When I was younger, sick days home from school meant one thing and one thing only: I got to spend the day with my caretaker. Not my mother or my family's housekeeper, but my nanny—the Nanny, the irrepressible sitcom character Fran Fine who was memorably brought to life by the actress Fran Drescher for six seasons in the '90s. I don't remember the show's major plot points, but the clothes? I remember the clothes, a kaleidoscope of animal prints, upbeat colors, and more joie de vivre in a single miniskirt than I thought possible. I wasn't the only one whose mind was blown—it was the costume design by Brenda Cooper that earned The Nanny its only Emmy, and today the show remains a social media darling.
Now, 22 years after it went off the air, The Nanny is finally available to stream (on HBO Max) and not a minute too soon. After a year of sweatpants with zero joie de vivre, Fran is a Glade Plug-in of sartorial effervescence.
"She kind of defibrillated us into seeing sitcom characters as truly expressive and quirky dressers," says Jill Kargman, the creator of the TV series Odd Man Out. "It's especially vital now to be jolted back into her world of technicolor fabulosity." Drescher, who is as well known for her character as she is for her charity, Cancer Schmancer, put it like this to T&C: "Today more than ever we need to bust out of style dictums and follow our own truth. Do what makes your heart sing!"
In her debut on CBS in 1993, Miss Fine stumbles into the home of a recently widowed British Broadway producer—Mistah Sheffield—and, like an outer borough Mary Poppins, charms his household. Hijinks ensue. What caught my eye was that Fran and her extended family (Hi, Grandma Yetta) dressed like no one else on television. It was the grungy era of Jerry Seinfeld and Roseanne Barr, and the flashy girl from Flushing strolled on in head-to-toe designer: Todd Oldham, Isaac Mizrahi, and Christian Lacroix.
"She was decked out in Moschino and Bob Mackie at a time when everyone wanted to look like Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy," says Chelsea Fairless, co-curator of the popular Instagram account @EveryOutfitOnSATC. For Cooper (whose new book, The Silhouette Solution, is out in December), the show's sweet spot was a high-low mix:"The perfect opportunity to use fashion, wit, and humor to elevate the comedy in a sexy but appropriate way."
Designers, of course, immediately got the character. "No matter what she wore," Mizrahi says, "you never noticed the clothes more than you noticed her." By making a statement in a world of snoozy neutrals, Fran Fine was also pushing cultural boundaries in subtler ways. "Most shows were and are skewed to the broader American public and a general WASP uniform," Kargman says. "Even if Fran reinforced a couple of stereotypes about being loud and flashy, I appreciated the chutzpah she injected into TV."
With her big hair and trademark laugh, Fran always understood the assignment and she showed me that a houndstooth print mini and matching tweed jacket was, if not always the right choice, then at least worth trotting out every now and then.
In the tony enclave where I was raised, prep was the perpetual MO. Yet each episode of The Nanny was an unapologetically perky fashion seminar brimming with frisky frocks and headbands (remember the piano dress?) racetrack prints, and miles and miles of sequins.
Perhaps that's Fran's most enduring style lesson: the conviction of individual taste. The Polonius of Queens remained true to herself, a smidge gaudy but defiant in her sequined Stephen Sprouse miniskirt suit. Now the real challenge is finding one just like it.
Shop Fran Fine's Style
Intermix Coco Tweed Mini Skirt
Balmain Button-detailed two-tone crepe mini dress
Balmain Button-embellished grain de poudre wool mini dress
AZ Factory MyBody stretch-knit mini dress
Rowen Rose Faux leather-trimmed checked tweed mini dress
8 Other Reasons Super Sleek Headband
As the deputy digital lifestyle director at Town & Country, Roxanne Adamiyatt covers fashion, beauty, wellness, design and travel.
