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Which TV or film character’s style do you covet?

I think I remember the first time I really, really wanted to look like somebody on TV. It was the late 1980s; the show was Saved by the Bell; the actress was Tiffani-Amber Thiessen; and the relevant monstrosity was this:

Now, you might be saying, that isn’t really so bad. I mean yes, the top is mauve, the jeans are floral, the hair is big and static … but that Tiffani-Amber Thiessen is a pretty girl, right? No wonder at eight years old you wanted to look like her.

Well — yes. I mean, I’m sure the fact that Tiffani-Amber Thiessen is pretty had an impact on it — but I’m afraid I can’t excuse myself so easily. It wasn’t just that when I watched Saved by the Bell, I wanted to have Kelly Kapowski’s hair, or Kelly Kapowski’s smile. No, I wanted to have Kelly Kapowski’s look, her whole gloriously ’80s pastel-and-neon wardrobe — complete with a pale orange T-shirt with rolled up sleeves that I remember particularly coveting. And — since it was the ’80s — I think I more or less got it.

Fast-forward five years, to the premiere of a show called My So-Called Life in 1994. Jordan wore plaid flannel. Danielle wore plaid flannel. Rayanne had a plaid flannel shirt that reached the ground. And Angela … well, Angela had red plaid flannel shorts that she wore with black tights. To quote a poster on TelevisionWithoutPity.com, “I can’t believe how normal I used to think these outfits were […] Today, it looks to me like she’s wearing cutoff pajama pants over leggings.”

Did I run from this sea of flannel? Did I say “no plaid for me?” No. I had a pair of plaid green shorts that I hoped would make me look like Angela (they didn’t).

Plaid got a different, less grungy and more preppie twist the next year, when Clueless hit the movie theaters:

I think this was the beginning of my love affair with preppie, ultra-girly fashion. Oh, how I longed for a little yellow jacket and skirt suit, with matching yellow vest. Somehow I suspected it wouldn’t go down quite the same in rural England as it did in Beverly Hills.

In 1998 came Katie Holmes in Dawson’s Creek, with her more accessible, girl-next-door, denim-heavy twist on clean-cut fashion:

But I think I somehow knew that no matter what I did, I was never going to be able to make just a plain pair of overalls look that good:

I think it must have been at about this time that the classic 1981 miniseries Brideshead Revisited, starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews, and set in the 1920s and ’30s, re-aired on British TV, thus providing me with my first glimpse of it:

I tend to think of boys’ clothes as pretty boring on the whole, so this was the first time I had ever really coveted men’s fashion. Oh, for a pale fawn three-piece suit in which to lounge about Oxford (where I live, so at least I’ve got a head start in one direction), or a linen shirt in which to sit in a gondola in Venice with my ambiguously gay boyfriend:

But I’ll admit it: My biggest outfit obsession is my most recent. Being in New York this past September, I caught the premiere of the trashtastic Gossip Girl, and … hello, Blair Waldorf.

Actually, hello to the whole show, because I probably wouldn’t turn down Serena van der Woodsen’s wardrobe either, if it were offered to me:

But it’s uptight, bitchy, secretly insecure Blair’s style that really strikes at a special place in my heart. Whether wearing ruffly Victorian-looking shirts:

Or more ruffly Victorian-looking shirts plus headband that I could not possibly carry off:

Or East Coast–meets–Clueless argyle-and-miniskirt ensembles:

Or doily-type dresses garnished with a little head-bow that makes her look like she’s wrapped herself up as a present for someone:

Or something that I would be better able to describe if I wasn’t quite so blinded by those red tights:

I want her clothes. And I want them irrespective of the fact that I know headbands always leave me looking stupidly flat-headed and helmet-haired when I take them off (a phenomenon that miraculously never seems to afflict Perfect Blair. As a side note, I can say from experience that she and Serena would also never be able to walk down the streets of New York showing that much leg without experiencing some serious, and possibly scary, sexual harassment).

I’ll admit that I also want a friendship like the one she has with Serena:

That’s some serious girl-love right there:

Whose style inspires you? Whose style do you wish had never inspired you? Do red-bow headbands make you want to squee, or want to puke? Tell me all below.

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