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Lena Dunham’s hotly anticipated return to television is finally here. Whereas her previous productions and their accompanying wardrobes (notably, Girls) feel like time capsules of the early 2010s, her new Netflix series Too Much feels like a maximalist fashion plate.
The series follows comedian Megan Stalter in her first major leading role as Jessica Salmon, a downtrodden New Yorker who reinvents herself in London after a bad breakup. The show takes us through the emotional chaos of a transcontinental move and has the clothes to match, thanks to costume designer Arielle Cooper-Lethem, who brought Dunham’s script to life with texture, color, and panache. There are a few memorable high-fashion moments, but the real story here is how Cooper-Lethem used both vintage and a rich assortment of smaller fashion brands to bring this quirky, hilarious, and ultimately moving story to life.
Ahead, Cooper-Lethem fills us in on what it was like to collaborate with Lena Dunham and the rest of the star-studded cast and why there really is no such thing as a bad nightgown.
What type of collaborator is Lena Dunham when it comes to costuming a show like Too Much?
Lena is such a fashion girlie. She really knows her clothes and her brands and gets really excited about clothing, which is always nice from a director. She wrote so much costume into the script. I remember reading the script for the first time, and it was so visual because of her clothing descriptions. What’s fabulous about Lena is that she gets excited about adding new ideas into the fold. She definitely had her own ideas that she wrote into the script, but when it came to me interpreting it, she would get excited about seeing the things she wrote interpreted in a new way. She’s very open to new ideas. The hardest part about working with Lena is knowing that I’ll have to work with someone else after her.
Are there any flagship costume moments we should look out for?
Episode 8 is a standalone episode where they go to this very stuffy English countryside wedding. It was written into the script that Jess should look like “Josie Grossie” from Never Been Kissed. So we made this custom, very over-the-top dress for her. She also wears that dress to scale the side of a building!
Nightgowns were a key element. Jess wears them constantly. It was written into the script that she wears these sort of pioneer nightgowns and that her dresses speak to the same vibe. We found some great ones from the London brand If Only If, and we sourced a lot of vintage nightgowns.
Emily Ratajkowski’s character is meant to be this knitwear influencer making her own pieces. So we thought about making everything custom, but in the end we found a London-based knitwear designer who had so many fun pieces, called Sulk. Meg also wears a ton of great ballet flats. She might even lose a flat when running away from a bad situation in episode 1. Those are French Sole. I love that they’re a little bit Amy Winehouse.
What’s the secret to selecting a good nightgown versus a bad nightgown?
Jess is kind of proof that there’s no such thing as a bad nightgown. It’s about who’s wearing it. Her gowns really range a wide spectrum. She’s got some 1960s pink pajama sets, she has a literal pioneer nightgown—she’s just a girl who has no rules.
It sounds like you worked with a lot of smaller brands to source costumes for Too Much.
The truth is, it’s still devastatingly hard to source extended-size clothing that is fun and indie and cool. A lot of what you see in the high-street shops just feels very officey and dowdy. We were so excited to reach out to these little brands with extended sizing that understand that people want to dress individually. Plus, Jess is the kind of girl who is on Instagram, she’s on Etsy, she’s always getting excited about new small things.
She wears a sailor-collar dress by Foundry Mews, as well as pieces from Bye Bambi and Rosette NYC. Fashion Brand Company is all over the show; they are incredibly size inclusive. There’s a floral rain trench that Jess wears by Celia B, and a lot of her wardrobe also came from Cider.
And as a designer I love sourcing vintage wherever possible because it’s better for the planet and tends to be more special. Lots of vintage for many of the characters was sourced by Found and Vision on Portobello Road in London. Many of the pieces are still available in their “for hire” archive if you really want the Too Much look!
I need to know what it’s like to work with Meg Stalter.
She really is that funny in person. She has 150 different outfit changes in this show, so it was a lot of work for her, and our fittings were really long—but she was always down for whatever from the start. Very fun, very collaborative.
I also noticed that supermodel Adwoa Aboah has a role in the show.
She is such a great actor. She has a pretty comedic part. And actually, when we started fitting, she was pregnant at the time and we didn’t know. So that was kind of an interesting challenge, because as we got through the shoot, we would get through the fitting and she continued to get further along in her pregnancy.
What types of brands did you put Adwoa in?
In episode 2, she wears a black PVC dress that is the Annie dress from Annie’s Ibiza. In episode 1, she wears this fabulous red trench from Abra with a necklace from Sandra Lexandra. In episode 8 she wears a dress from Simone Rocha and this surreal headpiece from Maryam Keyhani.
I think a big part of this show is about the tension between New York and London style. They’re both large English-speaking cities, but they can feel culturally very different, which is a central conceit of the show.
Totally. I think with Jess’s wardrobe, as we follow her arc, coming from New York and moving to London, she sort of feels all over the place, so her wardrobe is a bit collected from everywhere to reflect that. But for Emily Ratajkowski’s character, we went out of our way to source as much as possible from U.S.-based brands and New York brands. We got her this McNally Jackson bookstore tote to wear in one of her scenes. She also wears Oakleys. It’s just a very American look. We definitely wanted to feel the separation there.
What was the most challenging part of this production?
There were so many people to dress! As a costume designer, you want to be on set as much as possible to establish your look, and we had 125 principal cast, and our “Number One” had 150 changes! When I wasn’t in fittings, I was shopping for fittings! But I will say, to have such a big cast and have everyone be so lovely was very special.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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