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In 2015, Drea de Matteo’s East Village apartment on the corner of St. Marks Place and 1st Ave. went up in flames after a gas explosion set off in the adjacent building. Three buildings on the block, including de Matteo’s, were reduced to rubble by the next morning, and the actor, most famous for her role as the beloved Adriana la Cerva in “The Sopranos,” was only able to salvage a few of her most prized possessions. Among them? The iconic tiger-print jumpsuit Adriana wears only moments before her tragic demise in the HBO series.
“The best Adriana outfit is always gonna be that trashy tiger suit,” De Matteo tells me over the phone. “I wore it last Halloween. I found it. I can’t believe I found it. We thought it burned in the fire.”
“But it’s still the worst camel toe of all time,” she continues, laughing. “After I wore it, I was like ‘Guys, I got to auction this thing off.’ If I ever have to feel this thing between my legs ever again, I’m gonna lose my mind.”
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De Matteo shouldn’t have a problem finding someone to take the vintage costume off of her hands. Adriana — and, in turn, de Matteo — has become the poster child of the current “mob wife trend” taking over the internet, with thousands of people posting their own iterations of the animal-print outfit, in addition to the show’s other most memorable looks, on social media.
On TikTok, the hashtags #MobWifeTrend and #MobWifeAesthetic are tagged in more than 30,000 videos, which have garnered millions of views. There are more than 2,000 videos posted atop a viral audio snippet that says “Mean girl is out, mob wife is in” as Gen Z-ers dress themselves in faux furs, loud prints and gold hoops: the Adriana la Cerva special.
While the trend for many users is just one of several fleeting TikTok “aesthetics,” for some it’s a way of life. Sarah Arcuri, a New Jersey-based content creator, who helped the aforementioned audio go viral, calls herself the “Mob Wife Aesthetic CEO” across social media, and has been dressing the part for years.
De Matteo isn’t on TikTok but she says she was flooded with DMs, texts, requests and calls since the trend began sweeping the internet earlier this month. “I was like, ‘What in the fuck is going on?” she says. “You know, every Halloween people dress like us. It’s a big costume so I’m used to seeing that. But the mob wife wife trend was hilarious to me.”
“The Sopranos” creator David Chase even reached out to de Matteo to talk about the trend, which was likely boosted by HBO’s decision to post episode recaps of the show on TikTok for the show’s 25th anniversary, no doubt introducing the show — and its fashion — to a younger generation.
For de Matteo, the “mob wife trend” is all about coordination, which she says was made possible on the show by costume designer Juliet Polsca. “The hair to the nails to the makeup to the outfit…we’re stacked,” she says.
In fact, the aesthetic was so important to the Adriana character that she felt she couldn’t even deliver her lines correctly without the proper hair and makeup. “I couldn’t even do my accent if I didn’t have the right thing going on visually,” she says. “I had to really be immersed in the wardrobe and the hair and makeup before I could say my lines properly with the accent.”
But she does think, as one of the main inspirations for the trend, that she should have the power to change the name. Her rebrand? The Gangster Goddess Aesthetic.
“All these girls that are getting down with the look are a bunch of bossy bitches,” she says. “They don’t look like they’re vulnerable, meek women. They seem like they’re more gangster bitches. So, let’s go with the Gangster Goddess.”
