The story of Anna Delvey – real name Anna Sorokin – became an instant sensation when New York Magazinepublished an article by Jessica Pressler in 2018. It told the seemingly unbelievable story of Sorokin, then a 27-year old woman who fooled everyone around her into thinking she was a wealthy socialite, all the while conning bankers, friends and hotels out of thousands of dollars. Sorokin is now the subject of a new Netflix drama, available to watch from today.
As you might imagine for a woman who projected the image of an heiress, the character of Anna Delvey in Inventing Anna is dripping in designer labels. She is portrayed by Julia Garner and there's barely a fashion house in existence that doesn't feature in the show: Chanel, Gucci, Valentino, Dior, Balenciaga, Celine, Alexander McQueen, Michael Kors.
Lyn Paolo, the show's costume designer, embarked on a meticulous research process, working with her team to study Sorokin's clothes during her time in New York and during her trial in 2019.
'We literally spent months researching everything, finding the brand and reaching out to the brand or on The RealReal or a vintage store,' Paolo told_WWD__. '_It was sort of a dichotomy because we were matching [the fashion] quite seriously that you normally wouldn’t do I think on a current TV show.'
The clothes have a particular story to tell, too. Sorokin clearly used them to aid her duplicity, reinventing herself for different types of people and situations, so this was a key starting point for Paolo on Inventing Anna. 'It wasn’t just about putting pretty clothes on a pretty human. It was telling the story that Anna kept reinventing herself. It was an interesting project in that you have several different levels of storytelling with all the different Annas, but then you have the real Anna, too. We were true to her as much as we could be. For me, it was an interesting jigsaw puzzle.'
With so many designers in the mix, the estimated cost of Garner's costumes on the show must be an eye-watering figure indeed. It also reiterates the power clothes can wield, something which Sorokin understood entirely. She used them as social and economic signifiers not just to fool those around them, but to encourage them to give her huge sums of money, too.
If you thought _And Just Like That..._had an impressive wardrobe of fashion's power players, you haven't seen Inventing Anna yet.