Bonnie’s wardrobe

One of the things that drives me insane about Bonnie’s wardrobe in the early seasons is that it doesn’t tell me much about her. It never adds to her character like the others did.

Caroline was always in short dresses. Occasionally she wore jeans but it was always something that was clearly meant to be fashionable. Her clothes matched her personality which at the time meant to be bitch, but was insecure and someone who cared too much about her appearance and as such her wardrobe matched that.

Elena was always wearing “girl next door” clothes which is a weird classification that in of itself, but she wore jeans and converse and a solid color shirt. Very plain, it was almost modeled after Clark Kent where they always tried to keep him in primary colors. What that told me is that she was always meant to be the self-insert protagonist. There wasn’t much to her wardrobe because there was never meant to be much to her character beyond being “relatable” so that anyone could vicariously live through her. But either way it matched her.

However Bonnie, her wardrobe was always supposed to be eccentric. Her clothes were always supposed to be a little off, but a little off in a hippie sense, not wearing Caroline and Elena’s hand-me-downs way and it drives me insane that they rarely are off in that way. That’s what gets me about her wardrobe being bad, it’s not that she has the worst clothes and hair, it’s that no thought was given when they were coming up with it. They mostly just put her in the same clothes as everyone else.

In the books she wore interesting pieces and was very spiritual, in that she beleived in the witch stuff. There was very little skepticism and that was probably one of the first ways they cut down her character. You could tell they tried to add some BoHo looks but they never quite followed through. Most of the time seasons 1-4 she was either dressed in frumpy sweaters or exactly the same as Elena. She didn’t have much individuality in her wardrobe which makes when Caroline gives her Damon’s (Emily’s) necklace in season 1 because she knows it’s her style, make no sense because by that point Bonnie doesn’t have a style, or distinct look. She doesn’t wear anything that’s hers.

Unless it was a decade dance she was mostly in jeans and a solid color. Occasionally dress, but otherwise pretty basic, no real interesting prints like her character suggest she should. She doesn’t get any kind of distinct style until about season 5 which you can tell is when they started letting Kat have more influence over her wardrobe, noted by the haircut and the fact that she’s wearing clothes that were completely different from the previous ones. This change could be due to college, as they did up all of the girls’ wardrobe, but also note that they still had Bonnie mostly dressing like Elena as well, until she gets to 1994 at which point I think Kat had complete control over her wardrobe as she has a lot of nostalgia for the 90s and Plec didn’t have much investment in her character at the time. (It took that season for Plec to notice the potential of Bonnie and even then still squandered it).

We know that her character doesn’t get better clothes until after she gets “value” by Elena leaving and befriending Damon, but I’m willing to bet that it’s also because Plec didn’t care enough about how Bonnie dressed and just gave Kat free range as well which while was a benefit on the end, it says just how much thought was put into her character in general and the fact that the only person who had any investment in Bonnie was Kat.