Chelsea Doesn’t Dress Like a White Lotus Guest

This season's most lovable character dresses for herself.

The White Lotus is back and I, like everyone else, am endlessly entertained by the fashion on the show. It always ends up being such an important part of the storytelling and so I’ll be here, discussing it every week. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out!

Please note this send is a little later this time around because of the Oscars send that went out earlier this week!

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When you watch The White Lotus, all you can hope is that your favorite character doesn’t turn up dead. Of course you’ll probably wish for everyone else’s demise. These are the worst people you know, after all, on a vacation they don’t really deserve wearing clothing most of us can’t afford. They sip on aperol spritzes while admitting they didn’t vote or worse, imply they voted for Tr**p while asking for a bite of your pad thai. They sneak upstairs to have a quickie with their husband’s best friend or complain that their hotel spa massage didn’t come with a happy ending. These just aren’t characters you root for. These are characters you love to hate. But you’ll typically wish at least one person well every season. And I think we are all in agreement on who must make it out of Thailand unscathed.

Chelsea.

No but why does she look just like that cutie cartoon…Rick you better not break it.

I knew I loved her from the first second we saw her on the boat, wearing that My Beachy Side crochet cut-out dress, Jacquemus cheetah print Ovalo sunglasses and JW Anderson chain Espadrille platform sandals. When I interviewed the show’s costume designer, Alex Bovaird, she said she wanted Chelsea and Rick to be instantly perceived as “crackly and fizzly.” And they were.

You can just tell everyone here sucks except for maybe them two.

Everyone else on the boat looked so sterile and immaculate. You had the Ratliffs in their southern Sunday best looking so out of place, particularly Piper’s very puritan and maidenly lace Ralph Lauren peasant sleeve dress. And you had the blonde blob of middle-aged women dressed in the eerie coordinated way your high school bullies might have, projecting an insecurity and uncertainty of their own individual identity that feels so evident to everyone except themselves. But Chelsea…Chelsea looks like fun. You get the sense that she put that outfit on not to impress her mom or her best friends or her boyfriend, but herself. She isn’t trying to be cool either but you can feel immediately that she is self-assured, which is the coolest thing one could be.

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This only works on her and it works on her so well.

There’s a lot going on in her initial look but I actually think it works for her in a way that kind of haphazard style didn’t work for Portia last season. Portia was microdosing on multiple microtrends at once because TikTok likely told her too. Chelsea’s pieces are far less trend driven. I’d assume she found that crochet dress at a boutique on her travels instead of buying it from some influencer’s affiliate link on their Instagram story. Maybe trend experts on social media would have advised her to pair it with more neutral accessories since it has so much going on but she wouldn’t even know that because she doesn’t look to them when she puts together an outfit. Instead she sees this dress that’s maybe too much for most and decides to do more. Cheetah print on sunglasses and large gold embellishments on espadrilles aren’t for the faint of heart. They’re details that would put off most consumers, but Chelsea sees them and thinks, “What fun!”

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