‘Gilmore Girls’: Keiko Agena Said Actors Weren’t Allowed to Keep the Clothes
The fashion choices on Gilmore Girls continue to attract attention. Screencaps from the show, which ended its original run in 2007, are perennial attention-grabbers on social media. People, especially Gen Z, love these outfits, and actor Keiko Agena says she felt the same way back when she was working on the show.
Agena, who played Rory Gilmore’s best friend, Lane Kim, was always impressed by what the show’s stylists came up with. She always dressed great outside of the show, too. So did those outfits happen to come from the Gilmore Girls set wardrobe?
Keiko Agena wanted to take home clothes from the ‘Gilmore Girls’ set
Agena was happy to show off her casual wardrobe during a Season 7 behind-the-scenes featurette since posted to YouTube. She’s dressed casually in a purple shirt and some purple-and-white patterned pajama pants. Even in “comfort” clothes for Lane to lounge around the house, Agena still projects a well-dressed vibe.
She points to a pair of plain red shoes that openly clash with her outfit. “These are the red shoes I’ve been wearing since season one because they’re so darn comfortable and you rarely see my feet,” she said. “Every few episodes at the beginning, they tried to give me new shoes. And I’d be like, ‘where are my red shoes? They’re never gonna see my feet!”
Of all the fashion items from the stacked Gilmore Girls wardrobe, these are the ones Agena wanted to take home with her. Unfortunately, the crew insisted on keeping them with the production. “We don’t get to keep the clothes,” the Prodigal Son actor lamented.
Did any ‘Gilmore Girls’ cast members manage to take anything home?
The Gilmore Girls cast was always dressed thoughtfully, which usually impressed viewers. The costumes were handled so well that when fans noticed something was off, it was usually because an actor brought their own clothes in for a scene. Lauren Graham ran right into that issue when she pushed for Lorelai Gilmore to wear an outfit the actor wore in real life at home.
While actors were welcome to roll the dice on bringing in their own clothes, the opposite was not true. The Gilmore Girls wardrobe designer had extremely high standards, Mashable reports. There would sometimes be recurring clothing items to help ground the characters as real people. Taking home anything from the show’s fashion treasure trove was a big no-no for everybody, not just Agena.
Will there be more ‘Gilmore Girls’ in the future?
Gilmore Girls ended its original run in 2007, but returned in 2016 for a four-episode series of specials. Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life continued the fashion tradition of the original series in an updated form, E! Online reports.
They continued to design outfits around the old guidelines of the show, leaning toward both Gilmores wearing lots of blues. Lorelai’s looks generally align with how she dressed in the original series, with lots of quirky elements like hats making one-off appearances. Rory, meanwhile, developed a taste for high fashion brands and more traditional dresses than she wore during the show’s original run on The WB.
Enough time has passed that a new Gilmore Girls run would probably come with even more highly-anticipated tweaks to the lead characters’ looks. But is there any word on another revival? Unfortunately, things have been quiet lately.
A Year in the Life did exceptionally well for Netflix. When CW needed content to fill out their abruptly cold pandemic-era schedule in 2020, the show had a second successful run there. Clearly, interest or money wouldn’t be the issue.
It comes down to getting all the successful stars and creators back together. And there’s at least some good news on that front: creator Amy Sherman-Palladino might be available after The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel wraps up its final season this year.
