The Marvelous Mrs Maisel season 4 is almost upon us, promising more scrapes, skits and sensational looks as a show known equally for its rapid-pace humour and gorgeous design.
Aspiring comic Midge Masiel (Rachel Brosnahan) has so far taken audiences from late 50s New York City to Paris, the Catskills, Las Vegas and Miami – naturally with the appropriate wardrobe – as well as through divorce, a broken engagement, a Vegas quickie, TV, radio, club and theatre work. And don’t forget those early calisthenics classes.
The new season of the Amazon show sees Midge heading into the swinging sixties, while trying to piece together the remnants of her once-promising career after being unceremoniously fired from Shy Baldwin’s tour.
One of the people most responsible for whatever image you have of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel in your head right now is undoubtedly its costume designer, Donna Zakowska.
The Emmy award-winner sat down with Metro.co.uk ahead of season four’s premiere to talk all things fabulous fashion, how the costumes have evolved for the new decade and what viewers can expect from the latest episodes.
And yes – the all-important question of just how and why Midge can have so many clothes (not that we’re complaining!) is addressed.
Discussing how she first come onboard with Mrs Maisel, and where she started with her preparation, Zakowska cites her New Yorker heritage.
‘I am a New Yorker, and so I have a great attachment to New York, and the whole story about New York – especially, I think, in the 50s and 60s. It’s such a great period in terms of the arts, politics, everything,’ she explains. ‘When I met Amy and Dan [Sherman-Palladino and Palladino, the showrunners], it was sort of an instant chemistry. We both had the same love of telling this story.’
The costume designer shared that, as part of her initial research, she ‘looked at a lot of French Vogues’, admiring the ‘tremendous colour palette that was going on in the magazines’ during the 1950s.
Plenty of that is in evidence with Midge’s frankly iconic costumes, the sheer volume of which has become almost as much of a talking point as the designs themselves – she even has two cabs’ worth of suitcases as she and manager Susie (Alex Borstein) head dejectedly back to the city in season four’s opening episode.
Zakowska agrees it’s fun to design for a character like Midge – but how has the Jewish former housewife of Manhattan’s Upper West Side become such a clothes horse? And how does she maintain that luxury?
‘At times, we would talk about well, how does she have all this clothing? It seems so much. But I think that a character like Midge, as in real life – many women will do anything to have the clothing they love. I know it was the same for myself, whether or not I had a great deal of money or was succeeding – when I wanted that piece of clothing, it really became important to me. I think it’s a way of keeping your energy and your psyche intact.
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