A heart full of whaaaat?
We begin with Aria, the alpha and omega of crazy clothes. The heart-shaped apron of these skirt-overalls from season one serve as a psychic Valentine to the way her wardrobe would occasionally lose its mind. Please note that it's RARE outside, say, a Gymboree store to see the words "heart-shaped apron on skirt-overalls."
No birds were harmed in the making of this earring
THIS is the moment where it all fell into place with this show, all because Mandi took an earring out of her own ear and put it in Lucy Hale's, on a whim. It was the moment the show became shoppable, so to speak, should you want a giant allergen dangling from your lobe.
Meow
One of my favorite things with Hanna was when she worked in a doctor's office -- for snooping purposes -- and the show put her in kitten scrubs. I like to imagine that the show's creator got this idea after a really long turn in the dentist's chair with a lady wearing these scrubs who wouldn't stop whistling that Jellicle Cats song.
What the hell IS a Jellicle Cat anyway?
Speaking of that, I think this is Grizabella the Glamour Cat. I can tell because only she would wear two different kinds of shiny gold fabric.
Hanna bow tie
Hanna has also fallen prey to little bow-tie details on her clothes, although she ALSO fell prey to that jacket, and I can't blame her for that.
Rrowr
Aria's demi-glove is so Paris Hilton, and in a "Lord, what is PARIS HILTON still doing here" kind of way, rather than an "Aw, look, it's Paris Hilton, remember THAT?" long-distance affection kind of way. The rest of the outfit, though, is my perfect ideal Aria -- still pretty, still girly, but dipped in a vat of biker-chick.
Laundry day, anyone?
I feel like it's bad form to tempt A with a pre-marked stabhole.
Noooooo
Easy there, Braria.
A gaggle of liars
I love it when the directors generously give us an overhead shot. This is a good encapsulation of the girls: Spencer always looks like she might own one of those Old-Tymey bicycles with the giant front wheel, Emily always looks like she's dressed to take out the garbage bins, Hanna is in a dress and heels (and in this case looks like she is on her way to the beach), and Aria is an explosion of things.
?????
This outfit was in the season two finale, as if the show was saving the best for last. And by "best" I mean B.E.S.T., as in, Brain-Ejecting Sartorial Trauma.
Where's the lasso?
So naturally, she wore it with bright Wonder Woman boots. Hanna looks like she's about to go to her office job at Banana Republic a decade ago, the other two look relatively normal, and then there's Aria, fresh off doing battle with a paper shredder. The principal of this school should start a blog.
Theoooooo
Look, it's Aria's Huxtable poncho.
Has anyone seen Nemo?
The fact that I only JUST noticed Hanna's billowy and possibly pleated shorts is a testament to how insane Aria's dress is -- like an old Macintosh screen saver.
NIce necklace
Easy there, David Tasselhoff.
That's just Aria bein' Miley
Fringe beard in front; ribcage on her back; fantastically sense-free all the way around. This was from season three, and it was one of her finest outfits.
Not Outerwear
Aria has become hugely notable for her bottom half, though, in part because she enjoys offering people windows into it. When I first saw this episode, I rewound this scene five times to be sure I wasn't hallucinating that she is wearing a vintage slip OVER her shorts. Next she's going to turn around and announce she'd like to thank Herbert Hoover for something.
She might want to look into mousetraps
And of course, there were these Swiss cheese trouser socks, which she wore with some kind of jumper whose strap appears to be a giant belt. Sometimes the ABC Family directors don't understand that we need really gratuitous outfit shots as often as possible. Yeah, yeah, I know they have jobs to do, but think of the bloggers.
It's the climb
And of course then we had Aria's ladder pants...
The pants so nice she wore them twice
... which the show had her repeat in a later episode, WHILE climbing an actual ladder, which... if only they had made a tiny Aria figurine climbing her leg, and then another TINIER figurine climbing the leg of Wee Aria, and so on and so forth. It could have been an MC Escher joint up in here.
Loud pants
Are these pants, or are they leggings? Either way, something about her bottom half looks like she's a refugee from Back To The Future II.
THE pants
But these are THE pants. They are the PANTS. One leg is leopard, one is black, and I promise it never stops being jarring to see someone in trousers whose legs don't remotely match.
Right?
In this shot they manage to look like giant socks she's sewn to a pair of cutoffs, but I promise, they are a whole garment. This person was right to put up a chain fence. You don't want this dangerous influence getting past your front gate.
Quack
And then, to vent her frustration with A, Aria went to Sesame Street and terrorized Ernie's collection of Rubber Duckies.
Spencer
This was one of those episodes where I was like, "Spencer looks awesome in that cloche hat. I probably need a cloche hat. I would look TERRIBLE in a cloche hat. Almost everyone would look terrible in a cloche hat. Why does Spencer get to pull of a cloche hat? DAMN YOU SPENCER." I would have this conversation in subsequent episodes about almost everything Spencer wears. She makes me want to put things on my body that have NO BUSINESS there.
Halloween IS scary
This was from their Halloween episode, but not the costume portion, which means Spencer's waifish take on Miss Hannigan was just because she thought it looked good.
Aria
Apparently Aria ALSO owns a denim overalls-skirt-thing, although actually it might be shorts. It's still a lot of onesie-based clothing for a girl who is a) out of diapers, and b) not living in 1994.
Once, twice, three times an overall
And Hanna apparently owns a pair of FULL-BLOWN OVERALLS just on the off-chance that her boyfriend's uncle-maybe-dad would work in a barn and she'd need to go visit him and look inside some boxes and things. You KNOW Hanna went on a shopping spree just for this occasion, and I kind of wish we'd gotten to see THAT scene. Surely they can discuss A while they're at the Goodwill store.
Oh HANNA
Honey, the 1980s called... and encouraged you to keep this because even they don't think it's flattering.
Masqueraaaaaaaaade
But this? This was awesome. The costumers outdid themselves, especially on Aria's gown, which I believe Mandi Line designed. It's fantastic -- actually, this was one of my favorite episodes, because of what it did so well: Lots of hilarrible Aria clothes, then a sudden knockout homerun, all mixed in with masked intrigue at a big party. I wish every episode could end at a masquerade, but I suspect that would make the costume crew SLIGHTLY tired. Maybe they should do a spin-off series based entirely on companies that throw masquerades in various towns, and all the dark-corner drama that happens there. You'd just dip in and out, anthology-style. It'd be like "Murder, She Wrote," except possibly with less killing, and no grandmothers. LET'S DO THIS THING.