On July 5, 1990, NBC introduced viewers to a girl named Blossom Russo, soon to become an important and influential television character. It was on that date that the pilot for Blossom aired; however, when the show was picked up as a midseason replacement in January 1991, her family looked considerably different. She went from having a mother and father on the brink of divorce to simply having a hip single dad who was caring for her and her two brothers — one a recovering addict and the other a young, dumb hunk whose catchphrase was “Whoa.”
We covered the family dynamics and the brave, bold storytelling of Blossom earlier this year, when we spoke to creator Don Reo, as well as Mayim Bialik and most of her television family. And yet there is so much more to Blossom than just the way the character and the actress who played her inspired and affected girls across the country at a time when role models were mostly superficial. Behind Blossom Russo was the woman responsible for cultivating a sense of style that was unlike anything else on TV at that time: Sherry Thompson, Blossom‘s costume designer.
When Reo gave Thompson the job, she had already briefly worked with Bialik on a previous series. As with Michael Stoyanov (Blossom’s older brother, Anthony Russo) and Ted Wass (Blossom’s father, Nick), the actress had some influence in who she’d be working with on her new series. However, Reo made the designer’s job as simple as it was important by giving her one instruction.
“He just said, ‘Do whatever you want. We want people to tune in to see what the girls are wearing,’ and nobody ever says that,” Thompson laughs. “Honestly, I just worked with Mayim, and her mom was at every fitting and had a lot to say about all aspects of the show, but particularly the wardrobe. I’m pretty sure I took photographs, Polaroids at the time, and showed them to Judy [Allison], Don’s wife, just so they’d know. Back in the day there was such a thing as a dress rehearsal for a sitcom, which they never do anymore, so that people could see not only the clothes but also the shots, fix the dialogue, and all that stuff before they actually taped it. That’s when I saw how the clothes worked on camera and could make any needed changes.”
Thompson shared some of her old Polaroids with us, including the above shots of Bialik and Jenna Von Oy from the season two episode “Expectations.” In it, the Russo family react strangely to Nick’s latest girlfriend, and the episode includes a biker fantasy. That was part of the fun of Blossom: Every episode tried to be a little different from the typical sitcom, be it via special guests like Will Smith or Neil Patrick Harris, whom Reo tells us both helped the show survive early on while generally making it more fun, or because the characters wore wild and outrageous costumes.
“The most fun episode was the one where it was a parody of Madonna’s [documentary], Truth or Dare,” Thompson recalls. “I got to design all the outfits and a lot of girls who came every week to the show dressed like Blossom, we actually used them as extras, as the screaming fans, and we made t-shirts for them with a picture of Blossom on it.”
It all started with Bialik, though, and that includes the show’s opening credits, which originally featured Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative” before switching to Dr. John’s “My Opinionation.” To those songs she danced like no one was watching while wearing outfits that basically made no sense. Fans didn’t care, because they loved her unique style that came from a combination of the actress’s originality and Thompson’s remarkable attention to detail.
“Designing the opening credits in the first season was fun. [Mayim] does a somersault in a skirt made out of ties,” Thompson explains. “Over the years she did wear quite a few hats, but not every episode, sometimes in one quick scene. I decorated them all myself. I started as a milliner so I learned about hats at the very beginning of my career, so I was able to use some of those skills on Blossom. It’s funny and that was totally random.”
Obviously the hats became a huge part of the influence that Blossom played on fashion at the time. At one point there was even a clothing line based on the series, but that sort of impact was never Thompson’s intent. It just happened. “I wasn’t studying costuming or fashion or anything like that,” she says of the process she used to select Bialik’s clothes. She worked hand-in-hand with the young actress to find real looks that not only defined the character, but also helped create and exude personal confidence. Bialik and Thompson were so close that the young star even drew thank-you notes for the designer.
“I always say all wardrobe fittings are a collaboration with the actor to design the character,” Thompson explains. “This is true even with name actors I’ve worked with, they love trying on the clothes and looking in the mirror, they change their body language and become the character. It really, really helps them. I have a big collection of stuff of my own that I’d bring in and combine with things I bought, and cut up and made into something else to make her outfits. And [Mayim] liked it, she always had this little giggle that she did, it was so cute.”
In some cases, Thompson struck gold by simply tinkering with little things like adding a sunflower to one of Bialik’s hats, and they’d go with whatever looked and felt right, she says. The designer and star weren’t even aware that they were making such an impact in everyday fashion, since they didn’t have the internet.
“I had no idea that kind of thing could happen,” Thompson says of the spreading popularity of the show’s fashion at the time. “I was amazed. I didn’t really realize how teenagers flock to that kind of stuff. It was a complete surprise. It was very gratifying, of course, and it was fun, because by the time the second season came around there were actually girls that would come around, because we filmed in front of a live audience, they’d come. There would be a whole section of girls dressed in hats and vests, copying the look of the show. It was pretty cute.”
“The hat thing was definitely a thing. I don’t know, I didn’t go out much,” Bialik laughs. “I did the show then I went to college. I see people now dressing like what my character dressed like, floral dresses and army boots and things like that. What I think is interesting is 35-year-old women now dress the way I did when I was 15 on television. That’s just a reflection of our fascination with youth, I suppose. Women weren’t dressing the way teenagers did in 1990. Teenagers dressed that way and women wore smart business suits with shoulder pads.”
As Reo and Bialik told us of the show’s conception and casting the star, part of what made the actress so special was that she didn’t look like a typical TV actress. She was unique, an actual girl next door, and that was certainly why she was electrifying to teen girls across the country. If she could be on TV, they could be on TV, and if Blossom Russo was dealing with her period or substance abuse or even sexual assault, then they had someone they could relate with. But not everyone was immediately struck by Bialik’s appeal, as she still had some obstacles to clear.
Bialik may have been oblivious to her popularity, but she still thought it would be cool to be a magazine’s cover model. After all, this was at a time when every teen heartthrob actor and actress wound up on the covers of magazines like Tiger Beat and Seventeen, so if the opportunity came calling, Bialik was not going to turn it down.
“Interestingly, Seventeen, we couldn’t score a cover,” Bialik reveals. “I was too unusual looking. Not all-American enough. We did a fantastic photo shoot with them when I was about 17-years-old and they kind of did a real classy look for me, plaid kilts were in then and we did it with knee-high riding boots, very sleek with straightened hair, really classy, glossy makeup. It was a beautiful photo shoot but we could not score the cover. Just too unusual for America. And I don’t think that that’s true now. Now you do see women of other shapes, sizes, colors, dimensions of noses. But for the most part it’s still not popular to look the way I look.”
The fact remained everyone was taking notice of this peculiar girl and her incredibly strange and unique fashion sense. She may not have scored that cover, but she ended up on the cover of Sassy in 1992 (above), and Bialik also appeared on plenty of other magazines’ pages.
“There was an article and a fantastic photoshoot in Us, which at the time was a smaller magazine but was still a very big deal,” she tells us. “The title was ‘Queen of Teens’ and they did a beautiful photoshoot at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in all vintage bathing suits and really high glamour. I loved that. I did a fashion shoot for Elle. I’d say that was kind of the biggest hit I ever got in my career, publicity-wise. It was in one of their small pages, it wasn’t a feature or anything, but they also did a beautiful photo shoot and that was a really big deal to be featured in a grown-up magazine as opposed to just being thought of as a teenager.”
Today she’s a star of The Big Bang Theory, which is one of the most successful and popular shows in TV history. However, even with all of her years in show business, Bialik admits that she’s still excited about the idea of being in a magazine, particularly one publication. “I’m a grown up but I’m on a sitcom, which is kind of like being treated like a teenager,” she laughs. “I always wanted to be in Vanity Fair. That’s still one of my bucket list things for my career is to be featured in any way, even the corner, of any page on Vanity Fair.”
Never say never, even for a style spread. After all, fashion is cyclical and people are always suckers for vintage styles. While not everything about Blossom was unique to the character in terms of fashion, the show’s biggest contribution to ‘90s style was that it made certain looks and brands available to suburban America, as small-town girls had probably never seen Dr. Martens boots, let alone worn them with floral dresses. That’s why Thompson, whose recent credits include 7th Heaven and The Secret Life of the American Teenager, isn’t surprised to see some familiar looks when she stops into stores today.
“Fashion goes around and every 20 years or so things recirculate. I also think some of the girls who really glommed onto the look that Blossom had, perhaps they pursued their interest in fashion. Subconsciously they’re regurgitating it, I don’t know,” she laughs. “When I go in Free People and Anthropologie I see a lot of stuff that I would have been able to use on Blossom now.”
