Precisely what makes the costumes of Severance so remarkable is how unremarkable they are. The navy two-piece suit that Mark S (Adam Scott) wears while heading up the Macrodata Refinement department of Lumon Industries was envisioned by the show’s costume designer, Sarah Edwards, to be “timeless”. Not so much as an investment piece built to withstand the ebb and flow of trends. As in existing outside the concept of time.

Edwards’ answer was a dress code that leant heavily on that of IBM in the early 1960s, drawing from the limited palette of Severance’s overall aesthetic to create corporate attire that is entirely soulless – and somehow compelling for that fact. (It helps that Edwards had Brioni to turn her blueprint into an actual physical blue suit.)

“We had this idea that it’s cult-like, Lumon,” Edwards told Vogue. “They’re oppressed by their clothing.”

“It started as a somewhat rebellious look in the early 2000s, but has since become the default,” Die! Workwear’s Derek Guy says of this “corporatecore” look. “It’s pretty much the mainstream form of tailoring nowadays – short jacket, low-rise trousers, slim-fit pants.” This sort of flip of identity is something viewers of Severance have had to get used to.

It’s one thing to mourn the loss of someone, but what about the things they leave behind? After the – look away now if you’re yet to watch this – shock dispatch of Pedro Pascal’s Joel Miller early on in the second season of The Last Of Us, his wardrobe is the first place his erstwhile charge Ellie goes for comfort. In particular, into the arms of his trademark trucker jacket.

“Someone had this idea that Ellie should smell Joel’s jacket,” Neil Druckmann, who oversaw the production of the game and co-created the TV adaptation, told the HBO show’s companion podcast. “It was so powerful because there’s something about the sense of smell that just immediately triggers your memory.”

“Your selfhood is woven into the fabric of every garment you wear,” says the fashion psychologist Shakaila Forbes-Bell, host of The Wearapy Show. Studies show that the medial prefrontal cortex, the area of our brains that activates whenever we think of ourselves, also fires up when we think about our clothes. An item of clothing that reminds us of someone who is gone can be “a nostalgia-inducing experience that has been found to boost self-esteem, optimism, social connection, physical comfort and decrease loneliness,” Forbes-Bell says.

Those with a Joel-shaped hole in their hearts – or wardrobes – know how to fill it.

Award-winning actor, writer, modern style icon… Colman Domingo has worn many hats in his time (not to mention that of most-influential person, according to Time magazine). But never more in one project than those showcased in The Four Seasons. So, while she should’ve been watching the Netflix series, Esquire deputy editor Miranda Collinge admits that she found herself, well, distracted.

“I confess that I didn’t think the show was amazing, which is probably why my thoughts were wandering to his headgear in the first place,” she says. “But if you’re not fully engaged by the drama, it’s nice to have something else to look at and think about, even if that something else is hats.”

Collinge says Domingo, the current Esquire cover star, “is someone who can pull off a lot, style-wise, but also makes great choices in what he wears. He’s bold without being overly flamboyant, and he’s really learnt what works for him.”

But which headgear was top of the pile? “My hierarchy of Colman Domingo’s hats in the show is entirely related to how difficult they are to pull off, and therefore what level of props are due to him for being able to do so,” Collinge says. “The suede baseball cap? Sure, but not such a stretch. The black fluffy ambassador’s hat that sits several inches above his head? Now we’re talking!”

“It took me almost six and a half months to smile,” Walton Goggins told us earlier this year of his recovery after playing Rick Hatchett, the most morose tourist of The White Lotus’ third season. But it wasn’t just a scowl that he wore for the role. Contrary to his despondent demeanour, the character’s signature article of clothing was perhaps one of the most ebullient of a man’s wardrobes: the aloha shirt.

“He was very much a mess – and the shirt worked weirdly along with that,” says Lauren Cochrane, senior fashion writer for The Guardian and author of The Ten. “It felt ironic because he was always such a grouch (to put it mildly).”

While Rick could do with working on his emotional intelligence, sartorially at least we could all learn a thing or two from him. “In terms of wearing one, I liked the crumpled way he wore his – it makes it much less frat boy,” Cochrane says of the short-sleeved patterned shirt. “And good to team it with trousers rather than shorts. Maybe with a sandal as a concession to summer.”

“We looked at so many different versions of looks of what is an archetype of a detective, and we realised that there is always a gimmick with their costume,” the costume designer Lyn Paolo said this year when explaining the outfit worn by Cordelia Cupp, the meticulous, bird-watching detective at the heart of Netflix’s White House-set whodunnit, The Residence.

From the 1970s vibes of Poker Face to the textured tailoring and belt and suspenders of Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out series, this observation holds up. Cochrane picks up this thread, pointing to her favourite TV detective, Columbo. “The trench coat is such a great signature, and also plot point,” she says. “More recently, I do think Saga Norén from The Bridge looked good in a Scandi sort of way.”

However, the OG fictional sleuth whose fingerprints are all over Cupp’s look – and arguably every investigator in his wake – is indubitably Sherlock Holmes. “His look has been so influential that it’s become integral to detective style,” Cochrane says.

“I thought about Basil Rathbone, the original British Sherlock Holmes from the 1930s movies,” Paolo confessed. “He wore a deerstalker and a cape, and he was always [dressed] in British hunting tweeds. When I did all this research on hunting jackets, you can’t help but find all this information about the Royal Family… You have the padded shoulder for firing your gun and other things of that nature.”

As for bringing the look into your civilian wardrobe? “It’s tricky not for it to look like cosplay, to be honest,” Cochrane says. It goes without saying it is all about the details. “I like the idea of a tweedy coat with different trousers – jeans or something more casual. It could also work as outerwear, with a different outfit underneath. I think contrast is good and less is more. Also, no deerstalkers.” Elementary.

Meanwhile, on Neverland, the remote, tropical island that features in Alien: Earth, Boy Kavalier (played by Samuel Blenkin) is flouncing around like he owns the place. Turns out he does, along with a fifth of the planet, and he has designs on much of the territory – and extraterrestrial fauna and flora – beyond it, too.

“Suttirat Anne Larlarb, Alien: Earth’s costume designer, puts Boy K in relaxed silhouettes in natural fabrics that drift somewhere between artisanal fashion and folkish sleepwear,” writes the fashion journalist Ashley Ogawa Clarke. He sees the dress code of 2120’s trillionaires, the year Noah Hawley’s extension of the Alien universe is set, as being a quantum leap on from the tech-bro hoodies of today – billowy Japanese-influenced luxury loungewear for “disruptors who exist much higher up the food chain”.

But that’s not all. “The most notable thing about Boy Kavalier’s outfits is that he doesn’t wear shoes,” Ogawa Clarke reports, a power move that is only possible “when you never have to step on the dirty outdoor ground, but float from pristine hotel lobby to private plane like a modern-day Galadriel”.

In the boy genius’ mind at least, he’s not just the cat’s pyjamas, he’s the top-most dog. (Although several species, both alien and synthetic, might have something to say about that.)

While the American series had its moments – although, truth be told, our attention wavered once Bob the Drag Queen was banished – the British version of The Celebrity Traitors offered perhaps the apex of the murder-mystery reality quiz format. And the breakout star of the BBC series was its eventual winner, the comedian and chat-show host Alan Carr.

Carr’s journey from hot mess to cold-blooded killer provided a narrative arc to rival Breaking Bad. And while there were other key sartorial moments – Jonathan Ross’ mobster-boss funeral attire and Toad of Toad Hall regalia, Mark Bonnar’s dreamy knitwear, Carr himself attesting that he wasn’t a traitor while wearing a Gucci track jacket emblazoned with snake motifs – the most iconic item of clothing here was the Traitors’ cloak itself.

Forbes-Bell says that while the findings of 1971’s infamous Stanford Prison Experiment have since been “heavily criticised”, there are psychological studies that demonstrate how a change of clothes (read: slipping on a Traitors’ cloak) can in turn change our behaviour.

“A 1976 Halloween study found that children who wore costumes that masked their identities and were part of a group were more likely to take extra candy when they believed they were not being observed, illustrating the effects of anonymity and group influence on de-individuation,” Forbes-Bell says. Meanwhile, “a 2017 study found that when individuals put on police uniforms, they displayed attentional biases against individuals wearing hoodies.” Even if they were 100 per cent faithful.