WILLIAM VAN METER ESSAY


Could it be that the stars have aligned to make “Seinfeld’s” Elaine Benes the summer’s downtown fashion muse?

Over the years, the 1990s TV character has stood out as a beacon of a faded era, in long floral skirts, blazers with padded shoulders and granny shoes with socks. Unlike other ‘90s American TV series, “Seinfeld” was decidedly anti-fashion. But now, if you happen upon an old episode, Elaine just looks cool - and of-the-moment.

“She was definitely feminine,” said Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played Elaine, Jerry’s headstrong foil, from 1990 to 1998, “but she didn’t have girlfriends. She was one of the guys. It wasn’t about trying to look sexy. It was about looking like a girl who pushes people around.”

Ms. Louis-Dreyfus collaborated with Charmaine Simmons, the “Seinfeld” costume designer, to create Elaine’s look. The floral dresses and skirts were her trademark.

“The other part of it, too, was the shirts Elaine wore,” Ms. Louis- Dreyfus said. “They were often very lacy or had a lace inset or a demure collar and were worn underneath something tough, like a leather coat or denim jacket.

Brooches and cowboy boots also figured into the formula.

“There are certain trends you can’t imagine rearing their heads, but then, there they are,” Anne Slowey, the fashion news director of Elle magazine, said of the Elaine look .

“The Chloe Sevigny version is shorter and cuter. It’s a flirtier, cleaned-up version, but it is derivative. Who would ever think Elaine from ‘Seinfeld’ would be a style icon?”

Ms. Sevigny’s new resort collection for Opening Ceremony is the perfect, if inadvertent, modern take on Elaine.

“Girls like the floral,” Ms. Sevigny said. “A little femininity and delicacy. Pair it with a heavy boot. It works!”

The Elaine look incorporates so many styles - early American settler, Gypsy, business casual, pious zealot - that it was likely only a matter of time before one of them provided inspiration for designers. A chic Elaine specter hovered over lines as diverse as Prada and Rebecca Taylor .

For Lyz Olko, a designer of the punk-chic label Obesity and Speed, the Elaine look is nostalgic. “My entire wardrobe consists of floral, denim and black leather,” Ms. Olko said.

This June, Lauren Boyle, an editor at the subversive online fashion magazine Dis, paired Laura Ashley- clad models with punks, goths and ravers.

Jaime Perlman, the art director of British Vogue, says, “Elaine embodies both this season’s trends of the early ‘90s and the working woman.”

How does one explain the Elaine renaissance? Most of the trend’s habitues are too young to realize whom they are referencing. The fashion stylist Mel Ottenberg offered a theory.

“Girls who were obsessed with micro-minis are now so anti-that, and they’re embarrassed at what they were wearing two years ago,” he said. “This is a more covered-up look and looking like you have a brain. Elaine had a job. She worked at J. Peterman. She was a gogetter.”