Ross both made good money and Rachel had a connections in the fashion industry. She was a buyer for Bloomingdales’s and worked at Ralph Lauren which meant she not only did she get discounts (while at Bloomingdale’s) but also she had an eye for what looked good so these guys weren’t out shopping the racks by themselves. I can think of at least one time when she did help them shop and I’m 99% sure there was at least one time on the show when she got the guys discounts on tuxes which (to me) implies it may have happened off camera as well.
But even if we ignore that, Chandler and Ross, even when they weren’t dating their respective Monica and Rachel still had them around. I’ve found that just having women that close by will help you make better fashion decisions when you have someone that you can say “Hey, I’ve got to get a new work suit, can you come with me” or at the very least “Does this look okay or should I take it back?”
Even an expensive suit is going to look like a cheap suit if it’s not right for you (or the situation).
I think (early) “Roseanne” and “Malcolm in the Middle” were both pretty spot-on with this.
The few times Dan wore a suit, it was ill-fitting and his more common “dress up” outfit was pants and a sports jacket thing with hideous patches on the elbows. You know, that thing that lurks in the back of the closet until it’s needed. And you don’t really like it, but it fits, and it fits the bill, and it would cost money to replace, and so it stays. And you wear it when you have to.
Hal was often in slacks and short sleeve button-ups with crappy plastic-looking ties. And the measurements always seemed to be about a quarter inch too short everywhere. Just like tons of low-level manager types you see walking around in out in the real world.
*Roseanne was oft’ remarked on at the time for having the “look” of working class right. The famous afghan on the couch was one that a LOT of people watching actually owned! The wardrobe pieces were reused, like an actual family who can’t afford to wear new outfits everyday - but the quality of the clothing was a constant battle on the set. Roseanne tells us (in interviews and articles) that they kept bringing out high end stuff from Macys and Lord and Taylor for her character. She’d tell them it was way too nice for the character she’d created, and go get something from K-Mart. Battles ensued and this (among other things) is how Roseanne got herself such a reputation for being difficult to work with.
As for the OP: I don’t have a perfect eye for suits, but yes, they’re generally higher quality and better tailored on TV than in reality. But think about it…the people are generally prettier and in better shape on TV than in reality. TV isn’t about reproducing reality, it’s about telling stories and getting people to watch, and people like to watch pretty people in pretty suits.
Scrubs, too - the show *Scrubs *really exemplified that. Since 80% of the wardrobe on that show was scrubs, the costume director and minions had their work cut out for them making scrubs look good on their beautiful stars. A nip here, a curved seam there, take off some of the sleeve to show off a lovely upper arm… what they ended up with were much more flattering than the actual scrubs of the day. The really cool thing with that, however, is that they influenced actual scrub companies to hire more creative designers, and now scrubs that actual medical staff can buy share a lot of those cute details and more flattering cuts! (So creative, sometimes, that they don’t really look like scrubsanymore.) There’s even a line of Grey’s Anatomy scrubs. Expensive as heck, but so much more flattering than basic scrubs.
There were more flattering scrubs than that long before Scrubs came on the air. I worked at a Life uniform in college, and we carried several tops that had darts, princess seams, scoop necks, etc. Even the basic ladies’ v-neck had some curved seaming to it so it would fit women better than the unisex v-neck, from pretty much every company. These were not new special styles when I started working there, and that was our senior year of undergrad. The show didn’t come on till DoctorJ’s 4th year of med school, so there were more flattering scrubs a bare minimum of 5 years before Scrubs even hit the air, much less had any impact on scrub styling.