The show’s costume designer reveals how she created Fran Fine’s style and recalls a certain guest star ― Donald Trump.
For six seasons, “The Nanny” blessed audiences with humor, a treasure trove of pop culture references and the “will-they-won’t-they” to end all “will-they-won’t-theys” between makeup salesperson-turned-nanny Fran Fine and her boss, big-shot Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield.
And from the moment Fran Fine knocked on the door of that Upper East Side brownstone, her clothing was unforgettable.
There are some television shows ― “Sex and the City” and “The Golden Girls” come to mind ― in which the wardrobe becomes a character of its own. “The Nanny” undoubtedly falls into that category. For that, we have costume designer, stylist and color expert Brenda Cooper to thank.
Cooper served as costume designer for the show’s first four seasons. She had been working as an assistant on “Princesses,” another sitcom starring Fran Drescher, when the actress made her a proposition. “She said to me, ’If I ever get my own show, I want you to be my costume designer,” Cooper told HuffPost. A year later, she got the call. “The Nanny” premiered on CBS in November 1993.
Drescher, the creator and star of the show, recalled Cooper’s impact fondly. “The costumes on ‘The Nanny’ fast became as big a star of the show as the Nanny herself,” she told HuffPost in an email. “Her brilliant ‘eye’ for design, color, coordination and her ability to bring both style and wit to any outfit won her a well-deserved Emmy.”
Cooper clothed Drescher in looks by Moschino, Todd Oldham and Thierry Mugler, to name just a few. The character’s wardrobe typically sat right on the line between uber-chic and over-the-top. “Everything was like, ‘How far can I push this without tipping it over the edge?’” Cooper said of her approach to styling Drescher.
Cooper told HuffPost she was given complete freedom to execute her vision for the show. So she ran with it.
“Usually you’re told the look. Fran and I had a relationship where she just put it in my hands and I knew I wanted to make a difference,” she said. “Clothing is incredibly important, and I think sometimes in the industry it’s not treated with the importance it deserves. I wanted to make a statement. I wanted to show that wardrobe plays an important role in the story.”
And what a role it played. Every item, down to Fran Fine’s iconic bathrobes, made a statement. Nearly 20 years after “The Nanny” left the air, the star’s clothing continues to inspire articles, blogs and Instagram accounts. The Instagram account “What Fran Wore,” which chronicles Fine’s fabulous looks, has over 200,000 followers.
Cooper told HuffPost that the wow factor came partly from the clothing itself and partly from the way the original garments were altered and enhanced.
“I wanted that robe to have shape and style,” she said of the nanny’s bathrobes. “I always put a shoulder pad in the robe, so it had a really ’40s look to it. It was always about making it look more elegant and have more style and sass. Every week I had a team of seamstresses in the fittings ― we would be cutting, trimming, pinning. I would be ripping off sleeves, adding sleeves. There was a lot of creative stuff that went on to pump up the volume.”
Because Cooper often used pieces of garments from several different designers to create one look, the clothing can sometimes be tricky to identify. Cooper said such looks have even stumped Shanae Brown, creator of “What Fran Wore.”
“There was this Nicole Miller dress that we changed ― some dress she [Brown] couldn’t ID,” Cooper said. “I think it’s amazing what she’s doing, I love what she’s doing and identifying them. She just needs to pick up the phone and I can tell her what they are. [laughs]”
For Brown’s part, she credits Cooper’s eye for the staying power of that wardrobe. “I think Fran’s wardrobe is iconic because Brenda has a great eye for style!” she wrote HuffPost in an email. “There is a wave of ’90s nostalgia right now, and all the pieces that Fran wore aged perfectly. Her outfits were tight, short and full of color. The wardrobe perfectly matched who the character was as she wasn’t afraid to be bold and unapologetically herself, which is also another wave we’re going through ― women not being afraid to fully embrace themselves and their style through fashion.”
Cooper said she would shop for eight to 10 hours a day, searching for pieces that would appear on the show just once. Some of the clothing was lent to them. Cooper recalled borrowing a Herve Leger gown that was eventually needed for a reshoot.
