Fashion Flicks 📺💖 Summer Roberts from The O.C.
Can you hold the reputation of It Girl & environmental activist?
Welcome to the O.C., bitches!
Newport Beach’s It Girl has impacted fashion beyond Orange County, reaching all the way from Elle Australia to Vogue. In today’s Fashion Flicks, I’ll be doing a style analysis of Summer Roberts from The O.C. and its evolution from her teenage years to her early 20s.
The O.C., created by Josh Schwartz, is an early 2000s teen drama set in, you guessed it, Orange County, California. Specifically, Newport Beach… which is best described by Seth Cohen as “WASP-Y” (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant-y).
The first episode aired on August 5th, 2003, and had its final run on Feburary 22nd, 2007. The story begins when public defender, Sandy Cohen, takes in troubled teen, Ryan Atwood, from Chino, California. He adopts Ryan into his family consisting of his wife (Kirsten Cohen) and son (Seth Cohen) who, conveniently enough, happens to be the same age as Ryan! Off the bat, Ryan meets the pretty girl next door, Marissa Cooper. Throughout the four seasons of the show, you are introduced to “the core four” friend group, and thrown into the elite world of Newport Beach’s country club families, the lives of troubled rich kids, indie alt-rock bands and comic books via Seth Cohen, and how each of them grow from the high school into adulthood.
This show makes you wish you could walk into an Abercombie in the 2000s for the first time with shopping money your mom gave you ($20) to buy a fitted moose logo t-shirt and denim shorts that are two sizes too tight. Watching the surfing live stream on the righthand side of the store, you’re ready to hit the beaches of southern California.
Now that you’re all caught up, let’s talk all things Summer Roberts!
Summer Roberts, portrayed by Rachel Bilson, was introduced in the pilot episode as Marissa’s best friend. I learned that Summer’s character was meant to be temporary, but people on and off the show loved her performance so much, that Rachel became a regular cast member. Iconic. Summer spoke her mind constantly. Her character had one of the biggest developments throughout the show. It only makes sense that her style equally reflected her growth into her early adult years.
“An emblem for nascent feminist teenagers, who demonstrated that it was possible to be both incredibly well dressed and super smart at the same time.” - Rebecca Reid, GRAZIA
She perfectly perfected the cute, comfy, casual, cool-girl vibe through each outfit.
Summer’s priorities? Shopping, partying, and her friends.
In her first couple of episodes, she’s portrayed as the popular “mean” girl, contrasting Marissa’s sweet, girl next door personality. I put “mean” in parenthesis because TBH she was valid 99.99% of the time. She never actually bullied anyone, but wasn’t one to bring her guard down for just anyone. She just had standards! I’m a Summer defender (I am Summer).
Some of the initial outfits we see her in are mini skirts, bikini tops, and sometimes with a bejeweled belly button. It was the thing! It only makes sense, as the scenes she's primarily in for the first episodes are set at house parties or on the way to a beach party.
She loves a strapless dress! You will NEVER catch her with tan lines.
One of her most iconic looks is from season one, episode seven titled “The Escape,” where the core four take a trip to Tijuana on the last day of summer break. This episode gave us Marissa passed out in an alley and one of the best and most iconic outfits from Summer Roberts.
Her casual style and loungewear consisted of cute graphic tanks or t-shirts and flared tracksuit pants. One set she was seen loving was her yellow Juicy Couture tracksuit, as seen in multiple episodes.
In the early seasons, her formula for creating an outfit was fairly simple. Think tank top or blouse, miniskirt, heels, and a shoulder bag. You always need a shoulder bag.
More specifically, let’s dive into how a series of events in the show’s storyline impacted Summer’s sense of self and ultimately influenced her style.
Relationship with Seth Cohen
Top five best enemies to lovers, popular girl & nerd boy, he-fell-first-but-she-fell-harder tropes, I introduce to you… Seth Cohen and Summer Roberts.
Even when we get introduced to this potential slow-burn in season one, we can see elements of Summer’s outfits become adjusted to Seth’s lifestyle. This includes earth-tone palettes, knit fabrics, jeans, polo-style blouses, and cardigans integrating their way in slowly.
There is a shift in the color schemes we see within Summer’s wardrobe at this stage that follows into her college years and plays a significant role, symbolically, in her development.
College years
*Contains spoilers… but the show has been out for like 20 years. So don’t get mad at me!
Between moving across the country to Brown University, her dad working in Seattle, new family dynamics, and the death of Marissa, my girl was going through the trenches. Her sense of home in Newport was shaken as it wasn’t her home anymore. She once shared a Jack and Jill bathroom with Marissa (oh yeah, Julie Cooper married Neil Roberts in season three but then got divorced? But then Julie keeps the house and Taylor moves into Marissa’s old bedroom? This show is messy, but that’s the fun of it), so returning home was always hard.
In college, she got involved in student activist groups revolving around topics such as climate change and animal rights. Her social circles, funnily enough, reflect my college peers from on-campus environmental-related circles I’m in, even down to the style. When we see Summer in her freshman year of college, her style dramatically shifts. She traded in the mini skirts for cargo pants and wore more muted colors such as greens, greys, and browns. This change in style even impacts her hair. In previous seasons, her hair was always styled by blowouts, curls, braids, or hair scarves. But in her college/final season, her hair is always straight. I find this hilarious because as someone who has been curling her hair with overnight heatless curls for almost 3-4 years now, whenever I wear my hair straight for longer than a week, I have friends asking me if I’m doing okay (I’m usually not, check up on your heatless curl friends).
Obviously, she wasn’t doing alright. HER BFF JUST DIED.
Season four, episode four “The Metamorphosis” is one of my favorite Summer-centered episodes. Here, she goes to counseling for the first time to talk through her grief.
“I’ve changed a lot since I got to college. New friends, new interests, new clothes. But I think throwing myself into all these new things is just a way of avoiding dealing with what happened to my friend…” - Summer Roberts
Later in this episode, she comes “clean” to her friend about her true interests. She showcases her shoe collection, tabloid magazines, and hangs up a poster of The Devil Wears Prada. In this revelation of a scene, she’s wearing a red blouse, which represents more of the “old Summer,” and is bold compared to the outfits she has been wearing in the first four episodes of season four.
She can create a cost-benefit analysis chart of solar panel installments for her university and still slay. Duality! From watching the show at its completion this summer, I learned a lot from Summer Roberts on how to be a boss bitch and put together an outfit for any occasion. You go, girl!
Let me know your thoughts and any characters I should analyze next. 📺
XOXO
- Viv ❀
you’ve convinced me to watch this now. i wanna be summer’s friend