New Style Idea

HBO’s “Euphoria” returned with its second season Sunday and to much fanfare.

Emmy-winner Zendaya is back as teenage drug addict Rue as she navigates love, loss and addiction while going through highschool. The show, which first premiered in 2019, has become a pop culture phenomenon and its costumes are at its center of success. This season’s fashion has already kicked off with a bang.

Since the premiere, searches for specific looks worn by its leading characters saw a major uptick. And Maddy, played by Alexa Demie, led the pack.

In the New Year’s Eve episode, she wore an Akna Store black cutout dress to a house party with a pair of Amina Muaddi heels that laced up her leg. As a result, Love the Sales, a fashion e-commerce aggregator, saw an 890% increase in demand for ‘black cut-out dresses.’ It also reported a more than 125% rise in searches for ‘lace-up heels.’

Who are we question whether or not a teenager can afford $1,500 designer shoes? Either way, we are glad she did. The exact shoes Maddy wore in “Euphoria” are the Amina Muaddi x AWGE “LSD” satin gladiator sandals with crystal-embellished accents and wrap-around self-tie straps.

Last year, FN caught up with costume designer Heidi Bivens who said she was “given permission to sort of go off page and create our own reality that is the world of the show.”

She added, “The world of ‘Euphoria’ is rooted in reality with a lot of the issues that the teens are experiencing.  My challenge was to find a balance between pushing the style to hopefully be aspirational and exciting visually while [maintaining] the storytelling and developing characters, but also so that it wasn’t distracting in a way that took you out of the story.”

“Euphoria” also stars Hunter Schafer, Nika King, Eric Dane, Angus Cloud, Jacob Elordi, Algee Smith, Sydney Sweeney, Barbie Ferreira, Maude Apatow, Javon Walton, Dominic Fike, Storm Reid and Austin Abrams.

To see Alexa Demie’s off-screen style, click through the gallery.