Editor’s Note: Featuring the good, the dangerous and the ugly, ‘Look of the Week’ is an everyday collection devoted to unpacking the most talked about outfit of the final seven days.
NCS
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When Megan Stalter, the main girl in Lena Dunham’s new Netflix collection “Too Much,” arrived on stage at “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” this week, she did so in a calf-length honey blonde wig and a high that declared she was the prettiest woman in America. “It must be serious actor night,” Stalter quipped as she took her place beside Colbert — not earlier than at the very least 5 seconds of wig-swishing, winking and kiss-blowing to the digicam.
She is, in any case, a comic, who made her manner via the stand-up circuits of Chicago and on-line through social media platforms akin to TikTok, earlier than ultimately touchdown her breakout position in the HBO collection “Hacks” in 2021. And now, simply 4 years later, she has a starring position in Dunham’s newest — and extremely anticipated — work of autofiction since the HBO hit “Girls.” (HBO and NCS share the similar father or mother firm, Warner Bros. Discovery.)
Some actors would possibly buckle underneath the stress that newfound fame brings, however Stalter isn’t taking something too severely.
Stalter’s larger-than-life persona is obvious from the second she struts on Colbert’s stage with a Prada Cleo shoulder bag tucked underneath her arm. “Oh I saw the screen up there! I look amazing,” she interrupts Colbert as they communicate, her wig turning into progressively extra tangled in her talon-like nails. She asks the late evening host if he just lately returned from Disney, and jokes about seeing him on Space Mountain, which Colbert finds visibly bewildering. But nothing appears to contribute to her “cringe” comedy fashion (a burgeoning subgenre of humor that revels in the discomfort of its viewers) greater than her garments.
Her strapless high — which, she tells Colbert, is actually simply her comedy tour merchandise tee stretched over a corset that she sewed in place on the automobile journey over — reads, plain and easy: “Meg Stalter is the Prettiest Girl in America.” A photograph of Stalter seems emblazoned on the entrance, this time in an excellent lighter blonde wig, sporting a stars and stripes bikini, with the American flag as the backdrop. “I love your shirt,” stated Colbert, to which Stalter replied, “So many people kept saying it I thought it was probably time to put it on a damn shirt!” earlier than throwing one other theatrical wink into the crowd. Even her Prada bag turns into a prop. As she lays it earlier than Colbert and he begins to discover its contents, she swiftly scolds him: “You never know how many tampons might be in there if I’m on my big period!”
The outfit is just a few turns of the dial away from what her character Jessica would possibly put on in “Too Much.” In the present, which is loosely primarily based on Dunham’s personal transatlantic transfer in 2021, Jessica’s outsized American buoyancy makes her incongruous in London, a metropolis identified for its reserved and emotionally aloof residents. She experiences tradition shock and has the occasional misunderstanding (see her misinterpretation of the English swearword “bollocking”) after emigrating to the metropolis from New York.
On display, Jessica’s garments are audacious, quirky and unpredictable — in one scene she accessorizes a ‘70s-style paisley PVC trench coat with a fur collar by CeliaB with a turquoise bag; in another, she wears a custom-made metallic blue ruffled minidress with a giant bow on the back. The fusion of bold colors, clashing prints and other odd-ball pairings, selected by the show’s costume designer Arielle Cooper-Lethem, assist visually render Jessica as an outsider in London, the place impartial colored-clothing has largely turn into a ubiquitous uniform. “She’s living her glam dream, but she’s still not quite able to blend in,” Cooper-Lethem told W Magazine. “Like, she doesn’t know how to be quiet.”
Kat Typaldos, who has been curating Stalter’s’s current press tour seems, additionally took cues from Cooper-Lethem. “Her work inspired my approach,” Typaldos just lately wrote on Instagram Stories, alongside a photograph of Stalter at the present’s LA screening.
Still, longtime followers of Stalter will know she has at all times discovered vogue humorous. During an look on Jimmy Kimmel in 2021, the actor staggered onto the stage in a tiara, an enormous pink tulle princess costume and a sash that learn “Prettiest Girl in the World”. Like an unhinged Miss World winner, she contorted her face as if she have been crying whereas cradling a bouquet of roses, earlier than blowing kisses to the viewers and taking her seat. At the Critics Choice Celebration of LGBTQ+ Cinema and Television in Los Angeles final month, Stalter wore a Di Petsa dress and her prom-queen tiara once more, this time with a “Best Gay Actor” sash (Stalter identifies as bisexual).
Needless to say, Stalter is not afraid to maximise a press alternative with a head-turning outfit — significantly when a superlative is concerned. In reality, she would possibly simply be the Most Fearlessly Dressed Talk Show Guest we’ve ever seen.