50 Interesting Behind-The-Scenes Facts Straight From The Wardrobe Departments Of Iconic TV Shows

He worked alongside longtime wardrobe designer Debra Hanson.

She told the Los Angeles Times, “Otherwise [I] just stood there while Debra and her team and Daniel put me together in the most beautiful, formidable, and hysterical way.”

“Fittings with Catherine were always fun because we could really experiment. And the weirder things got, the better she looked,” Levy told the Los Angeles Times.

Levy told Vulture, “The juxtaposition of designer clothes against the backdrop of this town is able to tell a story. When we starting putting the show together, one of the fundamental building blocks of the wardrobe was making sure we’re not only creating an aspirational aesthetic, but also creating dimensions to these characters. Any way we can squeeze as much character out of these people as possible, the better.”

She told the Los Angeles Times, “While I looked for something else, a small image of a McQueen popped up; it was white and looked like an ecclesiastical bishop’s robe. I went, ‘Oh, my God.’ It was just gorgeous.”

She told Vogue India, “Oversized unstructured silhouettes were trending back then, but that was too unflattering for television. Also, I did not want the characters to only be in jeans all the time. New York was changing and I wanted them to reflect that.”

Rachel even sported several monochrome outfits from the stylist’s clothing line.

She told High Snobiety, “It was all about texture and color and staying true to a New York palette. It was very black, white, gray, with hits of color.”

“He was the one character that made sense to bring in some inspiration from the past. I did that certainly with the girls a lot but he was the only male character that I could sort of really play with that,” McGuire told High Snobiety.

She told the Guardian, “Monica was black, gray, white, burgundy; Rachel was blues and greens… Ross was tweedy, Chandler had a lot of vintage and racing stripe shirts, Joey had leather jackets, then later sweaters and chenille. Phoebe was in patterns.”

Costume director Kirston Mann told GQ, “Color-wise, we stick to a certain pallette to separate ‘the real world’ from the Good Place.”

“That’s how I talked myself into really loving that kind of print everyone is wearing in quite a few scenes,” Mann told GQ.

Mann told Fashionista, “We’re trying to have a palette that reflects Earth and just what it would be.”

“She became a person who didn’t have a big chip on her shoulder. She wanted to learn to be good and to be a student,” Mann told Fashionista.

Mann told Fashionista, “[The Jacksonville Jaguars] actually embraced Jason as a fan… They’ve invited [Manny Jacinto] to a few games — in real life, not in fiction.” 

On the Office Ladies podcast, she said, “The owner was so darling. And I just went in there and was very respectful and was like, ‘This is what I’m doing. I’m just trying to get a vibe and see what goes on here and see if I can kind of glean some details that maybe I wouldn’t have normally known.”

She took tons of pictures of the office and the employees, and put them into a slideshow called “Welcome to the Working Week” for her first big production meeting.

She imagined that Pam shopped at Gap and Old Navy while Jim borrowed professional-looking clothes from his father.

A lot of her outfits were purchased off-the-rack from then-trendy stores such as Juicy Couture, Bebe, and J.Crew.

On the Office Ladies podcast, she said, “The wonderful director who pulled me onto that project, Adam Bernstein, he has a thing about mustard shirts. And he was like, ‘We just need a mustard shirt. It’s just important.’ And now of course, that show took off. So now I try to put a mustard shirt — like it’s just my thing.”

She told Below the Line, “The suits fit [B.J. Novak] perfectly.”

She told Pop Sugar, “I also go to the library and look up what was popular at the time. So what the films were that were popular, or what books were popular at that time, what theater in New York was popular — anything that would influence the fashion world. I’m really interested in seeing what that is about.”

“The most fun part of our show is to have the costume be so loud, being able to do things that aren’t normally seen on TV and aren’t normally part of a story. That’s a blessing,” McGorty told Pop Sugar.

“It works so great because we all care so much. We all want it to be the best it could possibly be,” she told W Magazine.

She told W Magazine, “I never think about gender when I’m dressing him. I almost dress Billy like I dress myself.”

She told the Hollywood Reporter, “I don’t [even] know what it was, but it was just such a happy and beautiful costume.”

In total, the team created 7,500 different wardrobe pieces.

Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick told Vogue, “The Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams exhibition at [London’s] Victoria & Albert Museum provided a wealth of inspiration. We looked at Dior dresses, from the New Look [1947] to the present day.”

“This show is sexy, fun, and far more accessible than your average restrained period drama and it’s important for the openness of the necklines to reflect that,” Mirojnick told Vogue.

Mirojnick told Vogue, “They’re bolder, brighter, and more brazen than everyone else, and everything is overly embellished. They just don’t know any better.”

“She begins as a porcelain doll and becomes a woman,” Mirojnick told Vogue. 

She told Pop Sugar, “It truly feels like a blessing to be a part of a show with such a synergistic environment and where I have the opportunity to add value and authenticity to my character by infusing my real-life cultural background.”

“It’s hilarious and painful at the same time to see her in that outfit, and we had so much fun putting that look together behind the scenes,” Moorjani told Pop Sugar.

“I designed very simple and sweet pieces that a teen girl could have made herself,” he said on Instagram.

“I think Target should market the collection,” he joked on Instagram.

She told Vogue India, “Often, immigrants on American television are portrayed as dowdy and cheap. But the creators of the show and the costume designer, Salvador Pérez, really envisioned Nalini as a professional woman who knows how to put herself together.”

He previously worked with Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live.

Broecker told the Hollywood Reporter, “At first, she’s really trying to identify with the writers … There’s also a very strong comfort factor with her because of the long work hours. But then she met a guy and started to investigate her own life, and we began loosening up her silhouette and her color palette…”

He told Fashionista, “We sort of took a lot of liberty. Having worked with lots of sketch comedy actresses, what they wear to rehearsal is not what they wear on television. … We’d set it up, ‘Oh, she’s coming from the Regis and Kelly show. That’s why she’s more dressed up now.'”

Broecker wore the suit himself for a shoot with Entertainment Tonight.

Broecker told Zap2It, “He likes his clothes and wants to look good.”

The wardrobe team commissioned a local knitter to make it happen and create several more copies of the beanie.

“Spiders — it’s a symbol of power and growth and feminine energy, and it has that mystery to it, which Cheryl has,” she told Vanity Fair. 

She told Fashionista, “Either (adding) Veronica’s pearls or detail of the collar, I make sure the upper half is really good, so that we can feature their style and their look.”

For example, Betty and Archie are based on the ’50s, while Veronica and Hermione are based on the ’40s.

However, they’ve also been modernized so that “nobody is head-to-toe running around in ’70s or ’40s [looks].”

The designer told Vanity Fair, “She said, ‘Oh, there’s speculation about the pins and there’s speculation about the colors.’ She just showed me one day, and I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa.’ She was like, ‘Yeah, this is what I read about Riverdale.’”

Wardrobe designer Michele Clapton told Vox, “I think mauve is a color that hovers, so she’s in mauve for a long time, trying to be invisible and not trying to express herself, except through her embroidery.”

“It had to look effortless yet the structure to do this with so little coverage has to be so precisely cut. It also had to give Emilia the support and confidence to wear it,” Clapton told Entertainment Weekly.

“We could pump [in] hot water in winter and icy cold water in summer,” Clapton told Entertainment Weekly.

Clapton told Fashionista, “There’s an Ikea right next to the studios in Belfast, and I was browsing there one day trying to buy something for my apartment and I went, ‘Wow look at these amazing wool rugs!’ Our breakdown [team] attacked it and shredded it and waxed it and dusted it and then we added two leather straps.”

It was also designed with wide shoulders to help give it shape. 

Clapton told Vanity Fair, “It is so easy to lose the person in the layers, especially someone as small as Emilia… It would be impossible to use a long fur on her.”