In the fourth episode of The Perfect Couple – the soapy Netflix murder mystery that takes place on the island of Nantucket – Dakota Fanning’s character, the snobby Abby Winbury, has some choice words about a revealing Missoni dress worn by Meghann Fahy’s Merritt Monaco. “That is not a dress,” she smirks. “She’s wearing a bathing suit.
” (Abby’s wearing a demure, ankle-skimming maxi.) Fanning, with one swipe at an outfit, confirms to the viewer what the show has been hammering home for the past three episodes: Merritt isn’t one of them. The them , in this case, is old-money WASP.
And in the setting of the show – a Monomoy mansion owned by the wealthy Winbury family – is a nest of them: people whose families have been vacationing in the exclusive enclave for generations, belonging to the same country clubs and attending the same private schools. You’ve heard it before: the clothes make the man. Yet, in The Perfect Couple and pop culture, it’s never felt more relevant.
Let’s dissect. The most obvious outsider is Merritt , the mistress of family patriarch Tag Winbury. That Missoni dress – which she wears through pretty much the entire series – is, sure, expensive.
Yet, it’s not the right kind of expensive. It looks like something someone would wear amid Don Julio 1942-popping partiers at a Miami pool rather than among the New England country-club set. There’s a general ingrained expectation of reserve in these places; such institutions often.