Created by Darren Star, the featherlight Netflix series Emily in Paris unsurprisingly has plenty in common with Star's earlier iconic show Sex and the City. From the annoying protagonist, to the obsession with the City of Light, to the fashion – SATC costume designer Patricia Field worked on the first two seasons of Emily – the two shows share many of the same themes. And this season, Emily in Paris takes another page out from its forebear, as it addresses sexual harassment in the fashion world.
Many years before either Emily in Paris or, indeed, the #MeToo movement, SATC protagonist Carrie Bradshaw was sexually harassed at the Vogue HQ. The 2002 season four episode of Sex and the City saw the columnist and shoe aficionado ascend to the famous fashion closet in Vogue's hallowed halls, where she stumbled upon the much-coveted supposed “urban shoe myth” – Manolo Blahnik Mary Janes. While there, she also stumbled upon her supposed mentor, Julian (Ron Rifkin), in his underwear, calling her adorable while suggestively snapping the band of some Versace briefs he just happened to be trying on. “You're old enough to be my father,” she gasps, while Julian retorts with a dig about her having issues with men. “Show some respect. This is Vogue”, Carrie says dismissively, toeing the line in her Mary Jane pumps between calling Julian out, wanting to preserve her position at Vogue,and preventing further abuse.This 2002 episode aired long before the popularisation of the #MeToo movement, but now, a similar scene occurs in the fourth season of Emily in Paris, which dropped its first batch of five episodes last week, with the second instalment set to air on 12 September. It's notable because while there have been a few documentaries made in recent years that have highlighted allegations of sexual misconduct in the fashion industry – such as Scouting for Girls, Victoria's Secret: Angels & Demons and White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch – there has been surprisingly little in the way of mainstream fictional representations.
If you're not one of the 58 million households who streamed the fluffy series when it first dropped in 2020, here's a quick rundown: the titular Emily Cooper (Lily Collins) is transferred from Chicago to French marketing firm Savoir after her boss, who was supposed take the job, discovers she's pregnant. Emily isn't prepared for this opportunity in the slightest, and the fact that she doesn't know French, coupled with her chipper, workaholic US attitude immediately riles her laissez-faire French colleagues, including head of Savoir, the chic, intimidating Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu), and her underlings, Julien (Samuel Arnold) and Luc (Bruno Gouery).Things aren't much better for Emily at home, either, as she becomes embroiled in a love triangle with her neighbour, Gabriel (Lucas Bravo), and her new friend Camille (Camille Razat), Gabriel's ex. Emily's saving grace is fellow fish out of water, Mindy (Ashley Park), an Asian-American heiress and aspiring singer.
In the four seasons since, Emily has managed to bring her icy colleagues around to her through sheer determination – though that apparently hasn't included becoming fluent in their mother tongue nor a raise necessitating moving out of Mindy's studio apartment. Or maybe Emily just spent it on clothes…Buddy system
Now, in the new series, in a scene reminiscent of Carrie's fashion-closet experience, Mindy is delighted to be allowed to rifle through the workplace wardrobe of luxury fashion conglomerate, JVMA, which is owned by her fiancé Nicolas de Léon's father Louis de Léon. When two female employees encounter her trying on various archival outfits, they admonish Mindy – but not for the reason she thinks. “You need a buddy”, one of them tells her, with Mindy initially mistaking this as an offer for someone to carry her haul.
Later, relaying the information to Emily, Mindy is informed that the buddy system was created by JVMA's female employees because Louis insists they try on the clothes they've picked out in front of him. If they don't, they're deemed fashion philistines, and can therefore never climb up the ladder in the company. It is, in other words, a fashion version of the casting couch.
— CutC by BBC.com
