Christian Siriano on Anna Chlumsky’s Emmys Dress: ‘We Knew Not Everybody Would Get It’

Anna Chlumsky (Photo: Kevin Mazur/WireImage)

Now this is the definition of a statement-making look!

Veep star Anna Chlumsky definitely turned heads on the Emmy Awards red carpet last night with her textured shift and cascading cape design by Christian Siriano — and the design quickly became one of the most talked-about of the night, for better or for worse.

And Siriano doesn’t seem to mind.

When we caught up with the designer over the phone this morning — he’s currently in Barcelona, Spain, on a belated honeymoon and an inspiration trip for a forthcoming collection — he revealed the look was a dream come true for the actress, who had a baby daughter named Clara Elizabeth just seven weeks before attending the award show.

Anna Chlumsky’s gown featured a dramatic train. (Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

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“This was a collaboration,” he tells PeopleStyle of the gown, one of nine looks he designed for the Emmys. “She really wanted something very vintage. She has a lot of vintage references, like old-school ‘40s, ‘50s dresses. And she wanted this very weird shape because she just had a baby. So she really, I think, didn’t want to show too much of her body, but still wanted to look cool.”

And he knew as soon as he designed it that it would be a look that generated much discussion. “I think definitely it was a risk,” he says. “The fabric was a risk. The shape was a risk. But it was cool. People get very scared of what they haven’t seen before. Like, ‘Oh, I hate it,’ or ‘Oh, it’s not working,’ because it’s just new to them. But I think that’s okay. We all knew it was going to be something fun and different and not everybody would get it and that’s okay.”

What really mattered was that Anna felt comfortable, he says. “Anna could not have been happier,” he continues. “She picked the fabric. She loved it. It was just something about her feeling. Like at the end of the day, she just had a baby. She doesn’t care what people are saying. She’s thinking about her body and how she feels on a red carpet and she’s nominated.”

“So, obviously it was definitely a risk, but I think it’s sometimes fun to take a little risk every now and then,” he says. “It’s not like we sought out to make a weird dress.”