Meg Stalter on the Show-Stopping Look She Wore to Her Very First Emmys

The bitingly funny, Las Vegas-by-way-of-L.A.-set HBO series Hacks took home three awards at the Emmys on Monday night, including the coveted prize for outstanding comedy series, and as luck would have it, one of the show’s brightest spots—comedian Meg Stalter, who plays the immaculately clad Hollywood failchild Kayla—was on hand to deliver the look of a lifetime.

Stalter had never attended the Emmys before—last year, when Hacks was nominated for the first time, she watched from a screening room—so she was more than ready to make a statement on the red carpet, saying of the experience by phone on Tuesday, “Everywhere you turn there’s someone you think you know, but then you wave at someone and realize, ‘Oh, I’ve just seen them on TV since I was a child.’ It’s very wild. You almost have to dissociate a bit.”

The sheer red lace slip Stalter wore was by Norma Kamali, according to Stalter’s stylist Kat Typaldos, and the underwear was made by Cuup and color-customized by Typaldos herself. “I’m a true-blue child of the ’90s, and part of my visual landscape is Kirsten Dunst or Courtney Love or Chloe Sevigny on the red carpet,” Typaldos notes. “There’s something that feels so unique and cool about wearing something that’s not necessarily the archetypical Hollywood glam. Meg is so experimental and leans into this really modern idea of glamour, so I always want to bring that to the table.”

Stalter adds that her less-is-more approach to formalwear was particularly convenient in the sweltering Los Angeles heat, saying, “The dress was pretty breezy, so I felt naked, but safe. It was kind of perfect.” I have endless questions for Stalter about the bared Cuup hipsters, but quickly realize it feels somewhat funny to ask someone repeated questions about their underwear. Yet she’s happy to discuss the topic, explaining, “I didn’t know if we’d do a slip under the dress, but then when we put it on over underwear, we were like, ‘This is cool.’ It felt like we were breaking the rules, but we were also being elegant.”