Jenny Ortega is Wednesday Addams in the hit Netflix series Wednesday, and alongside being totally apathetic, sarcastic, and death-obsessed, she’s an icon of fashion without even trying. It’s not like Wednesday would care if we approved of her looks or not. In fact — it would probably bring her more, dare we say it, joy if we loathed them entirely.
Of course, we loved them and Ortega herself did too. She got to pull off so many beautiful, eerie, and incredible outfits throughout the series and they all suited every aspect of her personality perfectly.
Ortega is sharing five of her favorite Wednesday looks in a new video. From the stakeout look to the iconic original dress, Ortega brought Wednesday to life with masterful talent, sarcasm, and an appreciation for all things mysteriously spooky. It’s no surprise to fans that she did so with grace and style, too. Here is a look at Ortega’s best, and we have to say we wholeheartedly agree.
The stakeout
One of Ortega’s favorite looks was actually one that only makes an appearance in the series once, and she says that the team realized that it should have been more iconic once they saw Wednesday rocking it during the stakeout.
“I really liked this one. I’m actually really bummed that it only exists in one scene; it’s this nice leather jacket, and Wednesday and Eugene are about to go into the woods to hunt the monster. When establishing new looks on the show. I didn’t always have the time to have fittings because I would be filming. I remember we put it all on, and it was something they had put together and hadn’t really anticipated as one of the main looks. But we all looked in the mirror and just went, “ugh,” because it should have been more important.”
The fencing look
Ortega loved the costume and the scene where she got to take part in fencing for Wednesday.
“I love fencing. I thought it was so much fun. I had never done it before, and you know the sequence that we do it, we spend all day on it. So a lot of fun. I love anytime that I get to do stunts, but also I appreciated the fact that her fencing costume was all black. My Romanian coach was not too pleased. He’s a stickler. He likes tradition. So I didn’t tell him that I liked it. But this is my coming clean story. Women have to wear discs over their chests, so they kind of moved around a bit — going in the bathroom took 20 minutes.”
While the fencing costume looks great, a 20-minute bathroom break sounds less than stellar. However, Ortega made it work, and she rocked the out-of-the-box fencing look at the end of the day.
The dance dress
The dance scene is an iconic part of the series, and it was everything fans hoped it would be. Wednesday moved around the floor without a care or concern for those around her. As she spun and moved, the dress she wore flowed around her perfectly.
“It was really cool when we found this dance dress. We weren’t even on the episode yet, but I think that the costume designer was just really excited to start putting dance socks together. We really didn’t consider any other dress. I think that it made a lot of sense. I like that it looked a little bit torn and the way that it moves. It’s very light and airy, and it kind of stays three seconds behind. I thought it was really beautiful and for Wednesday to be in another dress. I knew that it had to be weird in some way. And I also liked that it had kind of a classic silhouette. Because I think a lot of the silhouettes for the show were 50-60s interrogator, almost Sherlock Holmes-esque, you know, with the fringe and everything. It felt very 50s.”
Ortega went on to say that the iconic collar that Wednesday is so well known for was a fabulous addition to the dress. It might not be the stand-out collar in her original dress, which she talks about next, but it’s a nod to who she is and what her style must-haves are all about.
The OG dress
Of course, you can’t mention Wednesday looks and not think about the original dress that is most often related to Addams. Those braided pigtails, the black dress with a simple pattern, and the distinct white collar: it is Wednesday.
“It was so cool for me. I think that the first time I put on the original dress it felt it felt like Wednesday, and that was kind of my first experience with her. I feel like I have some sort of emotional attachment or connection with that dress. It was the first time that Wednesday and I met, and it’s obviously iconic. I don’t know — I felt very very lucky to wear it, and I was always so excited when we did some sort of promo shoot or anything like that. Just to put the dress back on again. I wasn’t really allowed to wear it for the rest of the show — it had to be meaningful. We pretty much already knew what the original dress was going to be.”
Ortega notes that there’s an interesting difference in the dress for Wednesday compared to the original dress worn in The Addams Family.
“In the 90s films, the one that it was inspired off, it looks like roses on Christina Ricci’s dress, but it’s actually little squiggly lines. On this one, it was roses.”
She also spoke about the collar on the dress and how it wasn’t as easy as we might have expected to get the collar situation just right.
“Something that was actually tricky were those the collars. There are so many variations of white collars. We had put one on ‘that’s way too big.’ ‘It’s too white.’ It was one of those things that you didn’t think would be as complicated as it was.”
It might have been complicated, but it ended up working out perfectly. She embodies Wednesday throughout the entire series, but Ortega in the dress is next level.
The catsuit
Ortega talks about the canoeing team and how they were called the black cats, of course — they had epic suits for the competition, and this look is her favorite of the series.
“All of the Black Cats have whiskers and ears, and the stitched-up suit to me kind of reminded me of Edward Scissorhands in a sense because a lot of the material looked leather-like, and it was patchwork. I liked Enid’s because she had pink stitching instead of white stitching like everyone else. That was really cool. And I think I just have good memories attached to that outfit as well just because it was really fun getting to work with everyone and doing another scene and being out in the water. It was fall in Romania. So the weather was beautiful, and it felt like we were at summer camp.”
Ortega says that she’s “weird about materials” sometimes, so wearing a wetsuit under the catsuit wasn’t her favorite thing, but it was still awesome.
Becoming someone as iconic as Wednesday Addams has to be a treat in itself, and we can’t think of anyone who could have done the role as much justice as Ortega did on Wednesday. You can see these mesmerizing looks as you stream the series on Netflix now.