United Styles Of Tara

However, it is the perfect time to tell you a little bit about a TV show I have been getting into lately: United States of Tara created by Diablo Cody and starring Toni Collette & John Corbett. The premise of the show being that Tara (Toni Collette) has a dissociative identity disorder and has to juggle her family life and her multiple alters. It is a comedy show with moments of extreme darkness inherent to the subject broached.

One of the things I find interesting is how suddenly Toni Collette has stopped being “that girl from Muriel’s wedding” in my eyes and gets to star in a show that lets her showcase her whole acting repertoire.

The reason why I wanted to write about this show today is because it is also interesting style wise. Not so much because the costumes are amazing but because clothes play a real part in portraying the various alters. There is Buck (biker boots, boyfriend jeans, vests), Alice (50s dresses, apron, red lipstick), T (bodycon, shorts, g-strings) and of course Tara (everyday casual style). They all have very distinctive styles that gives us visual clues as to which alter ego has taken over. 

To some extent, when it comes to style, we all have multiple personalities, we put on clothes to express the way we feel and who we want to be at a given point in time. For me it generally goes from super casual to glamourous via preppy, girly, you name it. The same way Tara deals with the hardships of her life by hiding behind various alters, we all use clothes as a way to disguise ourselves, play the part, fit in, be someone else, even if just for a little while.