While I was watching Inventing Anna, it was pretty hard to look away — partially because of the drama, but mostly because of all the fabulous outfits.
Anna's sharp sense of fashion was the work of costume designers Lyn Paolo and Laura Frecon.
Here are 19 behind-the-scenes facts they've shared about the costumes in Inventing Anna:
1. Shonda Rhimes tapped Lyn Paolo to design for Inventing Anna because she served as the costume director on two other iconic Shondaland productions — Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder.
2. Laura Frecon is also a Shondaland vet — she was an assistant costume designer on How to Get Away with Murder.
3. The outfits Anna wears in the courtroom scenes are recreations of what Anna Sorokin wore during her trial in real life.
4. Before they started choosing her looks for the show, Paolo and Frecon extensively researched everything the real Anna wore in her Instagram posts.
5. The research for her outfits took two months.
6. They also researched everything the real Anna's friends wore in her Instagram posts.
7. They also recreated the real Anna's entire Instagram wall.
8. The designers scoured luxury resale platforms such as Poshmark and Farfetch for the exact outfits, and what they couldn't find, they recreated as closely as possible themselves.
9. Sourcing all of Anna's costumes took three months.
10. However, rather than recreating the real Anna Sorokin's day-to-day outfits directly, the show presented "an elevated version of her, a Shondaland version of her" to better show her transformation from imposter to socialite.
11. In total, they styled more than 3,000 outfits for the character because they "were trying to have her appeal to several worlds."
12. Julia Garner, who plays Anna, doesn't have pierced ears, so the wardrobe department had to find suitable clip-on earrings.
13. For the yacht scene, they had Christian Dior embroider Anna's name on a bag — which was finished surprisingly quickly, considering Italy had just shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
14. The costume designers bought the Alexander McQueen dress she wears in that scene from the mall then built the rest of the look around it.
15. Anna often wore a mix of designer brands in a single outfit because "if you really know what you’re doing with fashion, you mix it...not just wear everything as it was on the runway."
16. As the story progresses, every outfit becomes "a tiny bit more fashionista and less conservative."
17. The borrowed Theory dress and red Valentino coat Anna wears after losing everything was styled to show "her fall from grace."
18. The gold dress that she wears during her fake suicide attempt was chosen because the designers felt "it should be like a very Hollywood feeling at that moment, very 1930s."
19. And finally, Nora Radford was actually the most expensive character to dress because of how much "super high-end couture" she wore.
