They say nice guys finish last, but we think good guys do, too. At least in the style stakes, with evil masterminds, the criminally insane and the fiendishly cruel all appearing on a new league table of the most influential fashion characters of 2024.
The study, by online clothes emporium Public Desire, looked at the digital reach of 26 female silver and small screen icons, including how many hashtags have been posted to Instagram tied to their identity, the number of global monthly searches, and how many articles have been written which include them.
The results speak for themselves, with supervillains out-cooling superheroes and baddies apparently knowing their way around wardrobes better than their foes.
Hence Harley Quinn topping the list thanks to her effortlessly sexy casual clothes and captivating, if intimidating, attitude in the 2020 movie, Birds of Prey. Picking up the Suicide Squad member’s story after she’s ditched by lunatic ex-lover, Joker, even when Margot Robbie appears downtrodden and heartbroken in the movie she’s a tour de force, serving chaos and redemption with a thick Gotham (read: Brooklyn) accent, and looking the businesses while doing it.
Other less-than-friendlies on the list include Cruella AKA Estella de Vil from the smash hit Cruella, which just so happens to be Emma Stone’s second entry in this most influential chart.
One of the finest comedic actors of her generation can play a breadth of characters convincingly, and evidently does so with a style that resonates whether that’s the Dalmatian fur-loving permed menace or her role as Bella Baxter in the incredible Poor Things.
In a retelling of Frankenstein, our leading lady is bolted together from bits of dead people and then must learn how to engage with the world as an adult who was literally born yesterday.
Despite the obvious naivety, her surrealist period dress — how about those ruffles? — is a winner in every scene. As are Daphne Bridgerton’s countless ball gowns and basset dresses in the celebrated Regency-era drama, Bridgerton, and the fictitious Lady Whistledown, gossip pamphlet author and the pen name of none other than Penelope Bridgerton.
Fear not, though, there is style behind the monstrous feminine. Far less threatening than, say, a crazed supervillain, Emily Cooper — protagonist of Emily In Paris — ranks third on Public Desire’s list of the most influential fashion characters of 2024. And we expected no less, considering every location used in the series has since become a go-to destination for the ‘gram, and half of us have now looked into the viability of relocating to the City of Light for a few months. Even if the search was only jokey-serious.
Kate Bishop is another force for good in the world. In 2021 she appeared in the Marvel miniseries Hawkeye in which she was played by Hailee Steinfeld. The show shares its name with the lead character, a role Jeremy Renner took on, but in the end it was Bishop — a champion archer — that left the big impression. Even now, three years after her on-demand debut, she’s still clocking up more than 224,000 hashtags, and almost 91,000 online searches and has featured in over 1,700 articles overall.
Another long hauler, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina also features on the run down.
If it weren’t already obvious, this is a teen horror adaptation of Sabrina The Teenage Witch and more than half-a-decade on the centre of this universe, Sabrina, played by Kieran Shipka, is still smashing it on socials thanks to her understated chic.
With just under 350,000 hashtags recorded, she beats the 1960s retro look of chess ace Beth Harmon in The Queen’s Gambit and most of the other characters ranked for fashion influence. Stranger Things’ paranormally-gifted Eleven is one of the exceptions, although who knows what to believe in The Upside Down. Cutting to the chase, then, the real takeaways seem to be that true style doesn’t really change, and being bad can still get you noticed for all the right reasons.
