I love how Willow’s wardrobe evolves. The way she’s described in the pilot’s script suggests that she might be dressed by her mother. Her style in Sunnydale High is cute, don’t get me wrong, but it’s so antithetical to the fearsome, powerful witch she’ll go on to become. Her wardrobe at this point is, for lack of a better word, infantilizing, with demure silhouettes and a focus on bold prints. Yes, she is very much still a child at that point, but if you compare how she presents herself to, say, Buffy or Cordelia, she’s the one whose style seems the youngest.
You could say that this is a more realistic representation of a teenage girl, as opposed to Hollywood’s sexualized portrayal of teenage girls (because, let’s be honest, Buffy would have been dress-coded so many times if this were real life), but mainstream y2k fashion really did emphasize the latter. Buffy and Cordy are how a lot of girls would have wanted to dress, or felt like they had to dress, if school dress codes weren’t a thing.
The way Willow dresses notably changes after she leaves home to go to UC Sunnydale. Her colour scheme becomes more cohesive, her clothes more form-fitting and ornamented, which solidifies into a clear style identity in seasons 5 and 6. I like to think that she gradually starts dressing the way she wants to, now that she’s out of her (heavily implied) abusive family’s home. Her style also complements Tara’s, whimsigoth icon that she is, very well, and we see couples (or characters with romantic tension) dress to emulate each other a lot on this show. I think this is signalling to us just how much Willow’s relationship with Tara helped her figure out who she is, not just through her magic and her sexuality, but how she wants to present herself to the world.
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