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Fashion has always been one of the most important “characters” on Emily in Paris: nonverbal yet outspoken, communicating through avant-garde, sculptural dresses and print-mixing so divinely dizzying, it frequently steals the scene.
The Netflix series, which just released its fifth season, follows Emily Cooper (Lily Collins), a Chicago marketing executive who moves to Paris for work, navigating culture shock, romance, and office politics along the way. Since its debut in 2020, Marylin Fitoussi’s costume design has done what great style always does: get people talking.
Now, the Toulouse-born costume designer is pulling back the curtain with Emily in Paris: The Fashion Guide, a glossy, gorgeous coffee-table tome published by Assouline.
When Fitoussi started Season 1, she was returning to Paris after 13 years in Mexico, mixing Mexican textiles and Parisian pieces in her own wardrobe, a cultural collision that mirrored Emily’s experience. “Emily was a part of me,” she says. “She was a fish out of the water, saying, ‘I love your culture. I don’t speak French, but look, I love your culture, I want to embrace it.’” She mentions that Patricia Field, the iconic designer of Sex and the City and a consultant on Emily in Paris’ first two seasons, also loves color and joyful clothes. That shared sensibility between the two costume designers helped set the tone early on. “Imagine if this show were boring,” says Fitoussi. “Never.”
Boring still isn’t anywhere in Emily’s sartorial vocabulary, but there has been a definite evolution in her wardrobe. “We can’t have her be the little girl from Chicago five seasons later,” says Fitoussi. Emily now has more power, more money, and more confidence in her Parisian life, and her clothes reflect that. For the first time in the series, she even wears gray. “A beautiful John Galliano for Dior suit and pencil skirt from 1997,” says Fitoussi. “I couldn’t have done that before. We weren’t at that level of sophistication yet.” In Emily in Paris: The Fashion Guide, Fitoussi maps that evolution look by look, even giving each outfit a name and treating Emily’s wardrobe as a series of shifting characters and moods rather than a single, fixed style.
This season moves between Rome, Paris, and Venice, with each city influencing the color palette and silhouettes. “We have some unexpected silhouettes,’ says Fitoussi, describing how Rome sees Emily in bold prints and bright colors, whereas Paris is more neutral and strong (the vintage Dior moment). ”Venice is romantic, more ’50s, with little tops and tulip skirts,” she adds. Even with more sophistication, Emily never becomes fully restrained.
“What I was trying to deliver this season is the vision of ‘Paris Chic by Emily Cooper,’ with a splash of almost bad taste. Every time it’s perfect and clean, you have the crazy shoes or the bag,” says Fitoussi. “I don’t want make it perfect Parisian. For me, perfect means boring.”That balance is shaped through close collaboration with Collins. “It’s a constant dialogue,” Fitoussi says. Collins tries everything, but she’s thoughtful about when certain looks make sense for the character. “Sometimes she’ll say, ‘My character is not here yet.’”
Despite pulling from nearly 480 brands, Fitoussi doesn’t style by label. “I don’t wake up and say, ‘I’m going to do a total look with Valentino,’” she explains. “I don’t care about brands. It’s beautiful pieces that I choose because it’s an emotion.” That approach explains the show’s mix of archival pieces, young designers, and unexpected combinations.
As for viewers hoping to channel Emily’s style, Fitoussi keeps it simple. “Buy what pleases you,” she said. “Don’t care if people think it’s too colorful, too tacky, too outrageous.” Trends, she added, are irrelevant. Confidence is not. “If you feel fearless, you will be beautiful.”
