It’s no secret that we’re kind of obsessed with Girls or that 99.99999% of our girl talk subsequently starts with kale, cleanses, or SoulCycle and ends in Girls. If you recall, we once proclaimed our love for Lena Dunham in a short (yet slightly embarrassing) piece where we took a cue from Hannah Horvath, took a chance, put ourselves out there, and wrote all the reasons why she should open up her personal closet to us. Well, that hasn’t happened… but, this did. And it’s kind of like exclusive access inside Dunham’s delusionally genius brain, so we’ll take it. FYI: Shorteralls and fruit-printed separates were all parts of Dunham’s script, penned into production by her and brought to life by costume designer Jenn Rogien.
“Everything I do comes from the script,” Rogien told us. “I am nothing without that page. They’re not my characters, they’re Lena’s characters and Jenni [Konner]’s characters, so if I don’t have something to go from then I don’t have a story. So for me the script is the absolute most important part. If you talk to other costume designers they would say very much the same thing. It’s one of the big things that set us apart from styling or from other fashion design. We’re lifting these characters off the page and getting them to walk around and live and breathe.”
When the opportunity to get behind the golden gates of the Girls wardrobe closet presented itself, we jumped at it almost as fast as Jessa did with her impromptu, destined-to-fail marriage. We were given the royal HBO treatment and guided rack by rack by Rogien through each of the characters signature looks and even into the trailers on set where the girls get suited up. We saw it all: Hannah’s rompers (shorteralls, excuse us) and that neon mesh tank top (you know the one), Shoshanna’s tiny hats, Marnie’s plastic dress, oh and even Hannah’s, uh, undergarments. And for inquiring minds, they source the clothes and accessories from vintage shops, Urban Outfitters, Etsy, Beacon’s Closet, Bergdorfs, Salvation Army, Strawberry, and, like, everywhere in between. We’d be lying if we didn’t cop to totally geeking out, quizzing Rogien on every on-screen look like a couple of psychopaths who had rewatched each season ten times through – not too far from the truth if we’re being completely honest, though.
“I would describe the Girls’ characters’ styles in one sentence as: Hannah is lovingly disheveled, Marnie is polished, Shoshanna is flirty and feminine, and Jessa is odd and elegant and eclectic.”
