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In the higher stakes dealmaking and backstabbing of “Selling Sunset,” the Netflix reality tv show that tracks the drama of the Los Angeles residential actual estate enterprise The Oppenheim Group, a single of the greatest characters does not speak. It cannot type a believed. It cannot even make a deal — although based on how you use it, it may well assist you land a single.
We’re speaking, of course, about the clothing.
On the show, whose sixth season landed final week, the realtors have stunned (and flummoxed) audiences with cocktail dresses that lace up the front, glass bustiers, massive blazers that somehow also reveal a lot of skin, and tiny leather gloves. Memes extol the outlandishness of the clothing. “Selling Sunset agents turning up to a broker’s open property at two pm,” posted one user alongside three images of actress Megan Fox in ultra-revealing cutout gowns and heavy makeup.
“You believe you know what clothing appear like,” another Twitter user said. “And then you watch Promoting Sunset.”
“We all recognize how a lot style plays into our roles and how significant it is that we, as the public say, serve appears,” says Chelsea Lazkani, who joined the show final season.
For viewers who are utilized to switching amongst sweatpants for Zooming and streaming on the sofa and tame separates worn for halfhearted returns to the workplace, the clothing on “Selling Sunset” look to defy every little thing such as weekend put on and business enterprise casual.
Bre Tiesi, the newcomer (and paramour of Nick Cannon), often seems on the show in a Thierry Mugler blazer with massive, almost villanish shoulder pads that cuts off to reveal the bottom quarter of her breasts. “It tends to make me really feel edgy, but attractive, but classy,” Tiesi says.
The show’s stars frequently seem for a day of operate in neon cocktail attire, like a fitted neon green David Koma dress Davina Potratz wore in the middle of season six that has a lace-up cutout at the chest. “I believe if you reveal also a lot skin, you take away from your beauty,” Potratz says. “So I attempt to concentrate on a single aspect of my decrease physique or upper physique.”
Some of the cast members’ outfits even look to resist the pretty logic of clothes itself. In a single scene, Emma Hernan wears a black gown whose bodice is a lattice of silk straps. She puts a shot in the bust of the dress and a fellow cast member drinks it from its perch in the silky grid as Hernan obligingly leans forward. In a different scene, Lazkani arrives at the workplace in a white suit jacket and matching trousers — and underneath, a white bikini leading whose cups are two massive white flowers.
Amanza Smith, who frequently wears cornrows or Bjork-like buns, weeps in a nude tattoo leading that extends more than her complete hands, awkwardly wiping away her tears with her nude tattoo leading-covered fingers. In reality, a quantity of cast members go about their days inexplicably wearing gloves — in Los Angeles! In the midst of record temperatures! Lazkani says she wears them “when I want to be in my masculine era.” When you see an individual wearing gloves on tv, she says, “they’re often about to be messy.” Undertaking surgery, committing a crime — or merely acquiring their hands dirty with drama.
The show’s elaborate wardrobing also marks a departure from the style of producer and creator Adam DiVello’s preceding shows, “The Hills” and “Laguna Beach,” whose stars are extensively credited with ushering the cliché “basic girl,” with boot-reduce jeans, leggings and stretchy T-shirts.
Alternatively, flashy designers like Versace, LaQuan Smith and Dion Lee are the cast’s favorites. Overlook “quiet luxury.” These clothing command interest — encouraging lingering, even distracting stares — and refuse to apologize for it.
The group behind the show has encouraged the outlandish clothing, cast members say. “I believe the production [started to] concentrate a small bit additional on the appear and style, and they would do slow-mo entries into scenes and definitely sort of function the individuals that have been wearing additional bold or outrageous outfits,” Potratz says. “So we, of course, noticed that as nicely. All of us want to appear very good and stand out, and everyone’s stepping it up and going additional and additional and additional and attempting to see what sort of exciting style they can experiment with.”
Potratz also points to the influence of Christine Quinn, who left at the finish of final season beneath a cloud of murky ethics. She dressed “above and beyond,” Potratz says, and even appeared as a celebrity guest at a quantity of style shows in New York this previous style season. (Quinn declined to comment for this story.)
But possibly no one’s outfits stretch the limits of plausibility additional than Lazkani’s. In an early episode, she arrives at a broker’s open — basically a cocktail celebration for brokers to show off a new home, exactly where the show’s drama often crescendos — wearing a white porcelain bustier dress with a leather handbag whose front is sculpted to resemble female anatomy. That piece was by artist Stef Van Looveren Lazkani says she wanted to use the show to spotlight independent designers.
In a different scene, she meets a fellow broker for coffee in a leather wrap belt skirt by Diesel — an item that went viral on higher style social media this year, when purchasers realized it was practically implausible as a skirt — and struggles to sit down. (She at some point does so, although the angle of her chair blocks her under the hips.)
But wait a minute — are not all these individuals in the business enterprise of promoting multimillion-dollar actual estate? Lazkani says displaying her character via her clothing aids her clientele see her as a actual particular person. Tiesi says her suiting aids her really feel like a boss. “You dress for the job you want,” she says.
Maintaining up with the Oppenheim colleagues is no quick process. Almost all of the cast members use stylists, many stated in interviews. The stylists can charge anyplace from $800 to $two,000 per appear, on leading of which the cast members spend to rent the clothing, which is normally 20 % of the retail expense. Some operate with showrooms that lend or enable them to rent samples. (Some, like Lazkani, do not use a stylist and get all of their clothing.)
Does the show assist the cast with all these expenses? “Absolutely not,” Tiesi says. “They do not assist us with something.”
Cast members say they commonly spent two hours or additional in hair and makeup — there are spray tans and manicures and pedicures to be completed, right after all — and some, like Tiesi, have told production they will film just a single scene a day to hold their wardrobe preparation to a minimum. (Cast members say they do certainly dress like this even when they are not filming, dressing down only on uncommon occasions. “It’s to the nines,” Tiesi says of her sense of style.)
Other individuals describe a relentless chase to have adequate outfits: Probably you commence the day filming in the workplace — there’s a single outfit — and then you require a different appear for a birthday dinner that evening. And let’s say an individual gets in a fight at dinner (Did you attain out to my client behind my back? Did you inadequately confront an individual at a celebration 3 scenes ago?!) and you may well come across oneself possessing to film a scene the subsequent morning, to confront or comfort an individual — that is a different outfit. “You sort of have to have some stuff prepared to go,” Potratz says.
“It can be exhausting,” she says, “because you have to do all the acquiring prepared, and then you have the actual drama taking place, and then you have to strategy for the subsequent outfit.”
But it is not that tiring. “I could by no means be exhausted of style,” Tiesi says.
Alexis Williams contributed to this report.