Fashion and series: Why Fran Fine continues to dazzle us

If you regularly scroll through your Twitter and Instagram feeds, you may have noticed a resurgence of interest in Une nounou d'enfer star Fran Descher and her character Fran Fine over the past few years. Could this passion be linked to the series, which tells the story of a former cosmetics representative who lands in the very stuffy home of Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield to babysit his three children? Not really, no. If this series, which ran between 1993 and 1999, is still the talk of the town, it's more for Fran's looks, which have become an Internet cult. From miniskirts and houndstooth prints to vinyl dresses, fur coats and big polka-dot dresses, Fran's colorful outfits fascinate and excite. From the Instagram What Fran Woreaccount, on which American Shanae Brown has been compiling the heroine's most beautiful outfits since 2016 and trying to find their provenance, to The Nanny Art which draws parallels between Drescher's silhouette and famous works of art, Une nounou d'enfer offers itself a second life.

This iconic look is the result of a close collaboration between Fran Drescher, co-creator and lead actress of the series, and stylist Brenda Cooper. The two women met in 1991 on the set of Princesses. The actress promised the then assistant stylist that if one day she had her own series, she would hire her immediately. After selling One Hell of a Nanny to CBS, Drescher kept her promise. Cooper helps design the look of the heroine, Fran Fine, a young woman from Queens (New York) who finds herself in a bourgeois world whose codes she completely ignores. The pace is frantic: the stylist has to come up with some 50 outfits a week. She invented what she calls the "Fran Fine formula". In an interview with Lenny Letterin 2017, she explained how she constructed these looks. "I always started with an all-black silhouette: a black turtleneck, a black miniskirt, black opaque tights and black stilettos. Then I'd add color. I'd adjust all the outfits to fit her character perfectly. We'd shorten skirts to make them sassy, make tops tighter, change buttons..." She thought about every volume, every detail, to make the pieces seem tailored for Fran while mixing thrift-store finds with designer clothes (Moschino, Todd Oldham, Dolce & Gabbana, Nicole Miller...). Brown recounts finding outfits both in another show's trash cans and on the catwalk.

The costume designer was very strong, because she started with a uniform that a lot of girls wore in the '90s," notes journalist Agnès Léglise, who confesses that her son was amused at the time of the broadcast to find some of his mother's dresses in Une nounou d'enfer. Mini-skirts, black tights, turtlenecks, black sweaters - all the women wore this "uniform". On top of that, she added incredible pieces. Except that, unlike a series like Emily In Paris, where you can see that every outfit is very expensive and unbelievable, there was enough eccentricity so that it didn't look too much like an heiress princess!" Fran's look has endured through the decades. Brenda Cooper, for her part, is delighted that the clothes continue to inspire millennials. It has a lot to do with the character's cult status," she tells HelloGiggles. I didn't create this look to be fashionable. Her outfits are still wearable today. They're daring, they're colorful, they say something about the character. They're sexy."

How do you explain the appeal of Une nounou d'enfer to a new generation? Nawal Bonnefoy, journalist and vintage fan, who maintains an Instagram account dedicated to her retro looksNawal Bonnefoy, a journalist and vintage fan who maintains an Instagram account dedicated to her retro looks, draws a parallel between her attraction to Fran and to china. I love her taste for pop colors, patterns, cool suits and maximalism in general," she explains. These are elements that I myself like to introduce into my wardrobe and turn to when I go shopping. Often I come across a vintage piece and think, "Fran could so wear this!" My love of her style echoes my love of vintage, especially as what Fran wears doesn't necessarily correspond to current trends: even though the series is set in the 90s and we find many codes specific to the nineties, Fran's style also flirts with the mod and yé-yés trends of the 60s (her vinyl Courrèges ensembles), the 70s (her patchwork clogs, for example), the power dressing of the 80s..."

Fran's designer clothes are the talk of the web. Maylis tells us she's been actively searching for the famous Moschino piano dress she spotted on an account dedicated to the looks of Une Nounou d'enfer, even though she herself has never watched the series. The style consultant and author of Dress like a parisian Aloïs Guinut explains that this porosity between style and fashion is nothing new. She cites Rachel's famous hairstyle, so often requested in hair salons in the 90s, and Gossip Girl's preppy looks, which set a trend in the 2000s. "What's special about series," she explains, "is that the characters have time to develop their own style over several seasons and can become fashion icons. Just as we remember the look of Jackie Kennedy, we remember the look of Fran Fine or Rachel Green. And we have a catalog of looks at our disposal!" A way of learning more about fashion history with each episode. "A fashionista who's interested in Fran's eccentric, high-fashion nineties revival will know what to look for by looking at her outfits. Being in a vintage store without knowing what to look for can be quite complicated. By studying Fran's look, we can see that she was wearing this Moschino look and orient ourselves in that direction. This makes it possible to navigate through the vintage magma and even find missing designers that nobody is looking for!" And Fran isn't the only heroine whose look fascinates. Because it's accessible to everyone, pop culture has a huge influence on the way we dress," explains Nawal Bonnefoy. Fran Fine is far from the only heroine to inspire Internet users. Buffy, Blair Waldorf (Gossip Girl), Rachel (Friends) and Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and the City) all have styles that are widely acclaimed, analyzed, reproduced and commented on, even years after the series has ended.

When we ask her fans what they like about Fran, the answer is a mixture of admiration for the character and her audacity. Many women remember following her adventures as children, stars in their eyes. She didn't seem to have any particular worries in life," explains Fatoumata. Her lightness shone through. Her skirts, her dresses, the eye-catching colors and the high hairstyle: everything screamed 'life's a party!' and that made me realize that you can have fun with clothes!" For Celia, Fran asserted "a lot of her personality through her clothes. I always thought it was cool and interesting, not at all superficial!" Since the show went on air, Brenda Cooper has received a steady stream of letters from women telling her how Fran's clothes have helped them to assert and assert themselves.

Fran sent the idea of classic femininity represented by C.C.'s character into overdrive. "She embodies this notion of fun, of knowing how to have fun and enjoy yourself, and of daring to take a stand," explains Brenda Cooper. Margauxa big Fran fan. I'm quite tall, I have curves, and sometimes it shocks people that I'm also bold enough to have my own style, as if I were already taking up enough space. And that's what I like about Fran's look, this air of saying "yes, I'm taking up space, but that doesn't mean there's none for others, I'm just living my best life by dressing like my dolls."

Her clothes also reflect a disdain for a fixed notion of "good taste", as Tiphaine tells us, a subversive way of being colorful in Sheffield's "beige" world. She takes her character as the daughter of a Jewish family from Queens with her, and wears her difference proudly. The idea of good taste in the Upper East Side context where she works is very rigid, but she never questions herself," points out the journalist. Sarah Moroz. She's never ashamed, she's true to herself and doesn't question whether she should adapt, which I think is very cool." The singer November Ultra also emphasizes this desire to turn her clothes into "superhero capes". For me, the daughter of blue-collar workers, I still think that I don't have the natural class of some of my friends, so I tell myself that I'm Fran Fine, and I'm fine with that! She's got that 'street smart' side, able to put together incredible outfits with just about anything." Camelia draws a parallel with her own mother, also from a middle-class "even precarious" background. "My mother has always worn colorful outfits, high heels, with perfectly coiffed hair, and that gives her enormous strength and charisma. I think it's cool, even downright feminist, this figure of a woman who, regardless of her financial situation, remains herself, cheerful, outgoing and dignified. ! »

For Angélique Haÿne, Fran will forever remain a feminist icon, "strong and independent". For this avid fan of the series, who seeks to reproduce some of the iconic pieces in Fran's wardrobe by sewing or hunting them down, the heroine "uses fashion codes consciously". Even if the series offers her a fairly conventional destiny, a marriage and a pregnancy, Fran is in Angélique's eyes "a woman who uses fashion as a means of fighting men and the bourgeoisie" and who has helped her to "give herself confidence".

But what happened to the wardrobe that made so many women dream and won Brenda Cooper an Emmy? It ended up at Sony, who sold this goldmine to a thrift store. "Some people may have clothes in their wardrobe that came from A Nanny from Hell without knowing it..." explains Brenda Cooper to HelloGiggles. On this side of the Atlantic, all we have to do is scour the Internet to try and look like this unique heroine. Whose humor and freedom never cease to attract emulation.