Mindy’s Twitter yesterday indicated that she was delighted that she got to wear “[her] yellow dress,” which was custom for her by Salvador Perez (who also does the costumes for The Mindy Project, and appears to be for her the person I wish Janie Bryant would be for Christina Hendricks [although Mindy has always had a much firmer grasp of what looks good on her than our Joanie does])***:
She was correct to be excited. That is cute, Kaling. Keep it up.
** OKAY! It’s been pointed out that this looks JUST like a recent Gucci. Mindy called it a Sal Perez original in this tweet, but he HIMSELF used the word “custom,” which is not automatically the same thing. It’s semantics, yes, but “custom” means he is saying he made it specially for her, which is true. He built that on her body. I think Mindy may accidentally have swapped in the word “original” for “custom” as if they’re true synonyms, when in fashion, “original” actually connotes a level of creative ownership. That doesn’t answer the issue of whether it’s kosher to copy a Gucci that closely — I don’t know the details; I don’t know the industry to know its code — but it does at least settle that I don’t believe Sal Perez or Mindy ever intended to claim the basic idea as his. I think it was just excited tweeting about a dress she loved. As an aside… if Gucci was unwilling or unable to give Kaling its own custom version of this dress, tailored to fit by either its own people or Perez, then that stinks and plays into this absurd perception that high fashion is not for anyone above a size four. Maybe that’s not what happened, or maybe Mindy and Sal are just too nice to call them out on it. -H
