For a certain type of Angeleno (hi, hello!), it is impossible to watch I Love LA without screaming in delight at the hyperlocal Easter eggs that costume designer Christina Flannery has scattered throughout. None more provocatively than the Wi Spa shirt, very much not available for purchase at the Koreatown fave.
Flannery knew putting the shirt on a character was funny, but she didn’t expect the level of online obsession that came: “I’m used to working on things that are a little bit of an underdog.” Still, she gets why it landed. “It’s fucking hilarious. You can’t have that shirt without stealing it, and it ties into the storyline of Tallulah being a klepto. It’s so good.”
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Flannery jumped on a Zoom call the morning of her CDGA nomination for Righteous Gemstones to discuss the chaotic cool kid fashion she’s curated. Some of it is carefully worked out. Some of it gets literally ripped off the head of the crew. “ We were walking around the reservoir, and Rachel [Sennott, the series creator and star] needs a hat, the sun’s in her face,” Flannery says. Her key happened to walk by at just the right moment (or wrong moment, depending), and Flannery snatched the Bob Baker’s Marionette ballcap right off her noggin. “I was just like, ‘This hat is amazing. Let me get this hat.’”
Another genius in-joke chapeau came courtesy of Jordan Firstman’s Charlie, who dons a Jumbo’s Clown Room hat. That one was more out of self-defense than anything else, though. “ Jordan had a different hat on, and it was pretty insane for TV,” Flannery says. “And for me to say it is crazy? But this one was like, ‘Whew, that’s gonna get me maybe never working in this town again.’”
Wait, what did it say?
“It said, oh God. The hat said, ‘My cock, your ass,’ or something. I was like, ‘OK, slay. Love. Iconic moment, but also like maybe a little bit too out there.’”
Flannery has a near-impossible task in dressing the characters of I Love LA, who range from a stylist to an It Girl to a nepo baby to a teacher.
That mix of character logic and cultural specificity is behind most of I Love LA. The show is fashion-forward and deeply online, but it’s also about people who really live in East LA. The goal wasn’t uniform cool, but distinction. “It was about having a group of friends, but each one had their own identity,” she says. “That was the vibe we were going for.”
Flannery describes her aesthetic shorthand as “reality plus,” and the funeral sequence is where that philosophy goes fully feral. “ ‘Reality plus’ is me as a costume designer,” she says. “I can do reality, I did Christy, I can do gritty Sundance indie stuff. But I do love to gravitate towards projects that are reality plus.
That comes across in Episode 6’s funeral, where Charlie, Tallulah (Odessa A’zion), and Alani (True Whitaker) sit in a row looking like Fellini characters by way of Helmut Newton. Charlie’s look pulls from ’60s and ’70s spy films—“James Bond, old Italian movie star vibes”—while Alani’s initial look got snatched back after Chloe Sevigny wore it on a red carpet during filming. And Tallulah’s very of-the-moment Rick Owens dress leans unapologetically trendy. “She’s got a little money to splurge on something,” Flannery says, “but I wouldn’t consider her a super fashion character. She dresses very unintentionally Fashion.” The result, as Flannery puts it, is “anarchist fashion girly.”
That balance is harder than it looks, especially on a fast-moving TV schedule where almost everything is bought, not built. There’s also the constant anxiety of trend whiplash. “Fuck, is this cool? I’m not sure,” she admits wondering on set. “Imagine being our age and working on a show where everybody’s very cool, very relevant, very fresh.” Reader, I shuddered. Her solution is vintage, which she treats as a kind of fashion cheat code. “Vintage is timeless now,” she says. “You can kind of wear whatever you want forever, and it works.”
One of the smartest applications of that thinking is Hutcherson’s character, whose wardrobe barely evolves while everyone else’s escalates. “Nothing says LA more than a fucking chore coat,” Flannery says. His clothes are “clean, simple,” with subtle pushes from his girlfriend—visual shorthand for a relationship growing increasingly lopsided.
By the time the final episodes roll around, Flannery is already feeling the emotional hangover. “That’s the worst part of working on a TV show,” she says. “It’s over.” Still, she’s proud of what’s coming. “Episode 8 is my favorite evolution of Maia,” she says. “Every single outfit in that episode—even just simple T-shirts—I’m so excited about.”
Christina Flannery is an Emmy- and CDGA-nominated costume designer whose credits include Christy, Fresh, and The Chi. Her go-to at craft services? No hesitation: “Uncrustables.”
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