The Othering of Vanessa Abrams

Originally published on Substack 2/25/2021

A few weeks ago, I ended my comparison of Gossip Girl book and show fashion with a breakdown of Book Vanessa Abrams, a black turtleneck–clad, white-coded character—literally miles from TV Vanessa, the role that Jessica Szohr assumed in season one, episode six. Not long after her debut, New York magazine caught up with Szohr, and she explained TV Vanessa’s new style:

In the book, Vanessa was very gothic, always in black, with piercings and when we started the show, they wanted to make her kind of Lower East Side . . . tight skinny jeans, high-tops, and things like that. . . . I had just moved here so I wasn’t aware of the neighborhoods, so when I was doing homework for my character, I went to the Lower East Side (New York).

When interviewed by Vanity Fair the following year, costume designer Eric Daman and assistant costume designer Meredith Markworth-Pollack also mentioned the neighborhood: 

Vanessa is a breath of fresh air. She’s the Lower East Side, Raising Victor Vargas home-girl. One night we saw M.I.A. in concert wearing a sequin sailor suit and were like “Omigod, she is so Vanessa” (Vanity Fair).

What no one seems to add, however, is that Vanessa has no connection to the Lower East Side. In 1.6, Vanessa moves back to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to live with her sister. Before that, she spent at least a year living with her artist-activist parents in Vermont. She’s homeschooled, much of her time dedicated to working at a local coffee shop and making documentaries. In seasons three and four, she attends NYU.

None of this, again, is “Lower East Side.”

I located only one reference to Brooklyn in discussion of her costume design, an interview with Daman following the season three premiere:

Vanessa crosses the bridge to Manhattan [to attend NYU], and so will her wardrobe. Gone are the Brooklyn barista and hip-hop fashions of seasons past. We will see a more refined adult and fashion-forward Vanessa than ever before. [She’ll be] retaining her cool, eclectic vibe, but taking it to the next level with some new designer duds, statement necklaces, and bright ethnic prints (Elle).

I’m throwing these quotes up-front because honestly, I couldn’t find much else on Vanessa’s costume design from Szohr and Daman. All my usual sources were fruitless: Vanessa goes unmentioned in the season one extra “Gossip Girl Couture,” despite having been promoted to a series regular before the end of the season. She’s also absent from the season five extra “5 Years of Iconic Style”; by that point, she was no longer a regular on the show.

In 2010, circa season three, Daman collaborated with Grazia UK and Miss Selfridge, pulling together outfits for the female characters. I dug up only the introduction and Blair Waldorf’s video, but the title cards at the beginning say everything: Blair? Classic. Serena van der Woodsen? Effortless. Jenny Humphrey? Rocker.

Vanessa? Tribal.

Because here’s the thing: While the white characters’ costume design encompasses their personalities, their interests, Vanessa’s costume design centers her race, her otherness; coded in vague yet pointed terms: “tribal,” “ethnic,” “cool,” “hip-hop,” “home-girl.” Despite living in Williamsburg, Vanessa is grounded in the Lower East Side—a historically immigrant, working-class neighborhood—and the LES-set movie Raising Victor Vargas, which follows a Dominican American family. The costume designers even mention rapper M.I.A. as a style influence—as if to shout, “Not white, not white, not white!” That’s not to say that there aren’t women of color who dress like Vanessa but rather to ask why white costume designers felt they had to completely rework her costume design when descriptions of the character’s wardrobe already existed. 

Szohr herself is “Hungarian and a quarter Black” and is “often asked, ‘What are you exactly?’” (People). It’s a loaded question the show never attempts to answer, and so Vanessa is fated, through her plotlines and costume design, to be ambiguously “other,” dressed in a mix of prints and jewelry from various cultures, never rooted in specificity. The only confirmations that the show even knows that Vanessa is Black are the microaggressions from white characters and the casting of her mother as Gina Torres, an Afro-Latina actress. Her father and sister, I should note, never appear.

Now, I don’t know which decision came first—whether the producers cast Szohr and then attempted to rewrite the character, or decided that Vanessa should be a teen of color and cast Szohr from there. Either way, the show, largely written and costume designed by white people, seemed unprepared to support a character and actress of color. By introducing Vanessa in episode six, the writers already put her at a disadvantage with the viewers. In the book, Serena is the interloper in Vanessa’s longtime love for Dan Humphrey, while on the show, Vanessa is barging her way into Dan and Serena’s budding romance. Remember that New York interview with Szohr? The interviewer spends half the article worried that Vanessa is going to steal Dan from Serena.

From there, her story lines only got more frustrating, and viewers responded accordingly: When you search “Vanessa Abrams” on YouTube, one of the first results is an eleven-year-old video called “Reasons why we hate Vanessa,” with more than three hundred thousand views; when you google “Vanessa Abrams,” the search bar fills in “worst character.”

To be fair, Vanessa can be rude, annoying, and hypocritical, but so can literally every other character on this show. Throughout the series, Blair, Serena, and Jenny all say terrible things and make selfish decisions; none of them became the subject of hate searches or videos explaining why “we” hate them. After all, those characters were all well-off and white, and I’m inclined to think the poor storytelling and outsized hatred surrounding Vanessa were rooted in classism and especially racism: 1) The white showrunners and writers lacked the care to craft this character, and 2) many viewers had no ability or desire to recognize or understand that inadequacy. Fans identified more with Serena, and Jenny, and particularly Blair, and so Vanessa became a threat to their favorites’ happiness: “taking” Dan from Serena, Nate Archibald from Jenny, or Chuck Bass from Blair. The queen herself, Blair, almost always treated Vanessa with hostility and disgust, and some viewers seemed happy to follow along.

Vanessa’s costume design, too, played a role in her reception. Next to Blair’s Audrey Hepburn cosplay and Serena’s model-off-duty looks—all designer—Vanessa’s fashions only reinforced her otherness: As Jillian Hernandez writes in her excellent book Aesthetics of Excess, “the styles of working-class Black and Latina women and girls generate cultural and material capital when appropriated in art and media, while drawing mockery and censure in everyday contexts” (17). Mixing prints from various cultures and layering piles of jewelry is “fun” and “adventurous” on, for example, an older rich white woman like Iris Apfel but “too much” on a Black teen girl like Vanessa.

It’s no surprise, then, that Szohr left the show at the end of season four, saying:

When I started the fourth season, I kind of had a talk with the producers. . . . We didn’t know what we were going to do with the characters. After playing someone for four years, it can be a little repetitive. So I was ready for a change. . . . I had so much fun and I made friends I’ll have for a lifetime and it was so great to work in the city, but I got the most I could out of Vanessa (E!).

Szohr’s explanation of her departure is much more gracious than my interpretation: The showrunners had run out of what little ideas they had for Vanessa, and Szohr was tired of acting those same ideas over and over. Tired, I imagine, of playing only stories that orbited and interfered with those of the white characters, her costumes changing to fit into their world. While Blair and Serena and Jenny all had plotlines about their career ambitions—magazine editing and Hollywood producing and fashion designing—Vanessa’s filmmaking almost always centered on the other characters’ private schools, recording them at an illicit pool party or a performance of The Age of Innocence. She was there to document them, to be the “Lower East Side” to their Upper East Side, the outsider looking in. It’s no wonder that, by season four, that’s all she’s reduced to: an “outsider,” and always will be.

Season One

Let’s go back to Vanessa’s first look. She and Dan have been friends since childhood, and so she reappears in his life the same way she’s always visited: climbs up his fire escape and into his bedroom. Before Vanessa moved to Vermont, Dan told her he loved her, and now that she’s back, she wants to return his affections. Little does she know, Dan just started dating his other long-term crush, Serena.

Her first outfit includes many of the pieces that will become her season one signatures: varsity jacket, T-shirt, skinny jeans, gold hoops, high-top sneakers, all topped with a wild cat–shaped pendant necklace. As Daman discussed, the pieces are hip-hop inspired—though the color choices add another layer of meaning. As I’ll explore in Serena’s profile, Serena’s signature colors are gold and its little cousin, yellow—both of which Vanessa is wearing in this scene. She’s already being presented as a threat to the show’s golden girl, Serena.

Dan and Vanessa plan to see a movie at the Angelika, Vanessa hoping to confess her feelings before or after. She changes outfits for the date: silver hoodie, snakeskin-print dress, pleather leggings, heels, and silver jewelry. Unfortunately for Vanessa, Dan cancels to surprise Serena at the masquerade ball. Vanessa helps Dan’s little sister, Jenny, get ready for the ball instead and runs into Dan and Serena there. Vanessa suddenly realizes she’s the second choice—outfitted in silver, not gold.

The next episode, Vanessa again climbs through Dan’s window . . . while Dan and Serena are trying to have sex for the first time. She wears the same gold hoops from 1.6, paired with a yellow tank, crocheted shrug, gray skinny jeans, brown boots, and layered necklaces. Dan quickly escorts her to the front door; she returns later to find him alone watching porn and offers him some sex advice: “But if it were me with you . . . I’d want you to hide [your Cabbage Patch kid], maybe get some candles, and replace the football sheets.” It’s a heavy moment, weighted with their history and unconsummated feelings. Naturally, Vanessa is back in gold and yellow.

The following morning (1.8), Dan and Serena grab breakfast at a Williamsburg café where Vanessa now works, and Vanessa awkwardly (and incorrectly) implies that they had sex the previous night. With her apron, Vanessa wears a graffiti-heart-print shirt, light-wash jeans, gold necklaces, and orange earrings. Serena has thrown on Dan’s gray argyle cardigan, her own heart a subtle gold charm around her neck, rather than a burst of colorful ones. Vanessa’s feelings are too big, too bright, too much.

Dan wants Vanessa and Serena to get along, so he brings Vanessa to Serena’s best friend Blair’s birthday party. There, Vanessa and Serena bond over Guitar Hero, Vanessa having changed into a snakeskin-print dress and cropped leather jacket, a little more in line with Serena’s style. Blair sizes up Vanessa, then turns to Serena: “Oh, sweetie,” Blair says, “you did not tell me she looked like that. This is such a problem.” Implying, certainly, that Dan shouldn’t be friends with a beautiful girl, but also, perhaps, a beautiful Black girl.

Cut to Christmas (1.11), and Vanessa has given Dan the “best present ever”: publication in The New Yorker’s “20 Under 20” issue. To deliver the good news, she chooses a black leather jacket, her gold hoops, and an orange scarf interwoven with gold thread. The scarf ties her to Dan, wearing his own plaid one, while the gold lifts her above Serena.

Serena, after all, has no idea what to get Dan for Christmas—he neither wants material things nor has an unlimited budget to buy them. Vanessa offers her expertise, but Serena turns her down—Vanessa wearing a leopard-print sweater, purple striped shirt, gray jeans, gold hoops, and gold chains.

Later that day, Serena admits defeat, and Vanessa helps her pull together a video installation of the one thing Dan does want for Christmas: snow. As they work, Vanessa wears the same outfit but with another scarf thrown on top—again, threaded with gold, much like the one she wore to give her own present to Dan. Blair, like a bloodhound, smells Vanessa’s unresolved feelings and pulls her aside: “I think you like Dan a little too much.” Vanessa quickly leaves, put into place by Blair.

After the holidays (1.12), Vanessa begins filming a documentary on the world of Upper East Side private schools, hoping to receive a local arts grant. She accompanies Dan to an after-hours pool party on school grounds, where a student hits his head and almost drowns. The attending students are assigned ten-thousand-word essays as punishment, and the initiating student is promised expulsion if found.

Blair throws an essay-writing party at her penthouse, and Vanessa, again, attends with Dan, camcorder in hand. There, she gets footage of Blair and Chuck talking about Blair losing her virginity to Chuck and faking it for her on-and-off boyfriend, Nate. Vanessa’s dressed in a pink-and-black varsity jacket, Dan in a similar jacket in neutral colors. Of the main characters, only Vanessa and Dan seem interested in the offending student receiving punishment, and so they are linked by their school-like jackets.

Both Blair and Chuck want Vanessa’s footage—Blair threatening revenge, Chuck waving a wad of bills. “I know girls like you,” Chuck tells Vanessa as she films outside Constance Billard. “You act like money’s not important, but the truth is, money’s important to everyone. . . . I know this much cash can make a real difference in your life.” Vanessa accepts his money and hands him a tape; unbeknownst to Chuck and the viewer, it’s mostly blank.

In this scene, Vanessa wears a black puffer jacket, its hood lined with fur—inspired, likely, by the jackets hip-hop artists and rappers wore in the nineties. It’s also easily the most practical coat in the show’s history. Unlike Blair or Serena, Vanessa doesn’t walk ten feet to a warm waiting car; she hauls herself to the 6 train like everyone else.

Later that day, Vanessa gives the real tape to Blair; it’s the “decent thing to do,” she says. Her puffer is unzipped even farther, revealing more of what’s underneath: shimmery striped sweater, jeans, gold pendant necklace, and orange earrings; in sharp contrast with Blair’s tuxedo-inspired dress and white tights. To call them even, Blair pays Vanessa’s rent for a year, and they briefly bond over Vanessa’s use of Chuck’s money; she established a “medical grant for teens with genital herpes in his name.”

Still, Vanessa remains rightly suspicious of the Upper East Side—including Nate, Blair’s now ex-boyfriend. In episode 1.15, Nate drops off his old SAT prep books for Dan; Vanessa rankles at the “hand-me-downs,” telling Nate that she’s already a “fine tutor” for her friend.

After finding one of Nate’s practice essays tucked in a book, she softens and invites him to a local diner to apologize. In both scenes, she wears blouses—one, a cream printed top with little buttons on one shoulder; the other, a yellow pleated blouse, paired with a leather jacket and gold star necklace. The pieces are softer yet more formal than those we’ve previously seen on Vanessa—styles that Blair or Jenny, Nate’s other love interests, would wear. Nate and Vanessa spend the rest of the day getting to know each other and kiss at the end of the night.

Vanessa isn’t planning to take the SATs herself; her parents and sister are artists and never went to college. Nate convinces her to keep her options open, surprising her by taking her to an exam. When Nate picks her up, she’s dressed in a striped purple shirt, gray hoodie, leather bomber, denim mini, and bright pink Docs. The shirt reminds us of the first time she wore it—when Blair told her that she liked Dan “too much”—and echoes Nate’s own striped button-down. Vanessa’s feelings for Dan are fading while her feelings for Nate are growing.

In the season finale, Nate brings Vanessa as his date to a wedding. Jenny makes her an orange floral dress, and Vanessa pairs it with turquoise jewelry and an orange fake day lily in her hair. The lily and florals are likely a nod to the bride herself, Lily van der Woodsen; both Blair and Serena are also dressed in floral prints and fake flowers, though theirs are designer. Vanessa is learning to dress for the Upper East Side, but even the right outfit can’t save her relationship with Nate or prevent Blair from making nasty comments at the reception.

Unlike Chuck and Blair, whose pinks perfectly pair, Vanessa and Nate are dressed in completely different color palettes and styles, Nate all business in a navy pinstriped suit, checked shirt, and pale yellow tie. Nate has “too much going on” for a relationship—his father has just run away to Dominica to escape prison.     

Season Two

Vanessa spends the summer creating a café in Rufus Humphrey’s Williamsburg art gallery. When Rufus arrives home from his band’s tour (2.2), she shows off her handiwork, dressed in a neon yellow off-the-shoulder blouse, matching earrings, and two necklaces: one, a gold heart; the other, a gold key. With time, the colors yellow and gold have become independent of Serena and Dan, symbolic only of herself.

Nate soon visits the new café to confide in Vanessa: his family’s assets have been seized as restitution for his father’s crimes and his grandfather has cut them off. But unbeknownst to Vanessa, Nate has also confided in his secret summer fling: an older married woman named Catherine.

Nate promises to return later that evening but can’t keep their date; Catherine has offered him money to continue their relationship. Since she knows his father’s whereabouts, he can’t turn her down. Vanessa waits for Nate at the café, dressed up in a striped strapless dress, wedges, and two necklaces. The stripes call back to the shirt she wore at the beginning of their relationship, but gone are the heart and key charms from earlier in the day. Nate has the key to her heart, yet it remains unturned.

Despite his agreement with Catherine, Nate can’t give up on Vanessa. The next episode, they make plans to hang out, Vanessa happy in a bright striped top and matching earrings and necklace—unusual for Vanessa, who almost always favors mismatched jewelry.

In fact, the more time she spends with Nate, the more her wardrobe shifts: smaller, simpler jewelry; softer, sweeter dresses and tops, much like the printed blouses she wore in season one. Take, for example, this pale-yellow-and-lavender dress, paired with a minimalist gold necklace and earrings, belt, and heels. All the markers of her style are still there, just muted, matching. She’s dressing to blend into his Upper East Side world, to be more like the girl she thinks Nate would date.

Blair invites Vanessa to her back-to-school party—which, of course, Catherine is also attending. For the occasion, Vanessa picks an orange-and-white-floral halter dress and an orange necklace. Again, she’s chosen a simpler version of her usual look, in the color she wore the last time she and Nate broke up. Because at the party, they do again: Vanessa tells a confused Nate to stay with Catherine; she can’t tell him that Catherine threatened to rat out his father’s whereabouts if Vanessa didn’t remove herself from their love triangle.

In the next episode, Vanessa returns to her usual statement jewelry and color mixing as she tries to avoid Nate. Armed with another of Catherine’s secrets, Vanessa asks Blair for help with blackmail. But when Vanessa becomes convinced that Blair isn’t following through, she tells Catherine’s husband about the affair and disrupts Blair’s carefully laid plan. Once Nate finds out, he and Vanessa are officially over—not because Blair’s scheme was ruined but because Vanessa never told Nate what she was trying to do. In this scene, Vanessa wears a sheer black-and-purple blouse, subtle gold stripes running through it; purple woven earrings; an orange beaded necklace; and teal jeans. She’s done with dressing for Nate’s world, at least for a couple episodes.

Vanessa, the show sometimes remembers, is a community activist; by episode seven, we finally see some real activist-y work: Vanessa blackmails Blair into collecting signatures for a Brooklyn bar’s landmark status.

As revenge, Blair convinces Chuck to seduce and humiliate Vanessa. He feigns interest in buying the bar, but his act turns sincere as he learns more about its history and spends time with its owner, Horace, a magical Black man there to give Chuck some humanity while bluesy music plays in the background.

At the Bass housewarming, Blair reveals their game to Vanessa—worried, perhaps, that Chuck is becoming too close to his target; threatened, certainly, that Chuck is showing a piece of the “real” him to a girl like Vanessa. Their love triangle manifests in their party outfits: Blair in burgundy, Vanessa in gray, and Chuck in shades of both. Again, Vanessa has simplified her wardrobe for an Upper East Side occasion, this time pairing a gray print dress with a tiered blue necklace and hoops.

Nate’s affections turn to Jenny while he’s living with the Humphreys; they kiss but never quite date, though Nate sends her a love letter after he moves out of the Humphrey loft. Vanessa, naturally, is hurt by Nate’s easily transferred interest and Jenny’s disregard for their friendship.

So in episode eleven, when Vanessa is presented with the opportunity to reunite with Nate, she takes it, stealing Nate’s letter before Jenny can read it. Throughout the episode, Vanessa wears an orange peacoat—the bright color reminding us of her previous breakups with Nate, but the silhouette hinting at their future. A peacoat is a preppy staple, often worn by Nate himself in navy blue. Remember it; we’ll come back to the coat later.

Bubble Episode

For Vanessa’s profile, I knew my deep dive would be into 2.12, “It’s a Wonderful Lie”: an episode that illustrates not only how Vanessa’s style changes during her relationship with Nate but also how the show treats the bodies of its Black female characters.

At the beginning of the episode, Vanessa visits the loft, where Jenny is reorganizing Rufus’s record collection by genre—an attempt to distract herself from “thinking about what happened with Nate.” Vanessa nervously plays with the ends of her scarf and suggests that Jenny “move on”; she hasn’t told her friend that she’s dating Nate again. The grays in her striped bomber tie her to Jenny’s gray sweater dress, while the silver threads in her scarf call back to other metallic scarves that she’s worn: specifically, the gold-woven scarves from the same time last year, when she helped Serena with Dan’s present. Again, she isn’t being honest about her feelings, but this time, her chosen metal is Jenny’s silver, rather than Serena’s gold.

Vanessa leaves to meet Nate on the Upper East Side. There, he asks her to the Snowflake Ball, but she doesn’t think it’s a “very good idea right now”—“right now” being while Jenny doesn’t know. Her guilt fresh from her conversation at the loft, she asks Nate what he would do if Jenny still liked him. He brushes the question aside, and they kiss—captured, inevitably, by a passerby, who sends the photo to Gossip Girl. 

In the meantime, Jenny agrees to make a custom Snowflake Ball dress for one of Blair’s minions, Penelope. While in their fitting, they both see Gossip Girl’s blast: “Spotted: N swapping spit with a girl from an outer borough. Ew. Ew. Ew.” Vanessa doesn’t even get a name; she’s just “a girl from an outer borough”—not rich or white or ours.

Vanessa returns to the loft, unaware of the post until Jenny confronts her. She apologizes, but their conversation quickly turns into a fight over who stole Nate first. Vanessa storms out, declaring she will go to the Snowflake Ball with Nate.

Later that day, Jenny brings the custom dress to Penelope’s apartment, where Penelope and her fellow minions, Hazel and Iz, are plotting revenge on Vanessa for “fishing in [their] pond.” Iz reveals her Snowflake Ball dress—and when she stands in front of the light, it reveals a lot of her, too. The one-shouldered shimmery silver gown is unlined, and we’re given a long shot of Iz’s legs and underwear through the fabric. The minions’ revenge is now clear: Jenny will pretend the gown is her own creation and gift it to Vanessa for the ball.

The next day, Jenny does just that: brings the dress to the gallery café and tells Vanessa she was “up half the night making [it] before [she] realized who it was for.” Again, they are linked by shades of gray and silver: Vanessa in a rectangle-printed sweater and silver hoops, Jenny in a gray sweater and moto jacket and silver chains. 

Touched by Jenny’s “peace offering,” Vanessa attempts to confess the stolen letter, but she’s cut off by her phone ringing—Nate calling. Jenny quickly leaves, telling Vanessa she doesn’t “want to know”—likely because she doesn’t want to hear anything that might sway her from revenge.

Vanessa wears the silver gown to the ball, paired with her jewelry from the café and, outside, a plain gray shawl. Her choices are simple, little planned—in line with the more basic styles Vanessa favors while dating Nate, but also indicative of her sole mission at the ball. As she tells Jenny when she arrives, she is “ending things with Nate.”

Jenny herself is fully done up: a black gown and cape, silver and gunmetal chain necklaces, her usual heavy eyeliner. Among the soft pastels, whites, and metallics of the other attendees, she stands out, almost witchlike, ominous.

Vanessa finds Nate and reveals that she stole his letter. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, never,” she says, “and it made me do something that I can’t believe I did.” As she walks away, fighting tears, the minions turn a spotlight on her. Jenny tries to get to her first, but she’s too late: Vanessa’s gown is suddenly see-through in front of the entire ball, the hall echoing with laughter and calls of “Nice dress.” The camera pans up Vanessa’s legs to her underwear.

Aside from Vanessa, Iz is the only other Black recurring character, and so the show’s decision to embarrass them in the same manner, with the same lingering shots of their bodies, is disturbing. Yes, the white female characters are also subjected to long shots of their bodies in undergarments but almost always in romantic or sexual contexts: Blair waiting for Chuck in lingerie, for example. I can’t think of one instance of Blair or Serena or Jenny being disgraced by her unclothed body, while the camera simultaneously leers at said body. By costuming their two Black female characters in the same sheer dress, the show enforces the media representations of hypersexualized Black girls and women (the history of which is discussed in this article). Iz and Vanessa’s bodies are presented for the viewers’ and characters’ consumption and mocking and pleasure.

After Vanessa leaves the ball, Nate scolds Jenny and follows his date outside. “When you walked away tonight,” he tells her, “all I could think was, ‘She’s the one I want to be with.’”

This time, Vanessa cries happy tears—her consolation prize, her reward for taking her humiliation, is Nate’s affections. “You didn’t just pull a Janet Jackson at the Snowflake Ball,” she jokes.

Episode 2.12 aired only four years out from Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s halftime show, at a time when “Nipplegate” was still treated as a punch line, rather than a serious examination of the unequal punishment doled out to a Black woman (Jackson) and a white man (Timberlake). For this reason, I suspect the writers intended the joke to be just another hilarious pop culture reference, rather than an acknowledgment of a culture that vilifies Black women’s bodies, Vanessa’s and Iz’s included.

For the remainder of season two, Vanessa’s story lines, and wardrobe, revolve around her relationship with Nate and his rekindling feelings for Blair. In episode fifteen, her new peacoat makes its first appearance, worn with a striped skirt and scarf, leopard tights, and embroidered cross-body bag. She’s picking out candy for Nate at Dylan’s Candy Bar, so naturally, her outerwear reflects their new relationship, this time in solid black—unusual for a character that wears lots of bright colors and patterns. In the candy store, Dan tells Vanessa that he and Serena share a half brother, a fact that will become very important for Vanessa in season three.

Indeed, the central conflict in Vanessa and Nate’s relationship (much like in Dan and Serena’s) is their class difference: she’s a self-supported Brooklyn barista and he’s an Upper East Side legacy whose family just got their fortune back. In episode sixteen, Vanessa buys them nosebleed seats to the opera, not knowing that Nate was planning to invite her to the Archibald family box. For this scene, Vanessa wears her black peacoat with a solid gray sweater and jeans, her repeat cross-body bag. As earlier in the season, her clothes are becoming simpler, her jacket mirroring Nate’s own navy peacoat. She’s blending into the Upper East Side, while still asserting a little control over how she does so.

To the opera, Vanessa wears a crushed red velvet gown, almost as if she’s trying to become the opera house itself—her dress like a stage curtain.

Their theatrical adventures continue in episode eighteen: The senior class is putting on a production of The Age of Innocence, Vanessa filming it for a documentary. She loves Innocence, but despite her encouragement, Nate hasn’t bothered reading the book or watching the Martin Scorsese adaptation—a rift that grows into a full-blown fight once Nate suspects that Vanessa is more intellectually compatible with the play’s director. By the end of the episode, Vanessa arrives at the Archibald townhouse in her black peacoat and finds Nate watching the movie—each making concessions for the other.

In episode nineteen, Vanessa and Dan support Nate reuniting with his grandfather, William van der Bilt—a reunion that Vanessa comes to regret after Nate chooses a mayor’s office internship over a summer backpacking with her. I explore this episode’s costumes in greater detail in Nate’s profile, so I won’t rehash them here but rather summarize them as such: Vanessa tries, even harder, to fit into Nate’s world through her wardrobe, but Blair, more than anyone, knows exactly what to wear and how to wear it.

By episode twenty, Vanessa and Nate haven’t talked for a week, and Nate and Blair are having breakfast together every morning—a fact Vanessa only learns after Chuck sends a fake email from Nate’s account, luring her to the Upper East Side at exactly the right time. “When you’re ready to do something about [Nate and Blair’s relationship],” Chuck says, “you know where I am.” In this scene, Vanessa again wears her black peacoat, this time with gray jeans, her favorite cross-body bag, and fringed boots. She even keeps the coat on when she meets Nate at a café later that day—holding on to the hope that they’ll stay together even as Nate breaks up with her.

When Nate won’t admit to his renewed feelings for Blair, Vanessa goes to Chuck. Together, they attend Jenny’s birthday: Vanessa without a coat, just a purple halter-neck dress with heels and pearls. This time, Vanessa is one corner of a love quadrangle, her outfit mirroring both her date, Chuck—purple is his signature color—and her rival, Blair—Vanessa almost never wears pearls, but Blair frequently does.

Vanessa’s attempt at making Nate jealous only drives him closer to Blair and herself to Chuck; by the end of the episode, Vanessa and Chuck have had a one-night stand.

The season ends with Vanessa and Nate reconciling at his graduation—but only as friends. To the ceremony, Vanessa wears a bright blue moto jacket over a printed dress, her jacket almost the exact shade of the boys’ graduation gowns. After Nate quits his internship, he and Vanessa renew their summer backpacking plans. 

Season Three

In the third season, Vanessa begins college at NYU, along with Dan, Blair, and recurring villain Georgina Sparks. As quoted in the introduction to this profile, costume designer Eric Daman describes her collegiate style as such: “Gone are the Brooklyn barista and hip-hop fashions of seasons past. We will see a more refined adult and fashion-forward Vanessa than ever before. [She’ll be] retaining her cool, eclectic vibe, but taking it to the next level with some new designer duds, statement necklaces, and bright ethnic prints” (Elle). Now, other characters’ styles do “mature” with a move to college—after two years of school uniforms, how can they not?—but I find it significant that Vanessa’s growth and “refinement” are defined by an embracing of Manhattan and designer clothes, and a move away from Brooklyn and hip-hop-inspired pieces. The implication being, of course, that outer boroughs and hip-hop style are unrefined, immature.

But Eric, I thought her season one style was inspired by the Lower East Side??? Sigh, let’s roll the tape.

In the premiere, Vanessa and Dan grab coffee, catching up after a summer apart. Upon returning from backpacking with Nate, Vanessa started hanging out with a fellow NYU student, Scott. Little does she know, Scott is Rufus and Lily’s long-lost son, aka Dan and Serena’s half brother. In this scene, Vanessa wears a few hallmarks of her new style: a beaded tank, printed shorts, gold chain necklaces and earrings.

The Humphreys have moved from their Brooklyn loft to the van der Woodsen penthouse, and Dan is enjoying the “good life” a little more than Vanessa would like. At Scott’s suggestion, she attends a polo match—Scott, naturally, cares more about meeting his father than repairing Vanessa’s relationship with Dan. For the match, Vanessa chooses a patterned strapless dress, the tans and blues coordinating with the light-colored suits and shirts of all three Humphrey men: Dan, Rufus, and Scott.

For her first day at NYU (3.2), Vanessa dresses in a yellow top, denim shorts, feather earrings, and beaded necklaces. At the campus bookstore, she and Dan run into Georgina, who claims she’s ready to start over after two seasons of lying and scheming. Vanessa takes pity on her, and it’s easy to see why. Georgina is skilled at using fashion to construct her latest persona; this season, she’s darkest-timeline Vanessa: a beaded tie-dye tank, ripped skinny jeans, and gold chains. Georgina realizes, much sooner than Blair, that a “boho” Brooklyn filmmaker like Vanessa will be more popular at NYU than a preppy Upper East Side queen bee. While Blair is throwing a sushi and sake party for their dorm, Georgina is ordering pizza and screening Vanessa’s documentary on “this community garden in her neighborhood” (a documentary, I should note, that was never before and never will again be mentioned—after all, it isn’t about the Upper East Side).

Over the next few episodes, Vanessa and everyone else learn that Scott is a Humphrey and Georgina is still, well, Georgina. Scott’s presence is so sleep-inducing that I accidentally typed his name as “Cot,” so let’s move on to a slightly more interesting character: Vanessa’s new roommate and Dan’s new love interest, Olivia Burke. Olivia, played by Hilary Duff, is the star of a Twilight-like franchise, Endless Knights. Like many movie stars before her, she’s come to NYU to escape fame and get an education.

Naturally, fame follows her. In episode six, Olivia, Vanessa, and Blair compete for the same honor: the Parents’ Weekend freshman toast. Olivia is a contender for her stardom, Vanessa for a recent article about her vague activism, and Blair for sheer force of will. The episode opens with one of Blair’s Old Hollywood nightmares: Vanessa is Eve in All About Eve, accepting an award while Blair’s Bette Davis stews. The hair and costuming is inspired by, though not a direct copy of, the movie’s: Vanessa in a cap-sleeved ivory gown; Blair in an off-the-shoulder black gown. 

In real life, Vanessa has invited her parents, who disapprove of private colleges, for the weekend. She’s desperate to give the toast and prove to them that she belongs at NYU. After Olivia accepts the toast, Vanessa tries to manipulate her roommate into not attending, all while Blair schemes to knock them both over.

Once Vanessa’s mother, Gabriela, arrives, Vanessa’s changing style becomes a little more meaningful, a symbol of her desire to both emulate and distance herself from her mother. To visit the Humphreys, Gabriela wears a printed tunic and skirt, layered gold and turquoise necklaces, all pieces that would fit into Vanessa’s current wardrobe. Vanessa, however, wears a pleated orange dress and only one pendant—her outfit almost blending in to the penthouse wall behind her.

Vanessa’s father, Arlo, stayed in Vermont to “finish installing the solar panels on the chicken coop at the co-op”; they’ve been busy, Gabriela notes, “organizing the local 72, the union of the Burlington cheesemakers.” It’s like the writers threw a bunch of crunchy words in a bag, pulled them out at random, and assembled them into some attempt at a joke. Solar panels! Co-op! Organizing! Activism!! To Rufus and Lily—and even Vanessa—Gabriela is puzzling and painfully honest, most especially when she remarks that “knowledge should not be for sale.”

At the freshman dinner, Vanessa learns that Blair is giving the toast and pleads for her to reconsider. Blair refuses: “Some people are simply better than others.” A microphone tucked behind her huge NYU purple clutch, Vanessa asks Blair to explain why she’s better and broadcasts her racist reply: “Generations of breeding and wealth,” says Blair, “had to come together to create me. I have more in common with Marie Antoinette than with you. Granted, you may be popular at some Ivy safety school, but the fact is that the rabblers still rabble and they need a queen.”

Though she successfully embarrasses Blair, Vanessa doesn’t earn her mother’s respect. “I think it’s time,” Gabriela tells her, “to consider who this place is turning you into.” As earlier in the episode, Gabriela wears prints and layered necklaces, while Vanessa favors solids and simpler jewelry—a color-blocked dress and matching statement necklace. The necklace is an exact match to the earrings Lily wore to her wedding with Rufus—proof, as she tells Dan and Olivia, that Vanessa would rather have Rufus and Lily as her parents.

By episode nine, the next Endless Knights movie is greenlit and Olivia must leave NYU to begin filming. Vanessa and Dan send her off by checking off a college bucket list, ending the night with the last item: a (drunken) threesome. Unfortunately for Olivia, the director backs out and the movie is off again. The three friends must reckon with their newfound intimacy.

In episode ten, Vanessa sees Dan for the first time post-threesome; she’s wearing a plaid blanket coat. Vanessa rarely chooses plaid, but Dan wears the print constantly. Her employment of it now, and in a blanket style, is a symbol of the new sexual dimension to their friendship.

Vanessa, Dan, and Olivia agree to do a cabaret show together, but not without tension—their threesome revealed Dan and Vanessa’s feelings for each other. Olivia exits in the middle of their cabaret performance, leaving Vanessa to assume her role. Dan’s character kisses Vanessa’s, but the emotions behind the gesture are as real as the outfit she’s wearing; Vanessa had no time to change into costume and entered the scene in her street clothes: a blue tunic and black leggings.

Olivia leaves NYU for a different movie role, and Dan and Vanessa orbit each other for a few more episodes, finally kissing again at a beach-themed party in episode 3.14. Vanessa’s Ikat-patterned tunic almost perfectly matches the backdrop, leaving the viewer to wonder if it’s a sunrise or a sunset, if this is the beginning or end of something.

They debut their relationship at a Humphrey breakfast (3.16), where a conversation with Serena convinces Vanessa that she and Dan are already in a dating rut, doing the same things they did as friends. To break out of their routine, she dresses up like Grace Kelly in Dan’s favorite movie, Rear Window, even kisses him awake, as Kelly does to Jimmy Stewart. Like her Eve look, her outfit is a homage, not an exact copy, of Kelly’s outfit: a black blouse, black-and-white-printed skirt, pearls, and long white gloves.

I discussed Kelly’s character, Lisa Carol Fremont, in Lily’s profile, comparing (in the words of costume designer Edith Head) her “sophisticated society girl” to Lily, and Stewart’s “scruffy photographer” to Rufus. I think the comparison is worth reiterating here: Vanessa is trying add a spark to her relationship by dressing up as a beautiful, wealthy, “untouchable” woman—a figure much like Serena is to Dan. Serena plants the idea for something different, so it’s no surprise that Vanessa chooses Upper East Side drag.

As the season wears out, so does Dan and Vanessa’s relationship. Both apply to Tisch, but only Vanessa gets in, the imbalance tipping their once supportive partnership. In episode twenty, Vanessa is offered a CNN internship in Haiti, and she almost turns it down for Dan, not wanting to be separated for three months. He encourages her to accept it, her last appearance in a printed dress in the same neutrals as Dan’s outfit. Despite their complementary colors, Vanessa was right to be wary about her absence: by the season finale, Dan kisses Serena, and Nate sends Vanessa the Gossip Girl post as proof. Even thousands of miles away, she can’t escape Gossip Girl’s reach.   

Season Four

In the premiere, Vanessa returns from Haiti and finds Dan at the loft. He’s been quiet all summer, helping Georgina take care of her baby, who she claims is his. Vanessa’s style remains the same as season three’s: blue-and-green-printed tank, yellow shorts, coral necklace.

The next day, she and Dan meet up for a walk and talk, Vanessa wearing one of her cheekiest outfits: denim shorts, heeled clogs, chain earrings and necklaces, and a tank top that proclaims “PEACE.” Her ex-boyfriend has a baby, but she’s taking the high road! 

Vanessa’s red cross-body bag is similar to the one she carried in season two; perhaps Daman is trying to connect this scene to the season two visit to Dylan’s Candy Bar: the last time Dan and Vanessa talked about a secret love child. 

After Georgina abandons the baby, Vanessa stays at the loft to help Dan look after him, eventually rekindling their romantic relationship thanks to some manipulation from Nate and his new girlfriend, Juliet. When Georgina returns a couple episodes later, she reveals the baby isn’t Dan’s and takes him back.

In episode four, Dan is reeling from the loss, and Vanessa calls in Rufus and Lily to help (uttering one of my favorite lines of the series: “I caught you watching Wild Hogs and laughing.”). For this scene, Vanessa wears an orange tank and shrug, turquoise earrings—a stone that both she and Lily favor. They’re united in mission and wardrobe, but they can’t make Dan confront his feelings; instead, he goes to Serena to avoid. Vanessa has to be the “shrill” girlfriend, while Serena gets to be the “fun” escape.

The next episode, Gossip Girl falsely posts that Serena has an STD, and when Vanessa sees a photo of Dan at a clinic, she believes Dan lied about not sleeping with Serena while she was away in Haiti.

Desperate for the truth, Vanessa turns to Juliet for help. (A big mistake, as Juliet doesn’t give two shits about Vanessa and Dan’s relationship; she cares only about taking down Serena, who she believes sent her innocent brother to prison for statutory rape.) In this scene, Vanessa wears a beige printed dress with gold jewelry, coordinating with Juliet’s usual chameleonic neutrals.

Vanessa and Juliet meet at a Columbia party and steal Serena’s phone; in her emails, Vanessa finds proof that Dan is telling the truth. Juliet pretends to check the phone, too, but instead sends an email to one of Serena’s Columbia professors, offering to trade sex for grades. Juliet slips the phone into Vanessa’s purse; when it goes off, all the blame falls on her. 

Vanessa’s outfit in this scene mirrors Juliet’s—a simple, solid dress and drop earrings—but while Juliet blends in beige, Vanessa stands out in teal. She even carries a large snakeskin purse, its open top much easier for sabotage than the other girls’ closed clutches.

Though Dan believes Vanessa didn’t send the email, his trust is irrevocably broken, and Vanessa moves out of the loft.

In episode eight, Vanessa teams up with Nate, who’s now convinced that Juliet has been lying to him. Vanessa bribes her way into Juliet’s apartment, where she discovers surveillance photos of Serena and her professor. Turns out, Serena has been having a flirtation with a teacher, and Vanessa decides to use the photos to take Serena down and restore her own reputation. Juliet is no longer interested in revenge; she makes up with Nate after telling him her big “secret”: she isn’t rich.

Vanessa makes her move at the opening night of the New York City Ballet, Columbia’s dean—and every main cast member—in attendance. For the event, she chooses a ruffled ballet slipper–pink dress and drop earrings, a style similar to the ones she wore the night of the stolen phone.

Vanessa manipulates Juliet into joining her: “I’ve been losing to Serena for three years,” Vanessa says, “watching her get away with anything and everything, and I’m over it. . . . Face it, at the end of the day, you’re an outsider, just like me.” Unluckily for Vanessa, her statement is a prophecy: the Upper East Siders—Blair, Nate, and Chuck—close ranks to protect Serena, leaving the humiliated Juliet and Vanessa to team up with Jenny for one final takedown. 

Still, neither Jenny nor Vanessa knows the real reason for Juliet’s vendetta—her incarcerated brother—and neither expects her ultimate goal: drugging and dumping Serena in a Queens motel room. Serena is found on Thanksgiving and checked into rehab, her family and friends convinced that she’s gone back to her “old Serena” ways.

Vanessa is planning to have Thanksgiving dinner with the Humphreys, her outfit a Navajo-print jacket—a little subversion for the holiday?—with a red plaid tunic underneath. Once Vanessa learns what happened to Serena, Juliet encourages her to keep quiet. The Humphreys, she says, “will forgive [Jenny] eventually. She’s family. You’re not.” Through her plaid, Vanessa desperately clings to the Humphreys, hoping that by telling Rufus that Jenny is solely responsible for Serena’s state, she’ll remain part of their “family.” Jenny counters with the real story and gives all her proof to Blair; Vanessa once again leaves New York for her parents’ home in Vermont.

Vanessa returns in episode sixteen, wanting to apologize to Serena and make up with Dan. He turns her down, and she replies with what’s become her mantra: “I’m an outsider around here and always will be.” As she hails a taxi, Vanessa overhears Ben—Juliet’s brother, now on parole and dating Serena—admitting that he had Nate’s father beat up in prison. Vanessa almost blends into the night, in one of the most muted outfits she’s ever worn: a long gray coat and blue scarf; underneath, a gray sweater and dark blue top.

The “outsider” label sticks. In the five episodes Vanessa was gone, the show replaced her with the ultimate insider: Raina Thorpe, the daughter of a real estate mogul and Gossip Girl’s third recurring Black female character. Once again, the show makes no effort to write a nuanced character of color, instead giving Raina an identical backstory to her love interest, Chuck’s: they both grew up in hotels with absent mothers and are following in their fathers’ footsteps. They even favor the same bold primary colors and sleek business wear.

In the next episode (4.17), Vanessa tells Lily and Serena what she overheard. This time, she wears a navy coat over a turquoise top and necklace, bold against the creaminess of the penthouse and the van der Woodsens’ outfits. Serena refuses to believe her, but Lily does—hence the turquoise that again connects the two women.

By episode nineteen, Dan is ready to repair his friendship with Vanessa, their gray coats tying them together, even through the phone. But by the time they meet up, Dan has changed his mind. Turns out, Vanessa told Serena another overheard secret: Dan and Blair kissed. He ends their friendship forever, now stripped to his white button-down. Vanessa still wears her gray coat—sad, defeated, without its pair.

Before the season ends and she leaves to study abroad in Barcelona, Vanessa meddles in Dan’s life twice more: First, she offers advice to Charlie, Serena’s cousin and Dan’s emerging love interest (4.20). She hopes Charlie will be a good influence on Dan, “a girl won’t corrupt his soul,” as she thinks Serena or Blair will.

Charlie takes Vanessa’s advice and twists it to her advantage, telling Dan that Vanessa tried to sabotage her. “I’ve read Gossip Girl enough to know Dan can’t resist a damsel in distress,” Charlie tells her, “and you happen to make the perfect villain.”

In both scenes with Charlie, Vanessa wears bright yellow and gold jewelry, callbacks to her first appearances in season one, when Serena was her rival, not Charlie. Charlie knows exactly how to get Dan, and it’s not by being Vanessa; it’s by being his golden girl, Serena.

In the season finale, Vanessa completes her second bit of meddling: After finding the manuscript for Dan’s first novel at the loft, she tells him he needs to publish it. When he refuses, worried the book would make him an “outsider,” she replies, “You know as well as I do that you can’t be an insider and make great art. You have to stand alone to observe it and not care whose feelings you hurt or what people think of you.” She steals the manuscript, ultimately selling it to Jonathan Karp at Simon & Schuster, her cream printed top picking up the colors from the cover posters and walls in Karp’s office. Season five is set in motion, but Vanessa won’t be there to witness it.

Season Six

In fact, Vanessa doesn’t appear again until the series finale, 6.10, in a montage of recurring characters reacting to Dan Humphrey being Gossip Girl. Vanessa sees his article while making a peanut butter sandwich in her kitchen. She wears a printed top, burgundy sweater, and jeweled earrings and necklaces—her season four style, but in more subdued colors and prints; her yellow kitchen cabinets brighter than her wardrobe.

It’s strange to see Vanessa, a regular for four seasons, responding to this revelation alongside a bit player like Juliet or, you know, Michael Bloomberg. After all, Vanessa was Dan's best friend, his girlfriend for a good part of season three. He found his way inside, through Serena, through whiteness, and Vanessa is left on the outside, peering in through the window of her phone. She’s a “perfect villain,” an “outsider,” the show tells, over and over in season four, but it never bothers to ask, “Who made her that way?” Was it the world itself? Or was it the writers who created it, the viewers who consumed it?

[On Thursday, 3/11, I’ll be back with a profile of Gossip Girl himself, Dan Humphrey. In the meantime, thank you to everyone who has completed my volume two poll, still open if you’d like to fill it out. So far, Veronica Mars is leading as my next subject, and I’m very excited.]

DP on GG

My partner, Daniel, spent 2020 overhearing episodes of Gossip Girl from various rooms of our apartment. He still doesn’t understand the show and he doesn’t care.

DP: (lamenting) Vanessa is the Franklin of Gossip Girl.