one of my fav dynamics that i like teasing out when i rewatch early scenes from s02 for giffing purposes is how syd and carmen dress, and how their dress play off each other and how they as characters (esp on carm's side, since he has an interest in designing clothes) appreciate what the other wears.
now i know nothing about clothes and irl i just wear what fits over my boobs, but i feel like even when we see him in just dickies and birkenstocks and an expensive t-shirt under a sweater, carm values quality and make; and so even when he dresses casually, he dresses with care and attention, and he knows the particular details of every piece (and he thinks of his clothes like that, as "pieces") he wears--the material, how and where it was made, why it was made like that, the history of the piece of clothing, who made it, and where and how it exists in its cultural context. you know how cyborgs in movies see things--stay with me--like in the terminator from the cyborg's pov it sees a whole bunch of info on the screen when it looks at something? i feel like carm is like that when he looks at people re: their dress/sartorial choices. when he sees richie in track pants and beat up jordans and a beef t-shirt, he knows where mikey got those t-shirts printed, he knows the year and name of the jordans, he knows the entire history of track suits and the type of person in his neighborhood who wears them, and he knows what all that information says about richie socially and culturally. when richie first walks in in a suit, he knows who made that suit. he knows where ebra and sweeps get all their fun, funky shirts. he knows if nat gets her workwear at a department store or at some little boutique.
and so when syd walks in that first day wearing her thom browne shirt, and thom browne is the designer whose pants he was drawing when he was in high school, and who he's become close enough work associates with to ask him a special favor to make a custom jacket for his cdc, he immediately clocks a whole bunch of shit about her even before he looks at her resume. he knows she's wearing thom browne. he knows she's wearing his favorite designer.
(omg, the way the whole s02 thom browne reveal re-casts their meeting--not only did syd already "know" him because he'd made the best meal of her life, she was wearing something made by his favorite designer--another way they are connected even before ever officially meeting. aka 'before you came into my life i missed you so bad.' he was drawing those pants in high school, discovers some other guy was already doing what he thought of doing, admires and becomes professionally close to that guy, and then syd walks into his life wearing clothes he's been obsessed with since he was a teen. HELLO????? if not fate, then something very close to it.) not only that, but in addition to all the ways he and syd immediately form a unit in contrast to everyone else at the beef (the michelin pedigrees, the blue aprons, wanting a different system for the place, etc.) they are the only ones wearing fancy ass shirts.
now, one of the more subtle but delicious things about s02 is that with the move away from being in a professional kitchen every day, we get to see how syd dresses casually. in s01 she had all her beautiful signature scarves and bandanas, her pleated pants, her birkenstocks, and her white button downs with either embroidery or a little pop of red on the collar or sleeves. and of course she had her little green puffer with the detachable hood, which she continues to wear in s02. we also got just a bit of her home-wear: that little fitted button down with the landscape print on it; in her scene with marcus, when she's wearing her jazz on the run t-shirt (which inspired a fic) and her sweatshirt all flirtily hanging off her arms.
we know from the costume designer that syd wears her parents' old clothes:
Sydney wearing a Million Women March T-shirt is not her buying it from Round Two or eBay like we did. She got that from her mom. That’s something that her mom wore that she’s holding on to. That Bulls T-shirt, she’s probably found in her dad’s closet and kept wearing it.
and just that in itself is such an interesting character insight that contrasts her with carmen: it throws into relief how much love is in syd's little family, that she would wear her mom and dad's old shirts. carmen would never wear his dad's old clothes, because there is a painful distance between him and his as-yet-undefined absent father. the similarity in them comes with loss--syd wears her dead mom's old clothes, and in s01 carm asks nat to bring him the jacket that mikey gave him (is it fanon that that's the jacket he wears all the time? or was that a jean jacket he sold to get money to help run the beef?).
in s02 syd wears white overalls, pink cords, bulky sweatshirts, relaxed fit high waisted jeans, baggy graphic t-shirts, a long striped button down over-shirt, chunky shoes; and a threadbare, ratty old t-shirt under her old stained chef's coat that is then covered with the new designer chef's coat carm gifts her.
i feel like syd's taste in clothes is about comfort and self expression in a way that's different from carm's. comfort and self expression for carm mean wearing well made casual clothes that speak to/with the mythology of the american working class man--his clothes project easy, classic, 'all-american' masculinity, but ironically nothing about his clothes are easy, at least not in 2022/23. syd's comfort is a lot more local and specific to her own history, as opposed to a history of fashion and design--she finds comfort in her family, in chicago, in her mother's politics. she's in many ways "girly" as opposed to feminine--consider the difference between overalls and a romper; consider how she had her name stitched into her shirt, the way kids in grade school have their names stitched into the labels of their shirts. it's not infantilizing so much as it is youthful and playful, which i think is so important to have for syd, because so rarely is "playful" something people would call her, since she's the one who heads the brigade, and she's the one who gets all the shit done in all carm's flagrant disappearances; she's the one who gets in the way (in s01) of richie's fun. "youthful" is important too, cause while it denotes youth, it doesn't necessarily mean "green," that characteristic that haunts her, or "a kid," which richie uses to undermine her authority in s01.
what i'm getting at is i think carm likes the way syd dresses. he likes what her clothes say about her, and he likes that her clothes reflect what he likes about her--that she's fun and inventive, that her family isn't fucked up like his (i have suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch high hopes for carm and emmanuel interactions, you don't understand; everyone's like 'oh syd's a berzatto' NO carm is an adamu, he wants in on what syd and her dad have), that she so comfortably lives in chicago, the place he worked so hard to escape but finds himself in; just like her food is one way to connect and read and get close to her, her clothes are, too, and (cause he's a freak) they're a way he can read her without exposing too much of just how much he wants to be close to her.
ALSO!!! he writes himself into her sartorial history. clothes mean so much to carmen, both artistically (he wanted to design them ) and personally (he collects denim and mikey left him shit). here i've posited that clothes are one of the fundamental ways he interacts with the world and people. for syd clothes are how she maintains closeness with her family and her city. even on top of the intimacy of gifting someone clothes, on top of the intimacy of gifting someone something custom made that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world, with syd and carm is the added intimacy that he sees everything she does with her clothes re: her family, and he writes himself into that. now syd wears clothes passed down from her mom and given to her by carm. whatever confidence and comfort she gets from her mom's shirts, carm was like "i want to give you confidence and comfort, too. here's a gift."
