From nymag.com
Locally Grown
She’s happy to model spring’s pretty dresses, but Claire Danes prefers the comforts of jeans and her Soho bistro.
I always feel kind of defeated by how often I wear jeans,” says actress, dancer, and Soho native Claire Danes. “Plus I have a real weakness for animals on clothing, and hearts and stars. My mom had a nursery school in our loft and a pretty healthy appreciation for kitsch, so I think I appropriated that,” she says, adding that a friend has even given her style a name: kindergarten sophisticate. “But that’s starting to change.”
Not that there hasn’t been plenty of change already. The elegant blonde (next up, she plays a torch singer in the adaptation of Susan Minot’s
Evening) doesn’t much resemble the Danes we first met as the disaffected teen with the punkish dye job in
My So-Called Life. And neither does her wardrobe. At the moment, her closet includes “a disproportionate amount” of Jane Mayle, which she loves for “being feminine without being aggressively fashion-tastic.” The two shows she went to during Fashion Week were Narciso Rodriguez, who designed the outfit she wore to the Oscars at the age of 17, and Zac Posen, a neighborhood friend who sketched pieces for her back when they were in high school. “I do genuinely, objectively, if that’s possible, love their designs. I know how their clothes work on my body,” she says, “and it’s a great excuse to just run over and say hi.”