pH invention of annaShonda Reims needed someone they can trust to create infamous fashion dresses. As a longtime employee of Rhimes, costume designer Lynn Paolo was the best person for the job.
invention of anna It is a Netflix miniseries created and produced by Reims, inspired by the true story of the false German heiress Anna Sorokin, played by Julia Garner. Allegedly called Anna Delvey, Sorokin managed to convince New York’s most influential people that she had a huge fortune overseas, which she used as leverage to achieve her goal of creating an exclusive arts club.
Prior to traveling the world in the series, most of Delvi’s travels took place in New York, which became the basis for Paolo’s design. Although he lived on the Internet before he was caught, his fashion research was made more difficult for Paolo and his team after Delvey’s accounts were taken offline.
Deadline: You worked closely with creator Shonda Rhimes, what did she have in mind for the costume design?
Lynn Paul: It is very collaborative. It’s hard to describe because many manufacturers know costume design very well, but don’t know what they want, but Shonda’s got a very clear idea. He puts it into a script, so it’s not a constant phone call or email like it’s written on the page. He will sometimes say “fabulous clothes” or sometimes with a nice description. He other times he writes “What Lyn P Says” which is a great gift for a costume designer and a lot of fun when people read it. He is very hardworking as a writer. He will literally give you exactly what you expect from the page.
If I ever have a moment where I don’t know what that meant, he’ll send me pictures. Not always, but if I’m not sure I’ll send you pictures of Shonda and if she doesn’t answer she means I liked her. If she responds, sometimes she is just giving instructions. For this particular project, it was difficult, not in negative terms, but it was difficult to accomplish. And I mean, in the best form of the challenge, in the sense that we were trying to create a sense of New York and fashion, but we also had to do absolutely massive research on Anna, just like you would if you were doing a documentary or someone’s bio. She had to match exactly what she was posting, but by the end of the rest of the story she was creating amazing images. So she was part of both special worlds of costume design: a lot, a lot of research and then a lot, a lot of creative freedom.
Deadline: Was there a lot of good research material? She mainly lived on Instagram.
Pablo: But it was hidden by the time we looked at it. He was on the ground and we actually had to go into this wormhole where he would follow the people he took with him and dive deep. Shonda and her research team have already done a lot of work for us, but their research involved images. Our investigation was who made this dress? Where did these glasses come from? Then we look at the photo and ask what year was it? We went through all the online designer sites to find the right sunglasses, the right dress and more … and it was a lot of fun. Some of his research was a lot of fun.
Deadline: What was the biggest challenge you faced with this project?
Pablo: Definitely the volume of the suits. I think many people don’t realize when they watch the show that we create clothes for each photo on the wall of the nursery where the Instagram photos are posted. We created everything, each of them was a complete costume. Even though you saw her face in the photo recently, she was dressed down to her feet. We didn’t know how they would use each image, so the Instagram of all of this was pretty much a section of their wardrobe. Then there was the classroom section for the other costumes, and then for every other part of the story, like Morocco and Berlin.
Then he was part of Los Angeles and went to Chateau Marmont, and had a scene where he faked suicide, which was the norm for Desmond. We decided he had to look like Los Angeles in the 1930s and we even played with putting him on the turbine for a few seconds. So each section of the show had its own rhythm and each section had its face, so it was great fashion … and in the end I felt really sad because we put together this amazing fashion collection and then sold it on RealReal . . And he was exhausted, I think that in the shortest time everything disappeared.
Source: Deadline
