“He Thinks I’m a Streetwalker”: Susie Essman Takes Us Inside Her Closet

If every outfit tells a story, then Susie Essman’s wardrobe is full of absolute gems. To cap off her epic 12-season run on Curb Your Enthusiasm, the fabulously foul-mouthed comedian takes us behind the seams of some of her most memorable and meaningful pieces.

———

“This is one of my grandmother’s shawls. She used to have it draped on her piano. She was a bohemian, a ballet dancer, and she toured with the opera company. She had an affair with her husband’s brother, my uncle Yasha. That was the big family scandal.”

———

“It was January 2020, and Barneys was going out of business, so I said to my husband, ‘Let’s walk across the park and see what’s on sale.’ I get there and a woman on the sixth floor recognizes me and says, ‘We have a special today that’s 80 percent off and then another 80 percent off on top of that.’ This jacket was originally 2,400 dollars and I got it for 46 dollars. I spent, like, 300 bucks and got 30,000 dollars’ worth of stuff. I went back the next day and they told me it was all a mistake, but I didn’t have to give it back.”

———

“I went to Florence in April and I was like, ‘I’m really going to do some damage at these outlets.’ But everything I found had a label on it—and I am not a walking advertisement. Then, I met this guy on the street who used to work for Gucci and he hand-paints these things. It says, ‘I AM NOT GUCCI’ on the bottom.”

———

“This picture is on the Curb Monopoly board. Classic Fiorucci angels. Who doesn’t love Fiorucci angels? I remember when they first came out. Fiorucci was such a cool store. What are we talking about, the ’70s? The ’80s? I don’t even remember. That’s how fucking old I am.”

———

“This shirt was my mother’s. This is a photo of her wearing this shirt 67 years ago. She was quite beautiful when she was younger. She wore her hair back in a chignon and wore red lipstick, and would always have knockoff Chanel suits custom-made. And then one day, she cut all her hair off and started wearing polyester elastic-waist pants and it was all over. I swore that was never going to happen to me.”

———

“This was also a Susie Greene piece that I never wore for some reason. When I first created Susie’s look, I tried to describe it to Wendy Range Rao, our wardrobe designer at the time. She was like, ‘Where am I going to get clothes like that?’ And I said, ‘The back room of Loehmann’s.’ She had never heard of it, so I had to take her on a field trip.”

———

“There was a scene in Curb where I was wearing this jacket and hot pink crushed-velvet high boots and a tight black-and-silver dress. I was fapitzed. In Yiddish that means I was all dressed up, and it was my and Jeff [Garlin]’s anniversary. We’re in the hotel and I go down to meet him at the restaurant, and the security guard won’t let me in because he thinks I’m a streetwalker. But the scene was cut, so nobody has seen this jacket.”

———

“This is the first piece of real clothing I ever bought, probably in 1977. There was this little store on Hudson Street that made these dresses. I wanted this dress so badly. It was one hundred dollars, which at the time to me was a fortune. So, I saved and saved and then I bought the dress and wore it to every friend’s wedding for the next 15 years. I also wore this dress on Women of the Night II, my first stand-up special.”

———

“My manager gave me this one Christmas. It’s from the Beverly Hills Hotel, and this is pre-Barbie.”

———

Hair: Sergio Estrada using Bumble and Bumble at Born Artists.

Makeup: Linda Gradin using Dior Forever Foundation.

Nails: Martha Fekete using Essie at Bryan Bantry Agency.