TV style icons of 2020: Schitt’s Creek’s absolutely fabulous fashion overload

You might think Schitt’s Creek is just a show about a wealthy family who lose everything and have to move to a motel they refer to as a “vomit soaked dump”, but I’m here to tell you that it is also a show about fashion. Not since Absolutely Fabulous has a programme used clothing with such humour and precision, deploying a drop-crotch trouser or a dramatic epaulette with the meticulous timing of an exquisitely crafted punchline.

The Rose family’s luxurious wardrobes are the last vestiges of their former lives, their outfits a continual source of hilarity for their checked-shirt-clad small-town neighbours. All four family members are overdressed throughout but it is Moira and David who make it an artform. Nothing says “fish out of water” like the Helmut Lang mohawk hooded sweater David (Dan Levy) wears to a Mennonite farm, or the $3,000 (£2,400) Alexander McQueen frilled mini dress Moira (Catherine O’Hara) wears to waft about in her mouldy motel room. …

These people know fashion inside out, and their show celebrates the power of fashion and its futility. Their mad clothes are a constant reminder of their struggle to adapt to their reduced circumstances. In this town, their refined taste is not going to protect them. And yet, in ruched lamé Isabel Marant, and sequined Dsquared2, Moira and David continue, regardless of the derision of their neighbours, to dress doggedly for the life they once had and hope to reclaim.