This post was originally published on this site.
7 min readThe Good Buy is a podcast from Harper’s Bazaar in which editors Leah Chernikoff and Lynette Nylander invite celebrities, designers, models, and tastemakers to talk shop: what they buy, where they got it, and why it matters. Come down the fashion rabbit hole and take a peek inside the closets and shopping carts of the world’s most stylish people. Learn how they use style to tell their stories.
Tessa Thompson is deeply intentional when it comes to clothes. From her red-carpet fashion to her street style, she knows where she’s shopping, what she’s looking for, and how she’s putting together the pieces she finds.
The Hedda actor has long favored complex characters and innovative storytelling. From Dear White People (2014) to the Marvel universe and now The Fear of 13, she’s tried her hand at everything from indie films to blockbuster hits to Broadway productions. Plus, in 2021, she founded her own production company, Viva Maude, focused on championing underrepresented voices and stories in the entertainment industry.
She’s equally thoughtful about her fashion choices, working with household names such as Chanel, Balenciaga, and Valentino as well as It girl favorites Vaquera and Diotima to take risks, play, and say something meaningful.
On Bazaar’s podcast, Thompson dives into the ways in which fashion informs her characters, both on and off camera. Read on for highlights and watch the show in full above.
On thrifting:
“I am wearing this little skirt suit from Vivienne Westwood Spring/Summer 1988 collection. It was apparently owned by the photographer Henny Garfunkel, who worked a lot with John Waters, which was a big selling point for me. I love vintage and I really love imagining the stories of the clothes that you buy. This was incredible because I got an insight into who owned it, so I could think of all the fabulous places it might have existed.
“I grew up going to thrift stores with my parents out of necessity. I did not think it was cool. I was like, ‘I wish we could buy new stuff.’ But then I started to uncover all these incredible things. I’d show up to school and nobody else had what I was wearing, and there was something kind of fantastic about that.”
On her early style inspirations:
“For me, fashion had so much to do with identity. I was a massive Pee-wee Herman fan as a kid. I remember there was an episode where he puts on a pair of high heels just for fun. [I loved] this idea of being able to play and not care about gender, and wear what you want to wear, and feel a kind of freedom with the way that you express yourself with clothes.
“One of my biggest inspirations, both for fashion and life in general, is Prince. And then certainly I would say my mom. I hadn’t realized until recently. The play that I’m doing now is set in the late ‘80s ,and I looked at a photograph of my mom in ’85 and she looks so cool. She has a really cute Parisian haircut and a little bang and she’s wearing an oversize men’s blazer and a button-up and she looks kind of like Diane Keaton. I’ve always loved Diane Keaton, and I hadn’t realized it was probably connected to my mom.”
On how costuming impacts her character preparation:
“In my personal wardrobe, I don’t own a lot of red. I have always loved it but I just never wore it. And I knew that I needed to wear it [because the Hedda costume designer] designed this beautiful dress. I wanted to be able to wear it, not it wear me. So in the months preparing for Hedda, I started to wear red so that I could get cozy with the color and I started to see how it made me feel as I walked into the world. People notice you. And you have to be ready to meet it.”
On New York City vs. Los Angeles style:
“My hot take is that there is no comparison between New York and LA. They should exist together. They are yin-yang, they are beautiful. I think New York is the best city in the world, but I think there are virtues and values to each place. I would say that LA is such a lawless place in terms of fashion. When I was in high school, something that was popular was to wear cut-off shorts with Uggs. And you’d wear the Uggs without socks. Or in my twenties, you needed a hat and Frye boots. It’s that chaotic energy of Los Angeles. I did have a hat period, and more embarrassing than having a hat period is that I had a period where I dated men who wore a lot of those hats.
“I have a touch-and-go thing with hats now, except for a baseball cap or to the Met Gala. Although I am a granny waiting to happen. I’m going to be 65 or 85 and I’ll probably want a hat. I remember seeing my grandmother in a pillbox hat and gloves and a hat box. I’ve always wanted to be a lady who travels with a hat box.”
On her many storage units:
“Until very recently, I had multiple storage units. One in New York, which I’m in the process of clearing out now, because I’ve had it for many years. I still have one in Los Angeles. And then I’m so embarrassed to admit that I have one in a city that I just made a movie in, because I had amassed clothes and I was going somewhere else and I was like, ‘I can’t take all these clothes because they’re winter clothes.’ So for a very short period of time, I had a storage unit in Philadelphia. And then I was like, ‘I need help. This is not okay. I can’t have a storage unit just for coats, in a city I arguably am not going to go back to.’”
On fashion as armor:
“You know that thing that gets bandied around a lot, and I used to say it, of fashion is armor? I just don’t feel that way about it anymore. I kind of don’t want armor. I don’t want to a separation between myself and people when I go to these events. I think the whole point for me now is to be in the room and meet people and see people and be seen, but really be seen. Not like, ‘Oh, she looks like a highlighter.’ I think I used to have that kind of thing, it used to be this separation between my private self and my public self, and I just feel more integrated now. So I like the idea of something that I wear on the red carpet feeling like something that I’d actually like to own or would wear again.”
Shop Tessa’s Good Buys
HER FIRST BUY:
“There are two. My senior year in high school, I bought a prom dress which was totally mesh with beading. The reason that it was a big deal was because I had saved up all this money and I bought it. At that time it was my biggest purchase. It wasn’t a brand or anything, just this beautiful prom dress which I bought for myself which I was very proud of. I own it still. I got it on Melrose in Los Angeles at a hot boutique and it cost me just under $1,000, which is significant for a prom dress. I saved up my money—I was a Bar Mitzvah dancer.
“A later buy that [was memorable] in terms of my fashion story and certainly in terms of career was buying a pair of [Christian Louboutin] So Kates. The first time I bought a pair of So Kates was the beginning of trying to level up. Also, at that point, I wasn’t working consistently with a stylist. I’d do one-offs sometimes, I’d have a stylist work with me or I’d try to pull stuff myself, but I was like, ‘What I know I need is a pair of these shoes.’”
HER REGRET BUY:
“At Only Hearts, I bought a lot of pairs of bloomers with high hopes for the summer. I think I’ve been preparing for a bloomer summer for many years, but it has never come. I’m hoping that these will usher me into a proper bloomer summer, but I don’t know. So I don’t regret it yet, but I could.”
HER REPEAT BUY:
“I buy a lot of pointy-toe flats. Just a flat shoe with a pointy toe. Arguably you only need one, but I’m getting to double digits. I went to Loro Piana and I bought a pair of green pointed-toe flats.”
HER DREAM BUY:
“Some museum Margiela Artisanal piece. I collect ceramic hands, so I really love that black leather glove top. It’s just so beautiful. There’s a white one going around now and there’s also the playing card one, which I think is so chic. It’s that thing about, ‘What’s a thing you could have hanging in your closet that would just bring you joy every time you see it?’ I think those pieces, more than an aspirational bag or something, would just bring me a lot of delight and joy.”
HER LATEST GOOD BUY:
“I bought a couple of vintage skirt suits. One is a vintage Dolce & Gabbana. I like it because I feel like I can wear the skirt separate, I can wear the jacket, and it has this beautiful silky chiffon accent. It’s dark gray ,which is a color I’ve been liking more, but it has lots of orange and color. I’m trying to introduce color into my wardrobe. And it’s from some store in Norway.
“Another recent good buy of mine, I’m not going to say exactly where because you have to find it yourself, but there is a place—let’s call it Manhattan Blank and Blank—where you can get lots of vintage. In the basement of Manhattan Blank and Blank there is a store where you can get very beautiful vintage lingerie from the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. From there I bought a beautiful cone bra from 1930 which fits me perfectly and I have high hopes for it.”