I don’t know that Conrad would have a style icon. I know that in the past, Jenny and I imagined that when Susannah was alive, she bought his clothes and those were the clothes that were in the summer house, and that was how that informed his closet. So it’d be interesting to know if Chris ever thought about who Conrad’s style icons would be. But I do think it’s not something he thinks about that much, in my opinion. And Chris is just such a perfect, easy human to dress that you’re just like, “Oh, this would look cool on him.”
I’m a ’90 kid, so bringing the Red Wings back, that perfect wash of Levi’s, that good brown leather belt. There are things that are really nostalgic for me about dressing him from a certain time period of when I was their age. So that was also my reference: the guys that I grew up around.
I’ve been seeing a lot of people say that Conrad reminds them of ’90s Leo DiCaprio, or even Ryan Gosling in The Notebook. I was wondering if that was intentional: to create this leading man in the world of rom-coms with this iconic, timeless style that people are going to be looking back to years from now.
Obviously all of that stuff is in the library of my brain. The Notebook. And Christian Slater, that was another one. Leo, I don’t know why, but because I think Chris gets so many comparisons to Leo, he wasn’t so much in my mind. I was [more of] a True Romance girl.
I see a lot of stuff on Instagram that’s really funny, whether it’s the watch or just these button-downs, whatever it is. It’s been really cool to see that it is like that. And all those influences, the side-by-sides between The Notebook and these different shows, it’s flattering that people really like what we’ve done with the character.
Going back to that watch, it’s an Omega Constellation, right?
Yes, yes. Watches on our show are props, so our wonderful prop master, Robbie Beck, was in charge of the watch. That was a process that he had with Jenny to pick the right watch, and I think he ended up changing the straps to make it even more unique to Conrad.
Another really standout piece that I’m seeing a lot of people talking about are those pleated khakis that Conrad wore. Did you think they would be as swoon-worthy as they are?
I did not think that that look would end up being what it was. Those are Mango. We have had a lot of really great luck with Mango pants. There’s something really beautiful about the way they cut, they’re lightweight. We shoot in the dead of summer, so it is really hot and you want to be able to do more than just shorts, but you also don’t want to put them in jeans all the time. And sometimes with pleats it can be too voluminous or not fall right. Mango happened to make these beautiful pleated pants that we were able to fit with Chris, and they fell right and they worked. So, they’re really the unsung hero of that episode, those Mango pants. And that was a Buck Mason T-shirt.
In terms of Conrad’s style versus Jeremiah’s, I feel like Conrad is more timeless. It feels like everything in his closet can just be pulled out at random and it’ll go together, whereas Jeremiah has a few bolder statement pieces and he’s a little bit more youthful. Can you speak to how the differences in their costuming shows the differences in the two brothers?
Previously, Jeremiah was really put together and kind of fashionable, if you noticed, in the other seasons. He’d have the bright shirts. He was wearing pleated pants before Conrad was wearing pleated pants. Dressing Jeremiah was a lot more fun and vibrant. This season, because we’re leaning into [Jeremiah’s] frat-boy lifestyle and he’s just trying to get it together as we’ve seen with where he is at in the season, it was really more about taking the structure out of his world. [The idea for him is] that he pulls something off the chair in his dorm or in his frat house and he throws it on and it’s still cute.