Visionary costume designer Jenn Rogien, who brought Nadia Vulvokov’s (Natasha Lyonne) look to life in the first season of Russian Doll, has returned for Season 2. And viewers had better buckle up for this very fashionable ride. 

From her first appearance in the second season, Nadia is back in full force — and at full volume — wearing her signature silhouette. The cape-like coats, dark blazers, button-fly jeans and ever-present boots that fans have come to associate with Nadia are courtesy of veteran designer Rogien, and speak to Nadia’s no-nonsense New York City roots. 

But the clothes have more to say than just that. The black jacket Nadia drapes casually over her shoulders and the always-at-the-ready lighter dangling from her belt loop like a Batarang make her seem more like an anonymous superhero than an everyday New Yorker. Topped by Nadia’s mop of fiery red hair; smudged, smoky eye makeup; thick swipes of lipstick; and gold Krugerrand necklace, the look has become a visual classic. It’s at home in the grittiest parts of New York and the space-time continuum in general. This season, Nadia’s quintessential costume has a whole new meaning and several deliberate tweaks.

“Season 1, we got to play with the loops and see all of these amazing places in and around New York,” Rogien says. “With Season 2, it’s really a whole different journey in terms of time, and playing with time, and seeing Nadia in all of these different eras.”

No matter what decade — or bizarre powder-room situation — Nadia finds herself in, her wardrobe serves as armor, Rogien says. Where Nadia’s going, she doesn’t need roads, but her knowledge of matrilineal quantum jumping comes in handy as she navigates the nonlinear world. 

Below, Rogien expands on Nadia’s Season 2 sartorial oeuvre, including where to find those gorgeous keyhole blouses and the fashion Easter eggs to keep your eyes peeled for.

When we see Nadia’s style in the first season, viewers immediately understand she’s a real New Yorker — a “throwback cool” character, which you’ve said in the past: Her clothes are a uniform. This season, that seems especially relevant, right down to her military gold buttons. What did you want her look to communicate to viewers in Season 2? It was more about making sure Nadia still felt like Nadia while armoring her for the journey of Season 2. So it was using very similar pieces, but a few fresh patterns, a couple of different blouse styles, different boots, different accessories, to make it feel like the character had also had some time pass in between the two seasons. 

What were a few of the most unexpected influences that inspired you as a creative professional as you were designing her Season 2 look? Definitely some of the time elements in the script. Not just traveling through time, but the time periods in which Nadia lands — you know, the ’40s, the ’60s, the ’80s — didn’t necessarily directly influence the pieces we were pulling for Nadia's look specifically. But I knew that that would be the world around her. So, in some ways, Natasha and I wanted Nadia to be the real constant in the middle of all of that. 

And that’s where pieces like the black coat began to make a lot of sense. It was a little bit more neutral than her Season 1 beautifully textured gray coat. That was a bit eye-catching, very interesting. The black coat is a little bit more neutral and simpler and still exciting to look at, but not quite as notable as that iconic Season 1 piece. It was really about Nadia being the center of all of that action, rather than falling into loops over and over again. 

Let’s break down Nadia’s costume piece by piece: We were talking about the military peacoat, but we also wanted to discuss those gorgeous blouses. Her overall silhouette doesn’t change much, but the blouses do: Could you walk us through those first three tops? What’s kind of great is that I thought about it as three chapters within the season. There’s the first three episodes, in which Nadia wears this black-and-gold metallic blouse, because the action is continuous. Even though there are several other story days in those first three episodes, we see Nadia fall asleep at night, fall asleep in the past, wake up in the present. She doesn’t ever really have a practical opportunity to change her clothes, so that blouse plays for a long period of time.

And then the second blouse is, in my head, it was the second chapter, which was Episode 4 all unto itself — the moment where Nadia and Maxine (Greta Lee) go on a sort of girls’ trip in a very strange, Nadia–Maxine kind of way. And that’s the red-print blouse: It just seemed really fitting that that would be the moment Nadia doesn’t know that she’s gonna end up in Budapest, but I knew that, and so that pattern really helps to support all of the action and tell that story. 

Yes! We actually did want to ask about that one in particular. The red shapes almost look like they could be the larval stage of a butterfly, or perhaps even the red human figure from Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” video. Was it one of those, or was it an abstract print? Well, I love that this is open to interpretation! I’ve gotten a lot of [questions] that are like, “Is it this? Is it that?” I believe in our description, we called it a degraded heart print... The blouse [is] by Diane von Furstenberg. I love that you can see so many different things in it, especially in all the lighting and all the circumstances that Nadia goes through. It really is open to interpretation. And that is exactly as it should be in that episode. 

That first blouse is Hobbs [from the Wren collection] — the black, the metallic and the self-tie — and the second blouse [mentioned above] was Diane von Furstenberg. And then, in my mind again, the last three episodes are another chapter, and that’s the beautiful white tuxedo blouse. It’s a Sandro blouse, and the black ribbon tie that goes along with it. 

Nadia wears that black tie as a scarf-like accessory. Was there special meaning behind the piece? It was to tie back to Season 1, where we’ve done similar things with her red blouse. You didn’t see as much of the red blouse in Season 1, because it was part of, in the story, Day 2, and Nadia didn’t always make it to Day 2 in Season 1. But eagle-eyed viewers might notice that it’s a Nadia signature to have a necktie like that with a blouse. 

And then her skinny jeans and boots are unchanging staples; they’re constants from episode to episode. How would you say these pieces help anchor her costumes and her character?  It’s really all about the silhouette. And that silhouette is part of Nadia. You know, the longer coat, the strong shoulder, the buttons as accessories, as opposed to the buttons that disappear on the coats, and even on the blazers to a certain extent. So it’s all part of creating a very strong, sharp, punctuated silhouette for the character. And that’s what the jeans and boots do, is they just really continue the angularity all the way to the ground. 

Can we talk about her amazing sunglasses? Especially those double-bridge aviators we see her wearing in the very first shot. Sunglasses seem to be important to Nadia, no matter where she is. Are they part of her armor? That is a wonderful compliment to our incredible props team, who sources those for Nadia. I heartily agree with all of that. To me, they’re part of the character. She does use them as armor to hide and reveal her eyes when needed. They’re also just great sunglasses. 

We see that Nadia wears rings on the first two fingers of her left hand and one ring on her right middle finger, but the rings on the older Ruth (Elizabeth Ashley) are almost the exact inverse: She wears rings on the pinky and ring fingers of her left hand — and then two more rings on the ring finger and the first finger of her right hand. Was that intentional? I wish I could tell you that that was, but that’s a happy coincidence!

Now, finally, that integral piece: the Krugerrand necklace Nadia wears. It almost looks like two necklaces. It is.

Oh, it is! Tell me more about those necklaces. Was the decision to wear two necklaces a deliberate, meaningful choice in both seasons? The Krugerrand is obviously hugely important to Nadia’s story. She’s carrying the history of her family, whether she knows it or not. Season 1, she didn’t necessarily know the full history of that piece. But Natasha and I had conversations about how important it was to her and where it came from. And then in Season 2, we actually see where the necklace came from. In Season 1, we knew that it had been her mother’s, and we saw her mother wear it, but in Season 2, we actually found out the backstory, the origins of that necklace. So the necklace itself is hugely important, and she always wears it. Sometimes it’s tucked inside the jackets, and so you may not always see it, but she always wears both necklaces, the Krugerrand being the most important piece. 

Without any spoilers, are there any other details about the necklace this season that you can tell us? Well, from our end, I use the same necklaces that we use in Season 1. So in the costume world, it’s the piece that I worked with Donna Sacknowitz to create for the show. So it’s a degraded coin. You can’t necessarily see the face of it. It’s clearly been through a lot, but in Season 2, our props team actually took over the Krugerrand, because we only saw them as coins, and they weren’t in a necklace shape yet. And so there’s a newer version that you see in Season 2 that was created specifically for the story that happens in Season 2 around the coins. 

Let’s talk about the really fun stuff: the Easter eggs. In her final look, when she’s in a black blouse, she’s wearing a red flower pin. What does that pin signify?  It’s one of Ruth’s pins. We see Ruth wearing that same pin earlier, in an earlier episode, and it’s a direct signifier of the importance of Ruth in Nadia’s life. And that’s actually her fourth blouse as well! It’s a black silk blouse that she only wears for that very last moment.

Also, in her final look, we see her glittering earrings as “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” plays. Would you say that’s another happy coincidence or an Easter egg?  Oh, gosh, that’s a great question for Natasha. The music choices actually get layered in during the editing process, so... sometimes, I don’t know what they’re going to be until the edit comes together. So that’s fantastic! I love that and can’t wait to see it. 

Are there any other costume Easter eggs Nadia wears that fans will be excited to spot?  I think people are gonna be excited to see the return of the lighter on a leash. That happens to be a prop, but we often set it with our costumes, because it was literally in every scene. So I think that’ll be a fun thing to see come back. You know, the sunglasses — there are a couple of different versions of sunglasses, and then there’s some great stuff in the Budapest episode where there’s all kinds of funny headwear again.

We have one last kind of oddball question. No spoilers for the last episode, of course, but Nadia’s Apple Watch is technically technology, and her cell phone disappears when she travels back in time. What do you think happens to her Apple Watch? Does it turn off? Does it disappear?  Oh gosh, I don’t know. Watches are handled by the props department here in the New York area, and... I remember tracking the Apple Watch all over the place, because we pull it out of our dressing room, we get back to the props team, and I don’t remember what happened when the phone disappeared, if the watch also disappeared. I can’t wait to watch it and look for that now! It should come and go throughout the season... There are a lot of rules of logic that play throughout the season, so I can’t wait to look for that one.

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