Buffy The Vampire Slayer Fashion Roulette: “Triangle”.

My first stab at Buffy Fashion Roulette seems to have gone well; I had a blast doing it, and people LOLed. My work, I believe, must continue. This episode’s choosing isn’t completely random, throwing the roulette aspect of the game out the window, but the next will be. In the future I would love to set up a Buffy Fashion Roulette live blogging event via Twitter for all to participate in. Fun! I’m still waiting for more results to come in for the “Pangs” poll, so please vote and compel all your friends to do the same.

How the game works: I choose an episode of Buffy, pore over it carefully, and judge compelling examples of the characters’ fashion by today’s standards. At the end of every episode, fashion winners and losers are nominated in a poll. The winners are announced in a future entry.

The rules: I only have three so far, although that is subject to change. Uniforms (work, military, etc) do not count. Neither do “period pieces” (i.e flashbacks to Ye Olde England, Ireland, China, etc) or costumes (sorry, Halloween episodes fans). Most of the dressed monsters on the show wore regular clothing, so their wardrobes are up for debate just like anyone else’s.

I chose this episode of Buffy to fashionably dissect for two reasons: one, because Olaf The Troll is hysterically awesome, and two, because I seem to remember that in this episode, Buffy’s hair was in this cute pigtails-cum-buns style that I liked a lot. Hence, I wanted to see if I still like it. Pretty simple. Season 5, in my recollection, was when the Scooby Gang’s collective fashion sensibility finally made the transition from “teen” to “twenty-something”, season 4 having been the awkward year full of fashion growing pains. Not coincidentally, the themes and character development followed this same pattern. Interesting. Let’s see how it pans out, shall we?

We open this episode with a shot of Xander and Anya lying naked in bed, albeit under those television-mandated covers where the guy’s side is pushed down to cover his package yet show his pecs, and the woman’s side oddly covers her boobs- and inevitably, every time the woman gets up to pee pee she takes the whole bed with her. Man, this setup is more cliched than the loaf-of-French-bread-in-the-paper-grocery-bag bit. Also, this scene has no fashion in sight. Next!

Buffy’s at the nunnery (is that an offensive word to use?) and we think she’s in nun clothes cos Riley just left her, but she’s not! She’s actually wearing this hideous pink satin blouse.

Stake the blouse, Buffy!

Her hair is pulled back into one of those half ponytail, half bun things. The makeup is okay, and her gold hoops are acceptable in any day and age. Basically, she gets a pass on everything but that hideous, shiny, reflective blouse. Luckily, we only have to look at it for one scene, although I do say a silent prayer that were Buffy ever stranded on a deserted island, she would be fortunate enough to wear that shirt. All the planes would see her.

For the second episode in a row I am compelled to explain that "the towel isn't part of Giles' outfit."

Later we see Buffy working out in the training room and she’s kicking a lot of ass in a slightly odd outfit. Her sweater isn’t too bad, although it does kind of make her look like one of those signs that ring girls carry. (This is ironic, considering that she is working on her jabs in this scene.) More importantly, I can’t tell if it’s a sweater or a sweatshirt. I presume it’s a sweatshirt, because even the Buffy fashion department wouldn’t be clueless enough to have her work out in a sweater, but the shirt is definitely angora-looking. Angora sweatshirt? Anyway she’s wearing that and some hugely flowy white pants. Thank goodness she’s only working on her punching technique. And of course, while Giles is sweating profusely, Buffy is merely glowing. Plus, her hair looks perfect. Giles is looking pretty classically Giles; he has on a dark brown sweatshirt and some light brown pants. You see, unlike Buffy, when Giles works out he dresses in comfortable exercise clothes.

Next we have a table scene, which means it’s all tops, no bottoms. What I mean by that, you dirty pervert, is that we can’t really see much of what people are wearing on their lower halves. It also means that Buffy, Tara and Willow read textbooks, because that’s “so college”, while Xander and Anya read magazines. Willow looks pretty amazing; this was definitely the season when her hair was at its absolute best in color, cut and style. Her makeup is equally killer. She’s wearing a very nice brown scoop neck sweater, which I am reticent to praise too much because it’s perfectly possible that once she stands up, we’ll see that it has little rag dolls sewn all over its entire lower half. Her choker is about the best possible choker she could possibly be wearing- gold, timeless- but it’s still a freaking choker, Willow. Xander looks like either a late 90′s shampoo model or one of Scott Brown’s modeling portfolio head shots, I can’t decide which. Anya’s look has dramatically improved since we saw her last in “Pangs”. They’ve lightened up her hair’s color and style, which fits her personality more accurately. Her makeup is more bright and cheery than it used to be, with shades of pink rather than dark reds and browns. This is also a better fit for Anya. She’s wearing a pink button-down cardigan with nothing beneath it, which I could give her a thumbs-up pass on if it wasn’t ribbed (yeesh, what is up with all the ribbed clothing on this show?!). Anya is also wearing one of those illusion necklaces, which were all the rage during that time period. They were the necklaces where a particularly lovely bead or gemstone was strung on a piece of fishing line, giving the illusion that the bead was levitating on the wearer’s clavicle. I remember these necklaces well because I worked at a bead store at the time and made like ten of these things a day. They were hideous and, thankfully, a short-lived fad.

Perhaps the only group shot in the history of Buffy where Willow looks the most stylish.

Giles, on the other hand, looks like The Man With The Yellow Hat on a non-yellow, non-hat day. Later, he attempts to deflect from the width of the tie by putting on an ill-fitting jacket. Giles. It doesn’t work that way, bro.

All that tie.

Buffy is wearing a weird vest-y blouse. It is sleeveless and has lace trim. I can’t get behind it. She’s wearing the same earrings she had on the night before, and her hairstyle makes her look either ten years older or younger than she actually is; I can’t tell which. (That’s weird, I know.)

outfit: fail. facial expression: win.

Tara. Oh, Tara. Where shall I begin? I take greatest issue with the fact that her blue eyeshadow and liner match her blue shirt, and they both match her blue beaded necklace. That says it all right there. Is this what the people at Buffy think lesbians look like? “Give her a boyish shirt and necklace, but woman-ify it by matching it all with her eye makeup!” Curiously, as awful as that whole mess is, her jacket is not too terribly bad, minus the 70′s polyester shirt-style severely pointed collar.

Just glance and scroll, people. Glance and scroll.

Later that night we head back to the Summers house. Joyce is there! She’s packing to go back to the hospital and is sporting a functional-yet-fashionable scarf post-brain surgery, a long brown skirt, and one of those stripey shirts that every mom over the age of 40 had back in the early 00′s. (Full disclosure: I also owned one. Don’t hate. It was $2 on the sale rack at Old Navy.)

Joyce!

Dawn is also there. Oh. She is wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt that displays a girly graphic and a corny saying in a dated font. She is also portending the impending real life White Stripes invasion in a pair of fitted red pants. Basically, Dawn’s outfit is very age appropriate. How refreshing. Buffy’s back from the Magic Box, and now we can see the rest of her outfit. She’s wearing one of those skirts that’s form fitting all the way down to the ankles, where it flares out dramatically. I think those were called “tulip skirts” and I suspect that they may have been an unintended precursor to the fishtail evening gown explosion. She’s also wearing some light-brown leather heeled boots. They are lovely and soft-looking, the type of leather that begs for the adjective “buttery”. Most notably, Buffy has taken her awful hairdo down and looks a trillion times better. I am starting to realize that man, season 5 was such a good year for hair on this show, period.

Hilariously, in this scene Buffy and Dawn throw some shade on Joyce for how battered and ugly her comfy bathrobe is. I wish their outfits were worse so that I could laugh at them for it. Oh well; I’m sure there’ll be a next time. There always is!

How'd Dawn always get her hair so shiny?

Meanwhile, somewhere in the sewers Spike has dressed his creepy substitute-Buffy mannequin bust in this outfit, and is wooing it with a box of chocolates.

No bra, Mannequin Buffy?

Back at the Magic Box, Giles is out of town and Anya’s in charge. Willow is grappling with her for power and the right to do as much Too-Much-Magic as she wants, and Tara has tagged along for the ride. Apparently the couple decided to wear coordinated corduroy jacket and skirt sets. Really, I’m not making this up. It may even be brown denim. Willow’s has grommets and bell sleeves.

"Now, we just need to conjure a pair of matching brown newsboy caps..."

Anya’s outfit confuses me. I kind of like it, but I’m not sure why. I mean, like any girl who has ever been sucked into the pin-up fashion vortex, I can really fall hard for polka dots- even giant ones like this. But the magenta-ness of it all throws me, as does the linen pants. It’s like something one of the women in “9 to 5″ would wear. Is that good or bad?

I know this picture sucks but it's the best I could capture. Sue me.

Xander still looks like Ye Olde Scott Brown, but this is more Weekend Pickup Truck Scott rather than Sophisticated Male Model Scott. This Xander is much more familiar to us all.

Upon further analysis, Tara is actually wearing a matronly Kurt Cobain sweater.

Tara goes to UC Sunnydale to get Buffy, who is wearing that pigtails/buns combo hairstyle that I remember so vividly. It is still cute to me, as is her pink striped top, but I’m not sure if that’s because I loved the look so much ten years ago or if it’s because it’s still cute. (I count on you, the reader, to make this decision for me.)

Even Buffy has to glare at Tara's ensemble.

Xander and Spike begrudgingly hang out with each other at The Bronze; Olaf The Troll meets them there and demands mead and babies to eat, then does an upside-down keg stand. Although his fashion is technically a period piece due to time travel and is therefore not up for discussion, I find it to be very 2008 Brooklyn hipster hippie chic, but with a uniquely troll-y twist.

There is a photo of me doing this exact same thing floating around on the internet somewhere.

Buffy follows the troll back to the Magic Box and, after some arguing all around, kills him dead in the name of love (but they could not take his pride). She, Joyce and Giles meet up in the end to summarize the episode and to discuss the fake sister that is Dawn- who hears them. Joyce, Giles and Dawn aren’t wearing anything to write home about, but Buffy looks stunning in that red sleeveless shirt, even if it does have a gauzy exterior layer. (Lord, these trends from 10 years ago are killing me. KILLING me.) Also, her hair is perfection. Keep it up, Buffster.

That bowl looks like it has a penis and balls in it. Huh huh huh.

So, what do you guys think?