Euphoria has had the best fashion on TV since Gossip Girl went off the air in 2012. Like how Gossip Girl perfectly encapsulated how women in the late 2000s and early 2010s aspired to dress, Euphoria encapsulates how Gen Z aspires to dress, with no rules or boundaries, defined aesthetics, and vintage inspiration. It even inspired the “Euphoria High” internet craze or meme because of its iconic and anti-realism (though Gossip Girl wasn’t realistic either because no one wears stiletto heels every day in New York without significant blisters and limping), though they actually go to the fictional East Highland High. Just as Gossip Girl was in the previous decade, Pretty Little Liars took its place when Gossip Girl went off the air, and now Euphoria has cemented itself as the fashion TV show of the 2020s. Euphoria has already had such a huge impact on the fashion industry, consumers and fans that Business Of Fashion has called it’s stylish impact “The Euphoria Effect.”
Let’s start first with the characters. Heidi Bivens, the show’s costume designer, has assigned each character a color that embodies them. Rue’s seems to be brown. Maddy’s is purple. Kat’s is red. Cassie’s is pink. Lexi’s seems to be blue. And Jules is just the rainbow. This makes sense. For Rue, brown is the perfect color for our unreliable narrator. She’s relatable, sensible, and as a viewer, provides consistency and stability, even if her character has none of that. Brown symbolizes all of that.
As for Maddy, purple is the color of majesty, royalty, luxury, maturity and compassion. All of this perfectly represents Maddy. She has a pension for the finer things in life and has that Gen Z Queen Bee vibe to her, but she has a soft side too when she shares her wisdom with others. Kat being red when red represents urgency, emotion, caution, passion, attention and excitement is a match made in heaven. Kat embracing her sexuality and developing an IDGAF attitude makes red her color.
Cassie having pink as her color showcases her childhood fantasy and feminine ideals. She had all these dreams when she was little, and as we know from gender reveal parties, pink is the color for a girl. She is also desperate for a man’s love, so she believes dressing traditionally feminine is the key to achieving that goal. Along with femininity, pink also represents admiration and love, which Cassie needs, as well as immaturity and playfulness, showcasing her childishness when it comes to that need.
Lexi wears a lot of blue, as do Cassie and Maddy. However, Maddy and Cassie’s are brighter and lighter, while Lexi’s blue is closer to navy, showing that she is always in their shadows. Blue also represents precision, and intelligence, hence why it is the color of Ivy League school Yale, consciousness, productivity, wisdom, expression, and trustworthiness, all traits Lexi showcases on numerous occasions. Jules, however, is the rainbow. She is the character most comfortable with who she is. She is artsy and creative. It’s very hard to pin Jules down into just one thing. So, her representing the rainbow, with that, also being the queer pride symbol and her being a complex transwoman, represents her perfectly.
Rue, the narrator and driving force of the series, has the least glamorous style, reflecting her nihilistic view of the world. This is reflected in her makeup, which is always smudgy as if she slept with her makeup on or rubbed her eyes due to dryness. She begins to wear glitter and color when she starts dating Jules, who is into fashion and makeup, however, stops when they break up, as it is a painful reminder of their love and how her addiction is her top priority.
Rue’s costumes take inspiration from two time periods, the 70s and the 90s. Both of these periods are when drug use ran rapid. Her clothing is very understated, reminiscent of the skater and tomboy aesthetics popular in California. She wears a lot of masculine clothing, reflecting her ungendered mindset when it comes to romance. Rue also dresses as Marlene Dietrich for Halloween, who was famous for dressing genderless and was the first woman to have the same sex kiss in cinema. Rue wears mostly brown and black which represents her darkness and need to fade into the background in order to do drugs. Brown ironically symbolizes resilience and dependability, but for Rue they culminate in destructive ways to herself and those around her like Jules and their unhealthy co-dependent relationship, giving her mom false security that she’s sober and being overprotective of her sister, even though brown also symbolizes protection.
Black is an all-consuming color, and when her addiction becomes her top priority in Season 2, it dominates her wardrobe. Rue also wears maroon, her one main source of color. However, the darkness of the red, a color that symbolizes love and passion, symbolizes how these have had a negative impact on her life, through her father’s death and Jules’ abandonment. The hoodie provides comfort for her trauma and her healing, which maroon symbolizes. This is also the color of her dad’s hood, which she wore all of Season 1, physically wrapping herself in her father’s love that now has a melancholy stench attached to it, knowing he’d be disappointed in her actions and her grief is the driving force of her actions and the addiction. That’s why it makes fewer appearances in Season 2, when she’s making the most mistakes she has since the show began. The hoodie is also something a drug addict would wear because a symptom is always being cold, which shows how the costuming also takes into account the character’s physical state, always having her in long-sleeved flannels, sweaters and jackets. Her clothing is also oversized and baggy, reflecting how her overall health has taken a backseat to her addiction.
Her color palette in season 2 shows how dark and depressive her emotional state is. It’s more somber and tries to fade into the background. The first episode showed her in a black outfit with a maroon vest, showing how somber her mental state is and how she is starting to push away her trauma, and therefore stopped wearing her maroon hoodie. At her lowest, she transitions from black to gray, which is a more lifeless color. By the end of the season, the maroon hoodie returns and starts to have a color palette of more optimistic and hopeful colors like orange and yellow.
Maroon is Rue’s most symbolic color, however. Maroon, and the colors that make it up, red and brown, dominate her wardrobe in Season 1 and come back by the end of Season 2. Red represents her fieriness, desire for love and passion and brown represents her down-to-Earth-ness, and maroon as a whole represents her wallflower persona, her aggressive tendencies and how she self-isolates herself, but at the end of the day survives. Rue’s makeup also contrasts with the other girls because it’s messy as opposed to Jules and Maddy’s precision. However, it’s still creative, unlike Cassie. When she uses glitter if reflects light and makes it look like tears. Her makeup is meant to show her imaginative, chaotic and emotional mental state.
Maddy is by far the most fierce, outspoken and confident character on the show, and this stems from her past in beauty pageants. A glamorous, competitive and performative activity for a young girl to be involved in, Maddy has kept these qualities in her teenagerhood. Her confidence and love of performing led her to become a cheerleader. She is the most extroverted character on the show and often finds herself the center of attention, something she thrives in. This unapologetic confidence is reflected in how daring and experimental her wardrobe is, often wearing skin-tight ensembles, crop tops, cutouts, low-rise jeans, halter tops and glamourous accessories like hats, jewelry, and long press-on nails. Her wardrobe is meant to attract men with its skin-bearing silhouettes and be enviable to women, making them wish they had the confidence to pull off her outfits. Maddy is Euphoria‘s Queen Bee, which gives her a sense of authority and many characters go to her for help and advice. This is epitomized in her matching sets, which represent how meticulous and detailed-oriented she is. She is also a creature of habit, which is after she breaks up with Nate she is still juggling the idea of getting back together with him.
Her style is greatly influenced by iconic, impactful and powerful women, mainly Latinas and musicians including Madonna, Rhianna, Aalyiah and Selena Quintanilla. She even has direct costume and makeup homages to Sharon Stone, Nina Simone, Eve and Aalyiah. Her style is reminiscent of the 90s and 2000s, when women became more confident and experimental with their wardrobe, and both decades are huge inspirations for wardrobe today, showing how much of a trendsetter Maddy is. She also has a lot of Chicana influence with the Latinx telenovela Rebelde from the 2000s being a huge inspiration for her wardrobe. She is often seen wearing velour when she wears sweats, a popular athleisure fabric in the 2000s, showing how even when she’s at her lowest point, she is still a force to be reckoned with.
In Season 2, she wears the most designer pieces of any of the characters including Mugler, Chanel, Prada, Marc Jacobs and Dolce and Gabbana. This is epitomized in her closet montage while at her babysitting job, showing her materialism and passion for fashion. In Season 1, her love for designer clothes is still reflected in her wardrobe as she wears a bold Chanel-inspired matching set and dresses like Rose McGown in her iconic naked dress in the finale. Her Halloween costume is reflective of her relationship with Nate. As Iris from Taxi Driver, a character Robert De Niro’s character tries to protect from her less-than-ideal circumstances, it mirrors how Nate and Maddy see their relationship.
Maddy doesn’t want a dysfunctional relationship like her parents have, and Nate’s seemingly wealthy, nuclear family pays the bill, while Nate sees her as someone she can save from these circumstances, even though Maddy is anything but a damsel in distress. This is shown when Nate gives her lingerie, which is obviously not Maddy’s style. It would work more with Cassie as it’s pink and traditionally feminine, as opposed to Samantha, the woman she’s babysitting for, who saves Maddy from her circumstances in the form of a mentor and gives her a dress that is actually her style as a token of appreciation. Maddy mostly wears solid colors, but when she does wear prints, they’re usually very sweet, like cherries and flowers, however, this is only when she’s dating Nate. When they break up, she stops wearing prints altogether, and when she does, they are usually due to logomania, a popular 2000s trend she has always had an affinity for since before she met Nate, reflected in her rainbow Louis Vuitton matchings set she wears when Nate first sees her. However, she does like animal print, which Kat uses when she begins to find her personal style. Animal print, specifically the leopard print Maddy wears, has always been associated with sexually liberated women from Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate.
Her color palette also evolved, wearing blue, Nate’s color, and purple, the color of royalty, imagination, luxury, sexuality, drama, and sensitivity, in Season 1 and black, the color of sophistication and power and green, the color of renewal and rebirth, in Season 2. This evolution reflects the hold Nate has on her versus the confidence she has once she’s free from him. Purple is the color she wears during her iconic carnival look, which represents how Nate can’t manipulate Maddy into his perfect woman. She can’t be tamed and is undeniably unapologetically herself. She only ever wears pink when she is with Nate or thinking about Nate and only wears sweeter patterns like daisies and cherries when she’s with Nate, or in youth, representing her broken childhood and idea of love.
Black is the color of her first look of Season 2, our first time seeing her since she broke up with Nate. While for most of the characters, black symbolizes darkness and sadness, in fact, Maddy wore black in Season 1 after Nate assaults her, however for Maddy in Season 2, it represents her maturity and empowerment, with her now equally iconic New Year’s look. However, this is a double-edged sword, being that her wearing black could also be interpreted as her mourning her relationship with Nate and her friendship with Cassie. However, she’s not gonna let Nate win, and when Samantha gifts her a purple dress, it’s representative of how far she’s come from Nate’s grasp and how she won because she stayed true to herself.
She for the most part stops wearing blue in Season 2, showing how she is no longer with Nate, however she does wear it during Cassie’s freak out in the bathroom, when Kat lies to her about having sex with Ethan in the bathroom and when Rue reveals Cassie’s betrayal to Maddy, taunting Cassie for her mistake before she even knows the truth and showing how even if she is trying to move in, she still clings to it. The shades of blue she wears are pastel, which shows how Nate is still a vulnerable topic for her, which is made even more apparent when she wears it during the reveal scene. When she does wear dark blue, it taunts Cassie into confessing in a dream sequence.
Green takes blue’s place in Season 2 and she often wears it at Samantha’s house, which can be interpreted as her trying to manifest Samantha’s luxurious lifestyle for herself. Green symbolizes wealth and renewal, and that’s exactly what Maddy is going through this season. She also wears green when she confronts Cassie at the play, which represents how she’s not gonna let Cassie break her, and instead uses it as more motivation to change and achieve her goals.
However, Maddy isn’t perfect. She’s very manipulative, selfish and materialistic, which black and green can also symbolize because they are often associated with villainy. Maddy also wears black for much of Season 2, which symbolizes power and vulnerability, which is why it’s the perfect color for her first episode look. It also symbolizes maturity which is why she wears it around Samantha a lot, showing how she wants to overcome what has happened to her. She also wears it when she’s seeking revenge against Nate, and when he double-crosses her and traumatizes her.
Purple is Maddy’s signature color, was the main color in Season 1, and while she wears significantly less in Season 2, the items she does wear are incredibly significant. She wore it in the hallways scene with Cassie where they had matching outfits, however, Maddy’s is much more flattering and the shades of lilac show how she owns the color because most of the time when she wears it, it’s more saturated. Cassie’s is a teal-ish blue, showing that even though she’s wearing a shade of one of her signature colors, it’s still a costume on her. She also wears purple in the pool scene with Cassie with purple sunglasses, showing how she sees herself as royalty in the world. She knows she’s a bad bitch and is confident. She also wears it in flashbacks if the timeline is before Season 2. Then she wears it when she tries on Samantha’s iconic purple dress, which is later gifted. She admires Samantha and hopes to be like her when she grows up. Samantha talks to her like a mature adult and helps her see love in a new light. When she leaves her job, Samantha gifts Maddy the dress, representing how Maddy is coming back to herself after her trauma with Nate. Maddy also wears more saturated reddish and pinkish colors (through clothes and eye makeup) in a few flashbacks in Season 2, which are always when she is violent, symbolizing her aggressive side.
Maddy is by far the best at makeup on the show. The makeup on Euphoria shows each character’s growth and mental state, and it is never more apparent in any character than it is in Maddy, just because of how bold her makeup is. It’s always precise, without a smudge in sight, when even Jules, who is also into makeup, has smudges here and there. Maddy’s makeup is meticulous, often with rhinestones and razor-sharp wings being her signatures. These elements instantly let the viewer know who the boss is, even going as far as to put rhinestones in her hair. Her makeup looks also often match her outfits through color coordination, reflecting her attention to detail.
Her makeup starts off sweeter, with bright colors and smaller rhinestones then becomes bolder and darker as Season 1 goes on. Her focus on eye makeup brings to mind “if looks could kill,” making her a force to be reckoned with before she even opens her mouth. In Season 1, Maddy symbolizes her creativity, power, fierceness, polished-ness and how detailed-oriented she is. It’s bold and immediately lets everyone know who the Queen Bee is. She also has a knack for having makeup match her outfit, resembling a uniform, which also symbolizes power. She’s also strategic and calculating, wearing a sweeter color like pink when she wants something because the eyes are the window to the soul.
She uses color to show her mood and personality, showing how dramatic, confident and emotional she is. Her rhinestones act as her armor. It’s a defense mechanism because if she is bold enough to wear rhinestones casually, what else is she bold enough to do? She’s tough and protective. It also shows how confident she is. When she isn’t feeling confident she wears no makeup, showing how she behaves and feels unlike herself. Her makeup is her creative outlet and her shield, so when it comes to Season 2 and she finds her confidence again, she realizes that she doesn’t need rhinestones anymore, she just needs herself and her personality. This newfound maturity is also due to her friendship with Samantha who she admires.
Her makeup in Season 2 is more subtle, with sharp, mature and minimalistic eye looks. Her signature wings are sharper than ever, presenting a threatening and terrifying appearance to let people know who the boss is. She also one-ups Cassie makeup-wise, paralleling their relationship with Nate when they are in the same scene, but Maddy’s version is always bolder than Cassie’s. She wears pink eye makeup when she is feeling vulnerable and her boldest wing yet when she is the center of attention at her birthday party.
Towards the end of the season, where she wears shimmery eye shadow, which is the more opulent, mature, grounded and adult equivalent of Season 1’s rhinestones. In the finale, she wears green eye makeup to represent her renewal and a 60s style open wing to show her openness for the future. She wears blue eye shadow when she finds out about Cassie’s betrayal, showing just how much color influences her makeup choices. The blue also matches her shirt, and her nails match her fishnet top too, which shows her attention to detail (the nails in Season 2 are on a whole other level and matches the characters’ personalities perfectly but of course Maddy’s nails are the best. It was actually Alexa Demie’s idea to bring on a nail artist. The nails have become so much a part of her character from the snapping to the clapping). The boldness of her looks contrasts Cassie’s look so much that it’s a fun twist on their character tropes of the sassy brunette and sweet blonde (think Blair and Serena or Betty and Veronica).
Kat’s style is always based on her dreamy and imaginative nature. In the beginning, her style is simple, dark and undefined, reflecting her character’s lack of confidence, her desire to go unnoticed as a plus-sized girl in a world of thinner people and how she hasn’t found her personal style yet. Her style is heavily influenced by Enid in 2001’s Ghost World. Kat’s style evolves once she begins camming, employing a dominatrix-influenced style with metal and lace-up details, studs, leather, harnesses and sheer accents all used to create a more dynamic visual.
Clearly influenced by punk, fetish-wear and her new sense of confidence, Kat is seen wearing platforms, animal print, latex, chokers, darker colors and corsets. This is clearly not who Kat is. She is playing a character, a fantasy. She is overcompensating for her own self-loathing by trying to project a more confident image. Kat also stops wearing her glasses after this evolution, an age-old movie trope that in this instance actually makes sense, making Kat literally blind to her own problems. She also starts to wear red, the color of love and passion, black, the color of seduction and darkness, and green, the color of materialism and envy. The green and black reflect Kat’s true motivations, while the red and black symbolize her fantasy. She also wears green in her makeup, making her a literal green-eyed monster. At the dance, she dressed like pin-up model Betty Page down to a wig. This reflects Kat’s Season 2 arc. Just like Betty Page, she regrets her past mistakes, but in a contradictory way.
Kat’s regrets stem from how her relationship with Ethan isn’t as good as the confidence and admiration she had while camming. Her fantasy will always be stronger than the real thing. She is still as self-loathing and insecure as she was in the pilot. In Season 2, she is often seen wearing busier print, reflecting how confused and frustrated she is at this time in her life. Kat goes through the biggest visual transformation from the wallflower to someone who has confidence. Red is her color which symbolizes power, dominance, aggression, anger and violence. Her name also symbolizes rebirth, with the whole cats having nine lives thing. So, Bivens was very in tune with Kat’s development throughout the series.
Kat’s makeup goes through the most dramatic transition out of all the other characters. In the beginning, Kat barely wears any makeup then once she begins to embrace her sexuality, she begins to wear bolder colors, and mainly a bold red lip, demanding attention, instead of fading into the background like her past wallflower self. She wears a lot of black and red in her makeup in Season 1. She no longer wants to be ignored. She wants attention. She is starting to rebel and reject conventionality. She employs the punk and gothic makeup aesthetic and uses graphic eyeliner shapes and dreamy colors. It’s more in line with Jules’ creative and edgy makeup than Maddy’s pretty and precise makeup. The best example of this is the upside-down cross look for the Halloween episode. Her makeup represents her sexual awakening, being no longer soft, but bold and loud. But much like her clothing, it’s compensation. She is pretending to be confident by using bold makeup looks. She isn’t really as confident as the image she is projecting. However, she is far less experimental, only doing these looks when the events she’s going to, albeit Halloween or a school dance, serve the extravagance. She takes influence from the gothic and punk movements. She also wears colorful lipsticks, which none of the other characters do, showing how she wants to seem more secure, sexy and mature.
Cassie is one of the most controversial characters on the show, but her wardrobe does a great job at showing Cassie’s inner struggle and why viewers should try to understand and empathize with her, because she is honestly one of the most realistic characters on the show, just written and presented in a more hyperbolized way. Many teenage girls are insecure and desperate for love and affirmation, and their impressionable state makes them easy to manipulate and make mistakes. Cassie represents that. A key part of Cassie’s style is that she’s been sexualized from a very young age, making her think that her only value is in her appearance, which is why she doesn’t really wear anything experimental or distinctive, it’s just basic and traditionally feminine as to still appear to men in her quest for attention and love.
She wears denim skirts, jeans, lettuce hems, crop tops and rarely any patterns. She strictly wears blue, the color of masculinity and hope, pink, the color of femininity and love and white, the color of innocence and purity, and while Cassie isn’t sexually “innocent,” her mindset about love is incredibly naive. Blue and pink are also the colors of gender reveal, further reflecting how she embodies how women are only seen as birthing baby machines, not as actual human beings and how that mindset starts in youth.
Her color palette is the most consistent of any of the other characters, which reflects how stubborn and unadventurous she is. Pink symbolizes flirtatiousness and is also a combination of red and white, which shows her innocent idea of love. The pastel shade of pink she wears shows how insecure, immature and naive she is when it comes to love. Pastel shades, in both blue and pink, are also baby colors, reflecting her immaturity. Out of blue and pink, she wears blue much more, probably because of how much worth she puts into her relationships with boys. It’s also the color of sadness, emotionality and loneliness, which Cassie is terrified of. She wears white when she attempts to garner sympathy, behaving cowardly and avoiding taking accountability.
These wardrobe pieces and colors combined to make her look like the stereotypical girl next door. It’s just generically popular, which makes it unassuming and unproblematic, despite constantly “making mistakes and not learning from them.” The aesthetic itself is a mix of basics from the 2010s like jeans with solid colored tops, mixed with 80s basics in color palette and silhouette, with her color palettes being in shades of pastels and jeans being straight-leg mom jeans.
It’s reflective of two eras where mall culture was all the rage. The 80s was when malls were popping up all over the country as desirable places to spend the day with activities, shopping, and food, while the 2010s was when fast fashion became a force to be reckoned with, a mish-mosh of aesthetics and endless fashion inspiration online. The use of pastels also reflects Cassie’s lack of confidence and that her flirtatiousness and sexiness are only to garner attention, she doesn’t actually feel sexy or flirty. When Cassie does wear darker shades, it’s usually because she’s distressed and confused, and the color is almost always blue relating to how lonely, desperate and depressed she is.
In Season 2, her color palette is the only one that doesn’t change drastically. She is still wearing pastel pink and blue because she is still making the same mistakes and instead of positive development, she spirals even further. Instead of blue symbolizing calmness, it represents Cassie’s sadness, submissiveness, guilt and anxiety, meanwhile the pink represents how she is practically Nate’s very own Barbie doll. She also wears pink sunglasses when she’s at Maddy’s babysitting job, literally seeing the situation with Maddy and Nate through rose-colored glasses. When she begins to play the part of Maddy, matching sets are the first things she begins to wear, just in her signature colors (mostly blue because that is also Nate’s color). She also begins wearing her hair instead of the loose waves we’ve become to associate with her, as stick straight, mirroring Jules’ season 1 hair. In the Season 1 finale, she is dressed sleek with a mature shawl and bare face makeup, reflective of her fresh start, while in stark contrast season 2 end with her bleeding and messy, reflective of how far she’s spiraled.
Her makeup in Season 1 is very natural, at least that’s what men would think, and that’s her goal, to attract boys. She is very classic and natural. She doesn’t wear anything creative or experimental, it’s just traditionally attractive. Out of all the female characters, her makeup is the least colorful or creative, showing that she isn’t a risk-taker. There are only two times she’s bold makeup-wise throughout the first season, and they aren’t to express her mood like Jules, Maddy and Kat use makeup. At Halloween, when she dresses as one of the most iconic characters in hooker with a heart of gold trope Alabama Worley and the second is when she’s in her ice skating fantasy, which is reflective of her rhinestone makeup at her childhood birthday party before she was betrayed by all the men in her life. Both times, she is in fantasy. Play pretend. This isn’t who Cassie is.
In the finale, she wears a fresh face to represent her clean slate. It’s not sexy or meant to attract men, a rarity for Cassie. This costumey idea in her makeup stays during Season 2 when she begins dating Nate. Her makeup is almost exactly what Maddy wore in Season 1 when she dated Nate, reflecting that she’s just playing the part of Nate’s girlfriend. She recreates Maddy’s carnival look and mall look and begins to use a mixture of Y2K and 60s influence which has already become a signature of Maddy’s makeup, reflected in the “she certainly looks the part” scene. It also reflects how much of a pushover and coward she is. She gives 100% of herself to the other person in the romantic relationship, which leaves her nothing for herself, which is why her downward spiral involves her destroying her relationship with Mady, someone who has always been loyal to her. This desperation for Nate’s attention and deep insecurity that anyone will like her for who she is also reflected in her costumes while trying to get Nate’s attention, as she plays the role of multiple different types of women; herself just with a dolled up hair that is influenced by Maddy’s experimentalism, the blonde bombshell in the same vein as Hannah Montana as the innocent girl who is confident, the Jules-esque childish sweetheart and most iconically the sweet southern belle. All of which she wears is Nate’s signature color of blue in her signature shade of pastel. The only time he acknowledges her is when she is dressed as Maddy completely with her matching set and baby hair, and wearing a darker, louder shade of blue. It’s clear that Cassie believes the only way to get someone to like her is to play a part, which is even sadder when you remember that Maddy liked Cassie for exactly who she was.
Cassie’s makeup is always a more delicate version of Maddy’s, showing how less confident she is. When she does experiment, it’s for validation, not self-expression. This desperation for validation is shown as she increasingly becomes more Maddy-fied, but it’s always awkward to look at. While Maddy uses black eyeliner, representing how she represents the dark femininity of desire and femme fatale charm, Cassie uses white eyeliner, which represents the light feminity of sweetness and innocence, something that is conventionally feminine, which Nate is very attracted to. The white eyeliner looks very unnatural, representing how distant she is becoming from her own identity. Her cheeks are often flushed, showing her post-hook-up state and constant anxiety. Her makeup look at Maddy’s birthday shows her looking teary-eyed and anxious with the rhinestone and pinkish-red eye makeup, a color that love, or her illusion of it. When she is pretending to be Malibu Barbie, she is Jules and Maddy, Nate’s ideal woman, with lifeless skin and a bold 60s eye look that makes her look ridiculous because of her frail skin. It also uses blue eye makeup, showing how Nate, whose color is blue, is the only person in her eyes. She also replicates Maddy’s Season 1 mall look, showing just how far down the rabbit hole he has gone. When she isn’t around boys, her cheeks are flushed, showing how lonely and anxious she is, which is seen in the affair reveal scene. After the first episode of Season 2, she only wears rhinestones in Nate’s fantasy and when she attempts Maddy’s double wings, they are shorter and more timid than Maddy’s showing her lack of confidence.
Lexi’s style in Season 1 is almost unnoticeable, which is on purpose. She wears a lot of blacks and is dressed very plainly, reflecting her wallflower qualities. It can also be interpreted as her mourning her friendship with Rue and her father’s absence. She is often in her sister Cassie’s shadow, for not being outspoken or pretty enough. However, as the show develops, she finds confidence in her differences from Cassie. While Cassie is sexualized and only valued for her pretty appearance, while Lexi, who is also pretty, isn’t, Lexi knows that she has qualities that are important that Cassie doesn’t like intelligence and curiosity. This confidence is reflected in her wardrobe in Season 2, as she wears more preppy elements like plaid, peter pan collars, headbands, mary jane shoes, and collegiate colors like red, green, blue and white, reflecting her intellectualism. Preppy style has an association with the conservative, Old Money family, which also reflects Lexi’s desire for success through hard work, not how she looks. She doesn’t want to be sexualized, not after seeing what that did to Cassie. This is reflected in her Halloween costume as Bob Ross, a funny costume when all of her friends are dressed as beautiful and sexy, even Rue. The transitional point from wallflower to a tough young woman is at the Season 1 finale dance when she wears a dark blue dress with an edgy choker and bolder makeup than we have seen in the past, reflecting how she wants to find what makes her special, she just doesn’t want that to be anything like Cassie, as she wears a darker shade of one of Cassie’s signature colors. She also behaves in a more outspoken and daring way, although this is because she is intoxicated. Lexi often wears earth tones, showing how intuitive and grounded she is, unlike her hysterical sister. She often wears brown, symbolizing her responsibility, introspectiveness and dependability, blue, reflecting her intelligence and sadness, and red, her favorite pop of color, reflecting her newfound confidence and outspokenness. She is also the character who loves patterns the post like argyle, floral, tartan and hearts. This is significant because while patterns usually symbolize chaoticness, these symbolize her intelligence, femininity and desire for self-love.
Lexi is the least experimental of the girls, reflecting how she doesn’t want to be seen as just a pretty face but instead wants to be taken seriously for her hard work. This is reflected in her more natural makeup and how she often wears her hair up in buns and ponytails. When she does become bolder with makeup, she takes notes from Twiggy’s iconic eyeliner from the 60s, which is still rooted in a more timeless, sophisticated appearance, again trying to appear more mature, introspective, assured and creative. She also wears a red lip when she wants to be taken seriously whether it be through her work or through her relationship with Fez. Like Kat, she is the least experienced with makeup, so lip color is the easiest way for her to be bold through her makeup like her friends. Her most dramatic look is during her play, with bold eyeliner and more Twiggy-inspired lashes than her past looks, showing how she has finally found her confidence and voice, finally making her memorable and not fading into the background.
Jules starts off undeniably girly, looking like Lisa Frank’s graphic, a Winx Club character or a Strawberry Shortcake character, often wearing pastel colors and mini skirts. She often wears blue, mint green, pink, purple, acid green, orange and yellow, a seemingly random, candy-coated color palette, meant to symbolize her creativity, playfulness, youth and most importantly her femininity. In Season 1, her main desire through clothing is to please men, which is why she dressed in traditionally feminine pieces just with a more creative, individual twist in the detail. Its foundation reflects that of a school girl with pleated skirts being a mainstay of her wardrobe in early episodes. This later turns into a grunge approach by wearing darker clothes and more masculine pieces like sweatshirts and denim skirts. This is also reflected in how she wears pants to the finale dance when pilot Jules would have worn a dress. In season two, she almost is never seen in a skirt or a dress and exclusively wears shorts or pants, reflecting how she no longer wants to please men with her appearance. The pastels soon move to more saturated colors, representing Jules’ hopefulness moving towards a state of anxiousness. In the second season, her color palette is still expansive but in more muted and darker shades. Her style is also reflective of her desire to go to fashion school, as she wears more trendy pieces. She also has an affinity for layering, reflecting how her bubbly personality is a facade for something much darker underneath. She also plays with textures and patterns. Her style is very creative and experimental with hints of futurism that give her a cartoonish vibe as well. She also wears cutouts to reflect how affectionate and open she is, however, when bad things happen to her, she wears more conservative pieces, physically protecting herself from her current situation. Jules also started to dress like Jules, wearing more baggy silhouettes and sweats. Her Halloween costume, as Juliet in Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of Romeo + Juliet, reflects how she still has the desire to be loved in spite of her past romantic mistakes. Jules’ color palette is very unique and random compared to the other characters because she wears the most colors out of all the characters, which makes a lot of fo sense for her character. It can be interesting as her being a mix of Maddy’s creativity, Kat’s sexuality, Rue’s dependability, and Cassie’s sadness. A rainbow color palette symbolizes creativity, free expression, imagination, childishness, artisticness, playfulness and joy. The candy-colored pastel palette shows how optimistic and childish she is In Season 1. Pastels are also very feminine and sweet. She mostly wears the color pink, which is a color that symbolizes femininity (as seen with Cassie), which she says he wants to conquer. Later in Season 1, she wears darker and villain tones like purple, magenta and black,s howling at how confused and rebellious she is. In Season 2, her color palette becomes darker, but still multi-colored with mustard yellows, dark reds and blues, representing her androgynous, serious and experimental style and her dark mindset. The few times she does wear pastels like in Season 1, she is happy or trying to do what’s right. This shows how much growth she has gone through and how her core personality of creativity is still how she expresses herself to the outside world.
Jules’ makeup is very experimental and creative, often featuring interesting shapes and saturated colors that attract the eye but aren’t considered conventionally attractive. It’s her form of self-expression. In Season 1, she uses eyeliner to create shapes for a dynamic visual that doesn’t conform to any makeup rules. She also uses color to help convey emotion. In the beginning, she wears pink to help her appear more feminine to men. She eventually wears more vibrant colors like acid green and neon orange when she finally settles down in her new town. She can finally be her creative and playful self. When she learns the truth about Tyler, her makeup is softer, using pinks to show how she still desires love. When the stress gets to a time high, she went electric red, showing her desire for love and her rage at the situation. Black also replaces her pastels at this point in time. When she uses red, it often looks less precise and more messy, bold and exhausted than her past looks, showing how overwhelmed and reckless she is. Her makeup is always intentional and unconventional. In Season 2, her makeup is still very colorful and bold, but in a more understated way, like through marble eye shadow designs and interesting eyeliner shapes. It’s simplified, abstract and guarded, sometimes even looking like a tough anime hero. Her hair also has the most drastic change over any other character. In Season 1, she has long blonde hair with pink ends, reflecting the feminine identity that she wants to present. She also wears curly, a more inviting and breezy appearance. Later she dyes the ends a purple, to reflect her no-longer hopeful mindset and instead her sad and depressed state. She also begins to wear it straight, reflecting how rigid she is feeling. Then she removes her dye completely, reflecting how confused she is in her current state. Then she dyes her ends electric red, reflecting how angry she is with Nate and herself. Then in the finale, she has black streaks in her hair, reflecting how she no longer cares what Nate thinks and just wants to do what feels right to her, which led her to recklessly abandon Rue. In Season 2, she cuts her hair into a Kurt Cobain bob, reflecting how she wants to distance herself as much as possible from her old girly self.
Donnie Davy’s makeup artistry has had a huge impact, which is very rare for any form of cinema when usually it’s costumes that spawn trends (which Euphoria undoubtedly has also had). Beauty gurus and beauty influencers were already a huge thing before Euphoria came about, however, Euphoria gave their talent the TV treatment and normalized more experimental, bolder makeup. The show has also inspired a whole new generation of makeup wearers that are bolder, riskier and more unique. People who would shy away from bold colors and cool eyeliner shapes are now getting the confidence to try it out. Donni Davy has become so influential that she started her own makeup line Half Magic.
The hairstyling on the show has also been impactful. Alexa Demie’s signature baby hair details and sleekness have become certifiable trends among POC, which Maddy also employs. Colored hair was a trend prior to Euphoria, but Jules has inspired a whole new generation of colored hair enthusiasts. Jules is the character that uses hairstyling the most to translate a message to the audience. When she’s optimistic in the beginning, it’s a girly pink. It slowly turns into a more melancholy purple after there confrontation with Nate, and then a blue when it only gets worse. When she’s angry, she dyes it electric red, and when she doesn’t give crap in the finale, she puts black streaks in her hair. And in season 2, she chops her hair off into a Kurt Cobain-style bob to further distance herself from her past shameful self.
Not since Gossip Girl has a show been this fashionably impactful. Bivens is becoming the biggest influencer of them all, dressing Gen Z just as Erica Daman, Gossip Girl’s costume designer, dressed millennials. Bivens, and even Daman, Pretty Little Liar’s Mandi Line, the Barbie movie’s Jacqueline Durran, Ryan Murphy’s frequent collaborator Lou Eyrich, and A Simple Favor’s Renee Ehrlich Kalfus, are part of a wave of costume designers who finally providing becoming just as trendsetting, influential and famous as the actors they are dressing. And it’s about damn time they get recognition they deserve.
In the first season, while the role pushed the clothes more visually and that was more important than realism, costume designer Heidi Bivens still wanted the foundation to be based on realism. So, she scouted high schools and did reach out on Instagram to see what real teens are wearing and then give it a more hyperbolized, aspiration twist. In season 2, the approach was completely different. Instead, they went full throttle into the aspirational approach, using an abundance of designer pieces from designers like Mugler, Chanel, Moschino, Jean Paul Gaultier, Miu Miu and Prada.
The fashion world has also taken notice of how fashion-forward and influential Euphoria‘s actors are and have been given brand deals. Zendaya has been a style icon prior to Euphoria and ironically plays the least fashion-forward character on the show. Even when she looks terrible, she looks good thanks to her already perceived glamorous persona. She has a brand deal with Valentino and Bugari. Alexa Demie has become the ultimate Balenciaga girl, while former model Hunter Schafer works with Shehsido, Prada, and Rick Owens. Barbie Ferreria has relationships with YSL Beauty, Jonathan Simkhai, and Fendi. Sydney Sweeney has worked closely with Miu Miu, Jacquemas, and Tory Burch. Jacob Elordi and Maude Apatow have worked with YSL, while Apatow has also developed a relationship with Miu Miu.
The actors also each have a distinctive style they have become known for that either compliments or juxtaposes their characters. Alexa Demie and Maddy Perez are equally daring. While Sydney Sweeney and Cassie Howard both love sweeter colors and looks, Sweeney has proven she’s not afraid to be daring either. Maude Apatow has a much more risky style than Lexi. Hunter Schafer’s masculine cartoonish style mirrors Jules’ feminine cartoonish style. Barbie Ferreria’s style is far sweeter than Kat’s dark style. Zendaya is known for her bold, indistinctive style.
It’s clear that the fashion on Euphoria is having a huge impact, setting trends and making style icons out of its young cast. Heidi Bivens and Donni Davy have encapsulated Gen Z fashion and their style philosophy so well and I mean it when I say that other shows and movies should take note. Here’s to more fashion moments in Season 3!