If you’re a diehard fan of The Mindy Project, you probably tune in weekly not just to laugh at the shenanigans of the crew at Shulman and Associates, but also to covet Mindy’s extremely enviable wardrobe. The person responsible for her closet? Salvador (Sal) Perez, who not only outfits the cast of The Mindy Project but also often dresses Mindy in her day-to-day life and for major events. If you’ve ever stared lustily (sorry, this is getting creepy but her clothes are ridiculously adorable) at Mindy’s look, it’s likely Sal had a hand in it. Cosmopolitan.com sat down with the designer to get inside information on some of Mindy’s most memorable looks.
1.
Sal Perez:
“I saw the pattern and thought, ’She’s either gonna love it or hate it,’ and she loved it. We bought the Valentino shoes at the same time and I thought it was so great because it looks like the shoes just fell off the dress.”
2.
Sal:
“We bought that jewelry from Ben Amun two seasons ago and we just didn’t have the right outfit for it, and then we found this dress and it was like, ’Aha!’ And Mindy wanted me to cut off the dress and I was like, ’No, this has to be a maxi dress.’ We paired it with the green bag and she wasn’t sure about that but I was like, ’No, just trust me.’ And it worked, it’s such a memorable look on her.”
3.
Sal:
“That’s Moschino and it’s actually a one-piece. It originally had these white cuffs at the bottom but it was a little too 16-year-old girl when it was shorter, so I just took the cuff and folded it down and it was better proportionally and a little more sophisticated that way.”
4.
Sal:
“The first gown [my team and I] ever did for Mindy was for the Costume Designer Guild Awards in 2014. It was the first time she ever had a custom-made gown and she loved it so much that she asked if we could do the same thing for the Oscars. Well, the Oscars were only five days away, but I said, ’Sure!’ It’s a tradition now that we always do her CGA and Oscars gowns. Anyway, this was the sister to the CGA dress this year [pictured below] and she didn’t want it to be over-beaded but she wanted some sparkle. You can’t see it too well in this photo, but there are these two great slits in the gown on the sides of the dress. And I don’t normally put her in black, but it’s our tradition that we put her in black for the Oscars.”
5.
Sal:
“Mindy liked this CGA awards dress so much that we cut it off to make it short and she wore it in an episode of the show.”
6.
Sal:
“Here’s where Mindy was going out of her comfort zone on her ’Pork It’ date [season four, episode 17], so we wanted to sex it up a bit with something a little more fun. It’s fun, it’s flirty, it’s a slut dress! The jacket I designed and had it made.”
7.
Sal:
“We’d seen a dress like this from Gucci that was, like, four years old and we couldn’t find it so I made a version of it. The dress from Gucci was actually more like a sack with a big panel down the middle and I was like, ’Honey, if we’re gonna make it, we’re gonna make it the better version!’ And the crystals are Swarovski. They’re so good to us. I called them up and I was like, ’Can I get some crystals?’ and they were like, ’Anything for Mindy!’ Those are all hand-sewn, 478 crystals. She wore it on her book tour.”
8.
Sal:
“Ah, yes. The Mindy neckline. This was in the alternate-reality episode [the season four premiere] and she needed something for her date. So I harkened back to our favorite Mindy neckline with some crystals. And then she needed a coat; it was pouring rain so we had to make three of them. And there was supposed to be a stunt woman getting hit [by a car] in it. And I was like, ’You’re gonna put a stunt woman in that? Good luck!’ Because all those coats are made exactly to Mindy’s proportions, so they’re very specific. It stays on her and it doesn’t move. It’s engineered.”
9.
Sal:
“This is my favorite thing in the world. I made it, and then when they shot the episode, we had to lose the coat and I was devastated. It was the one day when I had to leave the set, I was so upset! But Mindy said we’ll reuse it.”
10.
Sal:
“Mindy normally has 14, 15 changes in one episode but this episode [which was the last of season four], she told me she was just gonna be in an elevator so it has to be very visually pleasing. I found the coat fabric and I thought, ’OK, I’ll do a pink dress because of the pink flowers.’ But then I thought, ’Well, Mindy looks amazing in yellow,’ so we went with yellow. And I’m all about textures so we added the lace. The fans loved it.”
Season 5 of The Mindy Project premieres October 4 on Hulu.
Originally appeared on Cosmopolitan.com