Kate Moss, Audrey Hepburn, Jane Birkin: all of these are socially sanctioned appropriately aspirational responses when asked to name your fashion muse. If I name-dropped one of those effortlessly well-dressed women as my own inspiration, though, I’d be lying: Tanya Turner, Footballers' Wives villainess extraordinaire and the undisputed First Lady of ITV’s fictional Premier League club Earls Park, is my one true style icon.
For those in need of a refresher, Footballers’ Wives was the worst-best show on ITV in the early-to-mid Noughties, and the chain-smoking, eternally scheming and perma-tanned Tanya was the best-worst thing about it. This was a woman unafraid to disguise the paternity of her child by dosing said child in fake tan (ethical implications be damned). Who says things like ‘I’ve decided there’s only one man for me… Charlie.’ Who brings new heights to the term maximalist dressing and wore Jane Norman like it was Dolce & Gabbana. Because Footballers’ Wives is yet to find a home on a (legal) streaming site, its disastrous but iconic fashion hasn’t been properly celebrated. So, crystal embellished glass of (neat) vodka in hand, here’s our sartorial tribute to Tanya and her woefully dressed frenemies…
1. Her match day outfits deserve their own Instagram account
There seemed to be more weirdly Dickensian catastrophes on Footballers’ Wives during its five-season run than actual Premier League fixtures (spontaneously combusting breast implants spring to mind…) When the writers did remember that they were ostensibly making a show about football, though, a match allowed Tanya to bring her unhinged sartorial ‘A’ game and assert her innate superiority over inferior WAGs (ie. Boring Donna from Bolton, a beige Colleen Rooney stand-in best described as an insult to northern women everywhere). Her endless wardrobe of spaghetti-strap slip dresses in dangerously flammable metallics looked Versace at a distance but Kookai close-up.
2. She pioneered the power bob
If the ‘Rachel’ cut was the effortless ‘90s cut we all aspired to, the ‘Tanya’ was the ‘00s hairdo we never quite asked our hairdresser for, but still ended up leaving the salon with all the same: chunky peroxide highlights, shoulder-skimming in length and feathered to perfection, it’s the sort of style that necessitated the buying of those terrifying gas-canister portable straighteners (to blitz any texture or volume into submission). She eventually did a ‘Posh’ and supplemented her shorter cut for a mass of increasingly bouffant hair extensions, but it’s this power bob that means we remember Tanya as the Anna Wintour of Earls Park. Sort of.
3. Her off-duty wardrobe knew no boundaries
For Tanya, a day ‘off’ usually involved industrial amounts of vodka and coke (not the soft drink) and lighting up endless cigarettes like a perma-tanned Holly Golightly. All this down time called for a. swathes of pastel pink athleisure, ideally in velour and b. endless knitted sleeveless roll-necks, best worn with boot cut trousers. In leather. If that all seems a bit pedestrian, a bit Next Directory, then bear in mind that she’d almost always wear the entirety of Argos’ Elizabeth Duke jewellery range over the turtleneck in question. Revolutionary.
4. Her wedding dress defies all conventions of taste
Disclaimer: no Footballers’ Wives wedding – scratch that, no TV wedding – will ever compare to the season one nuptials of Chardonnay and Kyle, which featured a Sleeping Beauty bridal tableau, a dress that’s best described as Cinderella meets Big Bird and, inexplicably, a child singing that time-honoured wedding classic, ‘Walking in the Air’ from The Snowman. Still, let’s take a moment to appreciate the first of Tanya’s three wedding dresses, worn for her vow renewal with Jason in season one. Worthy of a guest appearance on Katie and Peter: The Next Chapter, it’s Little Bo Peep by way of Ann Summers, with gold embellishment in the shape of high heeled shoes (glam). The Noughties were a truly wild ride. On a side note, all three of Tanya’s husbands end up dying in mysterious circumstances.
5. She kick-started the choker renaissance
I doubt that Bella Hadid, appropriator of ‘90s and ‘00s style par excellence, has ever heard of Footballers’ Wives and yet she owes our Tanya so much – especially in the field of choker appreciation. In the later series, no TT appearance was complete without her wearing some form of neckwear dripping in diamantés, hair extensions pulled back into a skyscraper pony. Nearly 15 years later, Bella has trademarked a version of this particular genre of glamour. Admittedly, it’s a far classier version, but still…
6. She was an animal print connoisseur to rival Pat Butcher
WAG or no WAG, animal print is a mainstay of many wardrobes, but no one could wear it with quite so much brassy appeal as Tanya. Her most iconic moment? When she turned up to a pool party in the same tiger print and diamanté monstrosity – complete with a fishtail train that’s also somehow pleated– as her love rival Amber, just to piss her off, pairing this nightmarish nighty of a dress with a single string of (more) diamantés and a GOLD CASIO WATCH.
Images courtesy of footballerswives.tv
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.