[ad_1]
NoHo Hank was supposed to die at the end of Barry‘s first episode. Instead, a last-minute tweak from co-creator and star Bill Hader not only saved his life, but set the stage for one of TV’s most fashionable characters.
From colorful polos and tailored slacks to statement-making accessories and loafers without socks, the spirited, openly gay Chechen mobster — played by the phenomenal Anthony Carrigan — has been serving looks since Hader and Alec Berg’s prestige dark comedy premiered in 2018. As the Emmy-winning series approaches the end of its four-season run, costume designers Audrey Fisher and Tiffany White Stanton reflect on NoHo Hank’s eclectic closet and fashion legacy with Decider.
“That character was so beautifully crafted in the script, so once the casting landed on Anthony it was like alchemy. It was a magical meeting of a character on the page; the way Anthony played it, the way he did the accent, everything just all coalesced,” Fisher, who was hired to establish Hank’s look in the pilot and wound up staying on for Barry‘s first two seasons, told Decider.
After drawing additional inspiration from street photography and researching mobster fashion in Russia, Chechnya, and Turkey, Fisher presented a giant mood board to Hader and Berg, and together, they outlined the backbone of NoHo Hank’s style.
“[It] was a lot of logo stuff, a lot of tracksuits, sweatpants, and slides. Of course, tattoos were very prominent, and interesting jewelry, and leather jackets — that sort of look that we probably think of when we think of a Russian mobster,” Fisher said. “I knew that the fashion that I put him in had to also have a very unusual twist. So I just started scouring all the shops and the rental houses, trying to find looks that felt right. And that polo with a little zip jacket, very snug trousers, and a moccasin with no socks, that all came together because Anthony is so trim and fit and really likes to wear things close to the body…He’s got his little pinky ring with Onyx. And then of course, I had to do a little Orthodox cross for his necklace, which I’m happy to see he’s still wearing.”
When we first meet NoHo Hank, Fisher described him as “sort of like the maître d’ or the consigliere” to mob boss Goran Pazar (Glenn Fleshler), but after Barry (Hader) kills Goran in the Season 1 finale, Hank takes over the business, embarking on a fashion evolution. “In Season 2 he becomes the boss, so I felt like we could get into stronger tones and stronger colors,” Fisher said. “There starts to be more of that little thing happening with Cristobal (Michael Irby). So it also upped the ante with his wardrobe. There’s a little more color because he’s sort of falling in love and we have a much clearer view of his sexuality. So it was fun to play with that as well.”
Fisher favored an Armenian store called Little Paris when shopping for Barry‘s Chechens because of its “marvelous” selection of polos, tracksuits, T-shirts, and accessories. “They had one brand called Mondo, and that was NoHo Hank’s brand,” Fisher explained. She praised the polos for never being too overdecorated but still setting Hank apart from less sophisticated subordinates. Yet some of Carrigan’s character’s most memorable fits from Seasons 1 and 2 don’t rely on his go-to shirt style.
In the Season 2 premiere, NoHo Hank drops in on Barry at Lululemon in disguise (a blonde wig and a vintage electric purple Hawaiian shirt from the 80s that Fisher pulled out of her costume kit). “Anthony and I thought it was amazing in the fitting. It was just so over the top and funny. I wasn’t sure if Bill would go for it, but he did. Something about it was so hilarious,” Fisher said. “It’s one of my favorite moments.”
Later in the season, Hank shows up to assassin training in a beret, because Fisher felt it would be funnier if he took the training too seriously. “He’s acting like there’s some kind of incredibly high-level troupe of assassins, when in fact it’s like a comedy routine right where the guys are shooting and they don’t know what they’re doing,” she said. “So it just seemed especially funny to make him dress up like he’s some kind of cadet and the leader of this ferocious team…It just felt like the right misfire. And of course, because it’s Anthony, he could rock that beret like no one else.” In the following episode, NoHo Hank raises the assassin training fashion bar by showing up in a white linen shirt, a blue and white scarf, a sun hat, and a sunscreen-slathered nose, which Fisher confirms was a riff on Marlon Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau.
In Barry Season 3, Chrisi Karvonides-Dushenko stepped in as costume designer, keeping NoHo Hank’s signature flair alive for eight episodes. And Fisher’s good friend Tiffany White Stanton is leading the wardrobe department for the show’s fourth and final season. “I love [Audrey] and what she created. I just was standing on her back,” Stanton told Decider in a phone call. When asked about her vision for NoHo Hank’s final fits, she said her inspiration came straight from the script. “NoHo and Cristobal, they’ve escaped LA. And I felt like NoHo would spend that time relaxing, and for him, relaxing is buying fabulous things,” she said.
NoHo Hank has been in five of six Season 4 episodes so far, and Stanton took the time to break down his final Barry ensembles.
Season 4, Episode 1: “yikes”
New season, new city, new NoHo Hank attire.
“When I saw the script and it said that [NoHo and Cristobal] were in Santa Fe and it’s their dream, and seeing that they were going to be out looking at sand, I thought it would be kind of funny if Hank was actually in a Hawaiian shirt. It’s like his version of a beach vacation,” Stanton said. “So I presented it to Anthony and he loved it. And it was so funny, we’re in the fitting and we had some pants for it initially. And he was like, ‘I don’t know. I feel like we go bolder on vacation!’ So we went back to our stack and I found those yellow pants, and we just cut them off right in the middle of the fitting. We were like, ‘It has to be shorts! It has to be!’”
“And then I always love an opportunity for NoHo to show off his tattoos, so I was like, ‘Why don’t we wear it open? It’ll feel so relaxed but still feel gangster to have those tattoos showing,” she continued. “So it was kind of a mix between Anthony and I. And we just had the best time in the fitting figuring that all out.”
“And then poncho and the hat…the script said something like he was in Santa Fe — it might have said a poncho, I can’t remember exactly — but Bill had said ‘NoHo’s version of incognito. He thinks he’s blending in.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I know the perfect thing,’” Stanton said with a laugh. “I got this poncho, which I loved. And then this hat I found on ASN. It had this gold chain, and I just saw that accessory and thought, ‘Oh my god, if he saw that in a little boutique in New Mexico, he would be like that gold chain is mine.’”
“When we were in the fitting we were looking at it and we were laughing so hard. We couldn’t stop laughing,” Fisher said of the nearly completed look. “But one of us — it might have been Anthony — was like, ‘I think this outfit calls for sunglasses.’ And I have those sunglasses in my costume kit so I put them on him and it was like, ‘It’s done! It’s amazing! It’s perfect!”
Season 4, Episode 2: “bestest place on the earth”
Next stop? Finding the perfect Dave & Buster’s fit.
“You know it’s funny… that jacket happened to be from Zara, and with Anthony we usually like higher-end things. We always bought from Saks or Bloomingdales or with polos we shopped all over the world for them. And then that jacket, my shopper Lindsay brought it in, and I was like, ‘This is from Zara?! It just had this like this European feel to it, and I couldn’t believe it,” Stanton said. “I put that polo underneath it and was like, ‘Oh my God, this has to be it.’ And when Anthony put it on he was like, ‘I have to wear this while I’m talking with the microphone.’ It was kismet, but it was funny because we were all laughing that the jacket is actually Zara. It’s the cheapest thing in his closet, but it looks amazing.”
Season 4, Episode 3: “you’re charming”
Hank wears a bold shirt to make a bold move. He hires El Toro (Guillermo del Toro!) to kill Barry, and he looks damn good doing it!
“This is from one of those websites that worked with us so much. We bought so many of our Chechen clothes from them, and actually, they sell it at this boutique in downtown LA. It’s on that Los Angeles men’s fashion row, and I saw it, and it reminded me of Hank’s octopus bathrobe from Season 3, even though it is not octopus at all,” Stanton explained. “It just had that same feeling. And I was like, ‘Oh, I love this! It’s like a callback to the octopus bathrobe.’ There’s just something kind of slippery about it, which I love. I love that for NoHo Hank, where you can’t quite pin him down.”
Season 4, Episode 4: “it takes a psycho”
And now? The shirt fit for one of the year’s most devastating TV episodes.
“I definitely wanted something dark, because we often see Hank in lighter things, and especially in this season I wanted him to grow a little bit darker throughout because in Season 4 he really shows his villainous side. And we haven’t seen exactly that kind of level he was approaching,” Stanton said. “I wanted it to be dark, especially when he’s in a scene with Cristobal. I didn’t want anything to be distracting. Sometimes his polos are so amazing you can’t stop looking at them. So I wanted it to be interesting enough that it would feel like him, but at the same time it wouldn’t steal away from the gravity of that scene.”
“I definitely cried through the episode, so I don’t think I could do that if he had on this very bold and loud and bright, or light-colored polo. So I definitely wanted it to be dark so we feel him changing. He’s done this horrific, horrific thing. So I think it has to be matched with the level of darkness that he’s feeling,” Stanton continued. “At the same time, you can’t put him in all black, because that doesn’t make sense for him. So I paired it with those blue pants so it still feels like him, especially at the party. I didn’t want it too much away. You know? Like, ‘Oh, he’s wearing black. He’s gonna kill somebody!’ I didn’t want it to feel like that. I wanted to still be realistic. And I felt like the blue counterbalanced that to make it feel like NoHo Hank. Then when he’s having a very serious scene the blue is cut out because [the camera] is a bit closer on its face. We just see the black and it feels darker and more serious.”
Season 4, Episode 6: “the wizard”
Hank isn’t in Season 4, Episode 5. But when we see him again in Episode 6, eight years have passed and he’s running his own company: Nohobal. So what went into choosing NoHo’s elevated boss attire?
“When I first presented to Anthony that Bill and I had talked about doing suits on him to make him look like he runs this operation — this legitimate business — he was a little bit saddened by the idea. He was like, ‘SUITS?!’ And I think he thought I was talking about corporate America suits like he was gonna be in a Brooks Brothers suit. And I was like, ‘Don’t worry, I’m gonna make you look amazing…and it’s definitely still gonna be NoHo Hank,” she said. “When he came into the fitting room, he was like, ‘I’m so relieved.’ There wasn’t one blue or black or pinstripe suit in the bunch. They were all perfectively tailored and the fabric and the materials is all Italian wool and it’s all really beautiful, but it’s just this range of colors. And then this turn of the century U shaped vest has a vintage throwback feel instead of a normal three-piece suit vest…In his mind, this is the height of business attire.”
Looking back on Carrigan, his character, and Barry six years after the journey began, Fisher says “Working on the show was a dream job, and Stanton calls it the pleasure of her life. “It’s been so fun working with Bill and Anthony. All of the cast on the show is incredible. But Anthony, I feel like he brings so much to the table. He has ideas. He has opinions. And he really deeply cares about what he’s wearing,” Stanton said.
When asked why makes she thinks NoHo Hank became such a fashion icon, Fisher says, “He’s always at an 11.”
New episodes of Barry Season 4 premiere on Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max. The Season 4 finale airs on May 28.
[ad_2]
