Rachel Sennott wants Gen Z to feel seen (and maybe a little called out) by her HBO comedy series I Love LA. Easier said than done when, in a world of microtrends, young people these days seem to be constantly reinventing themselves.
It turns out making a television show for and about the most online generation of young adults in human history so far has its unique challenges.
“I think fashion right now moves really quickly, and it’s easy to put in a look that feels like it immediately ages,” Sennott tells Deadline during the latest episode of The Process. “You’re like, ‘Oh, you shot the show six months ago, because that was the style.’ Or, that was the big look or that dress or that shirt or whatever. It ties it to a moment in time. So we wanted to avoid doing that, but we also wanted to have each character have their own style.”
Sennott worked closely with costume designer Christina Flannery to ride the fine line between specificity and unrelatability, taking inspiration from another HBO series where the characters’ fashion is at the forefront: Sex and the City.
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Adds Flannery: “I didn’t want to, I don’t know, alienate people. I always reference Sex and the City Season 1, because I feel like there was such a DIY element where it wasn’t like head to toe, crispy, clean, organized, made sense. It was patched together in weird ways, so it would be like a cute little vintage T-shirt and a designer little skirt you could have gotten from like Beard and Beagle. That was the vibe we were going for.”
People often assume that costuming becomes much simpler when working in contemporary genres. But, to the point above, Flannery couldn’t just walk into any store on Melrose Avenue and pick up some pieces. It still takes plenty of scouring in modern clothing stores, vintage stores and studio wardrobe warehouses to find the right pieces for each character.
“I think that ‘contemporary’ is an interesting world. You can very much fall into the red T-shirt, blue jeans kind of a thing,” she says. “I don’t think I fit the bill of that kind of a costume designer. I owned vintage stores before I was a costume designer. I’ve always just been so influenced by wardrobe … it represents so much more than a lot of things in the scene, the clothes that they’re wearing.”
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Sennott remembers Flannery introducing her to the Gold Room, aka the massive storage facility on the Warner Bros studio lot that houses costumes from countless projects across essentially every decade over the past 100 years.
“They have halls and halls of the 1940s, the ’50s, the ’60s, the ’90s. Like, 2003 is its own hallway. So going in there together and pulling stuff … Christina was like, ‘I have a rack. We’ll just try stuff.’ I was there any chance I could be there,” Sennott explains.
Some of the looks in the eight-episode first season required even further creativity to pull off. Take Ayo Edebiri’s transformation into British pop star Mimi Rush, for example.
“That jacket that she’s wearing [in her introduction scene] is from a sci-fi movie,” Flannery reveals. “I mean, even [Odessa A’zion’s] Tallulah wears some pieces from the sci-fi section.”
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The series already has been renewed for Season 2, and Flannery says she’s been doing some early scouting for looks, though it’ll be a while before she really dives in. Sennott tells Deadline that, so far, she and the writers haven’t shared scripts with the department heads. However, audiences definitely can expect some evolution on the horizon, which Flannery already is thinking about infusing into the costumes.
“I think that the characters took a leap into a new era at the end of the last season, and the clothes will get to reflect that, which will be fun,” Sennott says.
While she doesn’t yet know the exact direction she’ll take the fashion in Season 2, Flannery adds: “I will say that what I’m very excited about is continuing to elevate indie designers, especially in L.A. I think it’s imperative when you’re working in a city, especially in a fashion aspect, you need to elevate and support the community.”
To get more insight about I Love LA‘s chic fashion moments and dressing stars Edebiri and Odessa A’zion, watch the video above.
