For the ladies of Selling Sunset, fashion means business (2023)

We are of course talking about clothes.

On the show, whose sixth season premiered last week, the brokers wowed (and stunned) audiences with lace cocktail dresses, glass bustiers, huge blazers that somehow also reveal a lot of skin and tiny leather gloves. Memes glorify strange outfits. "Sunset sales agents show up for a real estate agent's open house at 2 p.m."posted one user along with three photos of actress Megan Fox in extremely revealing cut-out dresses and heavy make-up.

"You Think You Know What Clothes Look Like"said another Twitter user. "And then you see Selling Sunset."

"We all recognize how much fashion plays into our roles and how important it is to serve, as the audience says, the look," said Chelsea Lazkani, who was on the show last season.

For viewers accustomed to changing out of sweatshirts to zoom and stream on the sofa and tame baggy clothes to half-heartedly return to the office, the clothes in "Selling Sunset" seem to defy everything, including weekend and professional daily wear.

Bre Tiesi, newbie (and lover of Nick Cannon), regularly appears on the show in a Thierry Mugler jacket with huge, almost evil shoulder pads that are cut away to reveal the lower part of her chest. "It gives me an edgy yet sexy yet classic feel," says Tiesi.

The stars of the show often show up for a day at work in neon cocktail attire, such as a form-fitting neon green David Koma dress worn by Davina Potratz midway through season six, with lace across the chest. "I think if you reveal too much skin, you take away from your beauty," says Potratz. "So I try to focus on one part of my lower or upper body."

Some of the actors' clothes seem to defy even the logic of the clothing itself. In one scene, Emma Hernan wears a black dress, the bodice of which is a mesh of silk straps. She puts a shot into the bodice of the dress, and another cast member drinks it from his perch on the silk net, while Hernán dutifully leans forward. In another scene, Lazkani arrives at the office wearing a white jacket and matching trousers - and underneath a white bikini, the bowls of which are two huge white flowers.

Amanza Smith, who often wears buns or Bjork-style buns, cries with a bare-top tattoo spread across her arms and awkwardly wipes her tears with her bare tattooed fingers. In fact, many of the cast inexplicably spend their days wearing gloves - in Los Angeles! In the middle of record temperatures! Lazkani says she wears them "when I want to be in my manhood." If you see someone wearing gloves on TV, he says, "They're always ready to get messy." By having an operation, they commit a crime – or just get their hands dirty with the drama.

The show's extensive wardrobe also marks a departure from producer and creator Adam DiVello's style of previous shows, "The Hills" and "Laguna Beach," whose stars are widely credited with introducing the "basic girl" cliché. jeans, leggings and elastic T-shirts.

Instead, fancy designers like Versace, LaQuan Smith and Dion Lee are the cast's favorites. Forget "quiet luxury". These clothes command attention—encouraging lingering, even distracting gazes—and refuse to apologize for it.

The team behind the show has encouraged the outlandish attire, say cast members. "I think the production [started] to focus a little more on looks and fashion, and they would do slow entrances in scenes and really show people wearing more daring or outrageous clothes," says Potratz. "Of course we have also noticed that. We all want to look good and stand out and everyone is stepping it up and doing it more and more and trying to see what fun fashion they can experiment with.

Potratz also points to the influence of Christine Quinn, who left late last season under a cloud of dark morals. She dressed "above and beyond," says Potratz, and even appeared as a celebrity guest at a number of New York fashion shows this past fashion season. (Quinn declined to comment for this story.)

But perhaps no one's outfits push the boundaries of truth more than Lazkani's. In an early episode, she arrives at an estate house opening—essentially a cocktail party for real estate agents to show off a new property, where the show's drama often rises—wearing a white orange dress with a leather bag in front. the female anatomy. . This piece was by artist Stef Van Looveren. Lazkani says she wanted to use the show to showcase independent designers.

But wait a minute – aren't all these people selling real estate for millions of dollars? Lazkani says that showing her personality through her clothes helps her clients see her as a real person. Tiesi says her suit helps her feel like a boss. "Dress for the job you want," she says.

Keeping up with Oppenheim's colleagues is no easy task. Almost all the actors use stylists, several said in interviews. Stylists can charge from $800 to $2,000 per performance, and in addition, cast members pay to rent the clothes, which is generally 20 percent of the retail price. Some work with showrooms that lend or rent samples. (Some, like Lazkani, don't use a stylist and buy all their clothes.)

Does the show help the cast with all these expenses? "Absolutely not," says Tiesi. "They are not helping us at all."

Cast members say they typically spent two hours or more doing hair and makeup — there are, after all, spray tans and manicures and pedicures — and some, like Tiesi, told production they would shoot just one scene a day to stimulate wardrobe preparation to a minimum. (Cast members say they actually dress like this, even when they're not filming, and only on rare occasions. "It's the right way," Tiesi says of her sense of style.)

Others describe a relentless hunt for enough clothes: Maybe you start the day shooting around the office – there's an outfit – and then you need a new look for a birthday dinner that night. And let's say someone gets into a fight over dinner (did you contact my client behind my back? Did you abuse someone at a party three scenes ago?!), and you might have to shoot a scene the next morning to deal with or comfort someone - that's a different outfit. "You basically have to have the gear ready," says Potratz.

"It can be exhausting," she says, "because you have to get it all done, and then you have the real drama, and then you have to plan the next outfit."

But it is notAtwearing. "I could never go out of fashion," says Tiesi.

Alexis Williams contributed to this report.