Elaine Benes Is the Most Consistently Stylish Character in TV History
by Keegan Kelly · Cracked.com‘Seinfeld’s leading lady wore ‘no bad outfits’ for nine straight seasons
September 19, 2024
If any fashionable Seinfeld fans ever find themselves wondering how Elaine Benes manages to eat with every single new fit featured on the show, they should take a look at the list of charges on the J. Peterman Catalog corporate card.
Looking back at the looks served by white yuppies in New York during the 1990s, it’s surprising that a single shoulder-padded, dungarees-donned outfit from the many classic sitcoms featuring such urbanites aged well this far into the 21st century. Fashion trends come and go, and it’s anyone’s guess which bygone style era will make a triumphant comeback on TikTok this month, but so many looks that the TV world used to consider iconic — from the signature Friends haircut “The Rachel” to Will’s busted-ass, blue and yellow Billabong hat on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air — will only look even more hilariously outdated as those shows and their original audiences grow older and older.
Then, there’s Seinfeld. As opposed to its contemporaries, Seinfeld was never about looking cool or being on the cutting edge of fashion trends (although George was definitely in on GORE-TEX before it was cool), which is one of the reasons why Seinfeld continues to enjoy perfect retrospective reviews from many modern fashion commentators.
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Last week, one fashion-minded Twitter user challenged the platform to find her “a character with no bad outfits.” Look no further for the objectively correct answer than the queen of the castle herself, whose only wardrobe problem over nine stylish seasons was a single malfunction in a certain company Christmas card:
Of course, “objectively” is a strong word to use when there’s an entire Seinfeld plot line in the Season Six episode “The Secretary” about Elaine buying a bold, fashion-forward dress that she, herself, learns to despise once she sees her own reflection without the deceptively slimming mirrors at Barneys clouding her fashion sense. We also have ample evidence that Elaine once wore a floor-length, red polka-dotted, Little House on the Prairie-looking dress with librarian glasses and giant leather clompers. As such, even Elaine probably wouldn’t pretend that she never had a single swing and a miss during her time on Seinfeld.
All that being said, through 180 total Seinfeld episodes, 178 of which featured Elaine wearing clothes of some kind while the other two didn’t show her at all, she certainly had the highest success rate of dressing well out of any sitcom character of her era — although Kramer could very well give her a good fight in the fashion-off. It’s rare to see a hipster doofus pull off a full pimp fit as well as he did.
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