Thin about the last time that you got ready for a date. How many outfits did you have to decide between before you settled on your first instinct? Your clothes can signal to someone how you carry yourself, and attraction can bloom, for some, because of how you dress. How we present ourselves with items in our closet goes hand-in-hand with how we want to approach a new relationship, and nothing signifies that more than the costume design by Negar Ali-Kline for Netflix’s Nobody Wants This. This modern romance loves these characters as much as it shows adoration for Los Angeles itself.
We enter Nobody Wants This through the sisterly bond between Kristen Bell’s Joanne and Justine Lupe’s Morgan, and the characters sell themselves as a package deal. It’s important to note, though, that they are anything but the same person even if you love them as a duo from their podcast. I kept thinking about how sisters I know share each other’s closets (sometimes without the other knowing…) and how they may have seen each other’s styles change and evolve as they grew up with one another. To design these sisters, Kline had to balance their loving familiarity with strong individuality.
“They are super codependent, intertwined, and intermeshed,” Ali-Kline says. “They’re bot a bit Type A, but I would say that Joanne is more of the controlling one in the dynamic of the two whereas Morgan is a more of a free spirit. She has an irreverent attitude towards a lot of things, and she doesn’t care what people think about her. We wanted to draw those contrasts, but there were some overlapping things when it comes to their style since they’re sisters. Oftentimes sisters will borrow each other’s clothing and so that was an initial idea when we set out to draw them out. Originally, we looked at Erin and Sarah [Foster] even if it wasn’t exactly based on them, but we wanted to draw from their personal style a bit.
In Justine [Lupe]’s original fitting, we had everything a bit more sexy, sort of the way that Sarah likes to dress a bit more daring and body conscious. About a week after that fitting, she called us and got us into what was going on, and then we just took it from there. It actually worked in our favor in terms of drawing a contrast between the girls’ silhouettes. We dressed Morgan in more oversized silhouettes with men’s shirting, but we paired it with mini skirts so there would be contrasts within the outfits. We would draw from the same closet sometimes.”
Episode one ends with Joanne racing to temple to make a move on Adam Brody’s Noah. In a sea of dark colors, her red ensemble is bold and audacious. I love how the neckline is lower than anyone else’s in that room, and it shows off the J charm on her necklace as if a declaration of, ‘Here I am!’
“[The outfit] was written in the script, but it needed to pop in the space,” she says. “She had to be different than everyone else in the room, and we wanted her in a bright color. Red felt like the right call because it symbolized love and desire, and it was just this really bold choice for her to come in and make this statement in the temple. We knew that this moment had to be kind of iconic. That cardigan was something vintage that we found, and we customized it for Joanne by cropping it and re-cutting it to fit in that very cool kind of effortless slouchy way. At the same time, she is showing off a little bit at the top of her midriff, which is appropriate for temple. And that was totally intentional.”
Joanne’s main adversary (one of many, let’s be honest) comes in Jackie Tohn’s Esther. Even though Esther and Joanne are relatively close in age, Esther has positioned herself as a devoted in-law to Noah’s brother Sasha, played by Timothy Simons. In an early scene, the trim on Esther’s shirt almost matches the necklace worn by Bina, Noah’s mother. In a way, the character straddles two worlds while being very strong in her identity.
“Esther is a Roklov, and she draws a contrast between these two worlds,” Ali-Kline says. “There’s a bit of a Montague/Capulet dynamic going on, so we tried to assign these rules about dressing the family versus Morgan and Joanne’s world. For instance, Esther and Bina have designer, Valentino handbags whereas the girls would carry more indie brand handbags to try and distinguish styles there. The Roklovs feature jewel tones and maroons, and Esther is blinged out in a lot of her outfits since she’s about the jewelry. When we see her in that leopard coat, that was supposed to be a nod to her being a queen bee of her friend group. There’s a bit of a group thing going on between the friends where you see everyone dressing the same. It’s a status thing also inside the group, and that was very intentional when we see the girls dressed similarly within the group. I loved working with Jackie [Tohn].”
Sasha’s M.O. is comfort, and everyone is perfectly fine with that. Ali-Kline took inspiration from men she has seen in Los Angeles, and Simons plays the part well.
“Sasha is in the shadow of his brother, and he calls himself the loser sibling,” Ali-Kline says. “He works for his father’s company business even though he doesn’t feel fully seen or acknowledged, so there is a bit if a man-child thing going on. We thought those loose hoodies really signified how he feels about where he is in his life. It’s not childlike, because there are grown men wearing hoodies and he thinks wearing designer hoodies will make him cool. That character came together in the fitting room in the best way. You see guys like him in L.A. and you know they like to shop on Fairfax or they stop into Kith. Sasha likes to be comedy in his oversized sweatpants and sweatshirts. Noah is very tailored, and Sasha is very comfortable.”
Who didn’t swoon all season over Brody’s Noah? I would argue that his classic fashion certainly helped audiences’ hearts to flutter as he and Joanne try to figure things out. He has a funny line towards the end of the season where he says ‘it’s sweaters until the day I die’ because his nipples we poking through his dress shirts, but his attire should never be considered safe. It takes a certain type of man to be able to pull it all off.
“We didn’t want to make a big fashion statement with his clothes,” she admits. “He’s not trying to be loud or draw attention–he likes what he likes and he likes classic pieces. We wanted things that felt quality and timeless and things that maybe he’s had in his closet for many, many years. We kept it simple. Originally, we set out to not make him “look” like a rabbi since Joanne says something about that in the first episode when they meet at the dinner party.
Going into the fittings, we thought that he might wear Dunks or he was the type that would wear a suit with Air Force Ones to show the twist of how he’s not the conventional looking rabbi. In my conversations with Adam, one of the first questions that I asked him was about the kind of music that Noah listened to. We thought he might be listening to hip hop, but Adam saw him listening to jazz and Fleetwood Mac in the car. We thought that that would really inform his footwear, and he was approaching the character as a historian and an academic, and we loved that. We pivoted from there to build a classic, classic man.”
I was almost embarrassed to admit how much I longed for a lot of Sasha’s items. He sports a blue chevron cardigan that I love almost as much as I need Joanne’s pinstriped pantsuit that she wears to a meeting about taking her and her sister’s podcast to the next level.
“I would probably take something from Morgan’s closet,” she says. “In one episode, she wears printed trousers with a t-shirt that looks vintage from a brand called Mother. She wears it with this brown denim-like jacket. I love it, because it was something that you could kind of put together. It wouldn’t normally make sense, but when you put it together, it does. It’s comfy and lived in.”
Nobody Wants This is streaming on Netflix.
