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“If you’re a girl boss in Los Angeles, in modern times. What would you wear?”
That was the question “Running Point” costume designer Salvador Perez Jr. asked when putting together the looks for the Netflix series.
On the show, Kate Hudson plays Isla Gordon, the new president of the fictional Los Angeles basketball team the Waves. The comedy from Mindy Kaling, Elaine Ko, David Stassen, and Ike Barinholtz is loosely based on the Los Angeles Lakers and inspired by the team’s owner, Jeanie Buss.
In conversations with Kaling, Buss keeps her looks simple and doesn’t really dress up. Perez also didn’t want to play into “corporate boys-town wear.” With Hudson, they had someone who was a fashionista and had a great stylist in Sophie Lopez. “We wanted to play into femininity, and Kate wears clothes beautifully, so why not have her be a fabulous woman and embrace her femininity, and make her femininity part of her superpower, as opposed to hiding it?”
With that, Perez and Lopez collaborated to bring together Isla’s wardrobe. When audiences first meet her, Isla has mainly been involved in charity work and is not taken seriously.
She doesn’t go shopping for new clothes, Perez says. Rather, she pulls from her existing closet when she lands the job of CEO for the Waves.
One of the first outfits she wears is a tweed suit by Generation Love. She also sports a corset top with a suit. “It’s her playing dress up with her clothes,” Perez explains.
When Isla attends her first Waves game, she wears a bright pink Seroya suit, and her styling is still out of place. Perez says for that scene, “It’s not corporate, but it’s a suit. It’s her idea of ‘I’m a grown-up, and these are my grown-up clothes.’”
Perez made a deliberate choice to weave blue and orange into Isla’s looks – the team colors. The office belonged to former president, Cameron “Cam” Gordon (Justin Theroux), whose whole look is described by Perez as being dark and grays, and the office itself is all beige. “I wanted her to be this bright vision of color in that office,” Perez says.
As Isla starts taking control and starts to be taken seriously, her silhouette begins to reflect that shift. Gabriela Hearst and Favorite Daughter were favorite choices for Isla’s power look. Perez says, “I think as she was adding to her wardrobe, she took things into what was corporate, but still had Isla’s spin on it.” He adds, “There was a lot of vinyl and leather because Isla wasn’t changing who she was, she was just adapting to the corporate world in her own way.”
Case in point. When Isla heads to the owner’s conference, Perez dresses her in a Norma Kamali pinstripe suit again. Says Perez, “It happens to be a plungy neckline dress with a coat, but in her world, it’s pinstripes.”
By the end of the season, Perez puts Isla in a pale pink suit designed by Sasuphi. The look was one of the costume designer’s favorites. “It was her last big game, and it looked so good on Kate. We had to fit it in.” He adds, “I love the blouse, by the same designer, it had that double collar and the beautiful cuffs coming out of the jacket. It felt like Isla had grown into it and she’s feeling comfortable as CEO.”
Perez and Kaling’s collaboration and trust date back years, and that came in handy when needing to accessorize for Isla. One item everyone agreed that Isla would have was a Birkin bag. Except, Perez didn’t have the budget for it. “I called up Mindy, and she said, ‘Sal, you’re welcome to come to my closet and shop, so I shopped her bags, including the Birkin,” he laughs.
As for Buss’ reaction, Perez said the Lakers boss thanked him “for making me look good.”
His biggest challenge wasn’t with Isla, it was with the team costumes and the Waves girls. “We had to make and print all the uniforms.” Says Perez, “Those took the longest to make.”
English (US) ·