TV style icons of 2020: how Friends’ Ross Geller pivoted from sartorial disaster
The first time I watched Friends, there was a clear style hierarchy among the male characters. Gunther, Joey, Chandler, baby Ben, Mr Geller (Ross and Monica’s dad) – and then Ross.
Gunther, with his bleached-blond, close-cropped hair and bold coloured shirts, had a “New York artist in the early 80s” vibe about him. Joey, meanwhile, with his crackpot magnetism, managed to make any outfit from sweats to plaid shirts work, with his heart-shaped face and curtains haircut. He even went accidentally highfashion with a man-bag and, in the episode where he wore all of Chandler’s clothes, predicted Balenciaga-esque layering. Even Geller Sr had a very specific rumpled, older-gentleman style about him, with his one-size-toobig suits and jumpers.
But Ross … oh, poor Ross! Wasn’t he always boringly attired, with his egghead haircut and his caramel-coloured suits and stripy shirts? For the arc of Friends’ 10 seasons, Ross had some deep personal lows (including, in retrospect, a spot of serious depression). Around season eight, he became the male Phoebe, a comedic foil for the other characters: the sad clown, the Eeyore figure. Later on, some of his most outrageously comic moments would centre on his fashion mishaps.
But, rewatching the show years later and thinking about the character and his interplay with his clothes, something became clear to me. For Ross, fashion wasn’t just functional: it was experimental, allowing him to try on different personas for size. This seems to perfectly mirror the slightly manic view that men took concerning their wardrobe during lockdown.
The flashbacks in Friends were an early indication that Ross was into roleplaying this way. There was Bea: the Grey Gardens-ish older female persona, which saw the young Ross dress up in a pirate-fedora hat and a woman’s patchwork blazer. (Altogether now: “I am Bea. I like tea. Won’t you dance around with me.”) There was also Ross giving it his best Lionel Richie, with a perm and a caterpillar moustache, playing his sad keyboard as Rachel went off to prom with Chip, and Miami Vice Ross, with the electric-blue suit and yolk-coloured T-shirt.
Still, the first few seasons of Friends did not give much indication that Ross would be the male lead to push the boat out with fashion. But then the writers and costume designers did something very interesting. As Ross’s life collapsed in on itself, juggling the disappointments of his marriages ending and the pressures of co-parenting, he began experimenting with the boundaries of the persona that everyone knew.
In season four, he found another Ross through his relationship with Emily. He said he was a whole “other guy” when they were together; he even got his ear pierced spontaneously. “Who am I? David Bowie?” he asked Emily. The line was played for laughs (he even did it in a Dick Van Dyke