Fran Drescher's series The Nanny may have gone off the air in 1999, but her character's fab fashion left an indelible mark on pop culture -- and now singers like Sabrina Carpenter and Rosalía are rewearing fits that were made famous on the show.
"Rosalía has been wearing the dress that I wore in the Bette Midler episode, which has a little, like pleated keyboard from the piano dress and is so cute," Drescher, 68, says of the Moschino number.
"And Sabrina Carpenter, who bought that [leopard lined] dress, which is Bob Mackie, actually let us borrow it for the Fran Drescher retrospective at the Hollywood Museum. And on social media, there are also all these mashups of different shows with me in all the different outfits."
Did Drescher herself she keep any items?
"I did keep some stuff," she says. "I kept the winter coat I wore in the skiing episode. It's Anna Sui and so gorgeous. It was very expensive. I remember we cut corners in other areas so we could afford that coat."
"I have some over-the-knee suede wedgie boots, some high platform suede zip-up boots. A couple of turtlenecks. But I'm not wearing hot pants or miniskirts anymore! Although now that I'm thinner again I could come close to fitting in them," she continues.
As for where all the other clothes are now, sadly, Drescher doesn't totally know.
"Sony didn't create an archival collection, which they should have, but they didn't know what they had at the time. They couldn't see the future. And so, it ended up out there in a million different places." In some cases, in the hands of Nanny fans.
"There's a guy in Germany who goes by Nanny Schmatta or something, who keeps buying and collecting the clothes, and he does a traveling show," she says.
Drescher tells PEOPLE that at the time she filmed the show, some labels were thrilled to lend their looks for Fran Fine to wear. "It was designers Moschino, Dolce & Gabbana, Todd Oldham," she says. "And we wore them all."
She notes that the reason her character -- a live-in caretaker for the kids of a wealthy Broadway producer -- was able to look so stylish on a babysitter's budget is simple: She shopped at designer deal department store Loehmann's.
"I was always into fashion, as was Peter [her ex-husband and co-creator of The Nanny.] So Peter and I knew that this character, even though she was from the wrong side of the tracks, didn't have money, didn't have education, was going to wear phenomenal clothes. And in Queens, there was a store that no longer exists called Loehmann's."
She continues, “Now, the thing about Loehmann’s was they cut out the labels, but they had a lot of designer stuff, if you could recognize what it was. So of course, Fran Fine was able to do that. So that was our rationalization for dressing the way she did because she shopped at Loehmann’s. And we talked about it all the time on the series.”
Fran Fine's obsession with Loehmann's, which went out of business in 2018, even made it into the very first episode.
"In the pilot, the father says, 'Oh, you look beautiful, Gracie.' And she says, 'Loehmann's, 50 percent off.' And Fran says, 'She'll never shop retail again.'"