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Jun 01, 2023

In You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, All the Popular Middle Schoolers Wear Online Ceramics

By Eileen Cartter When you’re in middle school, personal style isn’t about expressing your individuality—it’s about fitting in. The seventh graders in You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, a new

By Eileen Cartter

When you’re in middle school, personal style isn’t about expressing your individuality—it’s about fitting in. The seventh graders in You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, a new Netflix family comedy starring Adam Sandler and his real-life teen daughters, Sunny and Sadie Sandler, are more way concerned with nailing the right things to care about (what’s cool to wear, who’s cool to have on a crush on) than they are with preparing their Torah portions or completing their mitzvah projects. Which, in other words, makes them entirely normal middle schoolers.

Production on the film, which is based on Fiona Rosenbloom’s 2005 young adult novel of the same name, began just weeks after the actual bat mitzvah of Sandler’s 14-year-old daughter Sunny, who plays protagonist Stacy Friedman. This is around when costume designer Jordy Scheinberg sat down with the Sandler girls, in their family’s backyard, to hear their takes on what’s cool (and not cool) in Gen Z’s world right now. Turns out, they had strong opinions about what their characters would wear; so, too, did the rest of their young castmates.

In the film, Stacy has a crush on the coolest guy in her Hebrew school cohort, Andy Goldfarb (Dylan Hoffman), who almost exclusively wears shirts from the cool-guy brand Online Ceramics, an acid trip of an apparel company known for making Dead & Company’s heady tie-dye tour merch. Indeed, Jordy could’ve easily purchased a decent chunk of the movie’s wardrobe on Shakedown Street; the movie’s kooky guardian figure, Rabbi Rebecca, played by Saturday Night Live’s Sarah Sherman, wears yarmulkes knitted with the Dead’s bear and skull emblems—an idea that came right from Sherman herself. (Funnily enough, Sandler and Sherman’s fellow SNL alum Pete Davidson, who often dresses like a cool 14-year-old boy, also wore Online Ceramics throughout his 2020 semi-autobiographical stoner dramedy, The King of Staten Island.)

Speaking from Los Angeles, Scheinberg dives deeper into the psyche of contemporary Zoomer fashion, and how the viral phenomenon of baggy “Sandler fits” made it into the movie.

GQ: First and foremost, I’m curious about how this Andy Goldfarb has so many Online Ceramics shirts.

Jordy Scheinberg: I had a lot of fun with [Andy], just because he is the cool guy, he’s the one that all the girls have a crush on. Thinking about even when I was a teenager, the guys like that [were the] skaters. I grew up here in Southern California, and he has that cool vibe. A lot of other movies and TV shows with teens or high schoolers, I feel like the costumes aren’t totally realistic, or it feels like their parents may have dressed them. But with Andy and Online Ceramics, that’s a brand that adult men and people in their 30s wear, and a lot of teens, that’s [also] how they dress. As an adult, sometimes it’s hard to believe that teenagers like the same things as you.

Online Ceramics was a really great brand for Andy, because it’s obviously so loud, so bright, so in your face with the branding, and that’s what teens like. Even thinking back to when I was a teenager [with] Juicy jackets, something that was so branded. Dylan [Hoffman], who played Andy, he’s very cool and totally gets it. It was just really fun piecing together, like, what would this cool, aloof teen wear? It feels kind of skater-y, even though he plays soccer. One of the things that I was most proud of, just details wise and bonding with Dylan: I laid out his outfit in his trailer, and it was a pair of Dickies, pair of Vans, Online Ceramics shirt, and I left a shoelace in his room. I was like, “If he knows what this is for, I know that this is going to be a perfect character.” And of course he used it as a belt, which is what it was for.

Oh, that’s so funny.

A lot of the people on my team were like, “He’s not going to know what to do with that. He already has shoelaces in his shoes.” I was like, “No, he’s going to know.” And of course, he was like, “Yeah, no, that’s what I use [as a belt].” … It is just such a detail of what teens are actually like. In a lot of movies, there’s almost this pressure [to make] every single outfit different, every single day is a different thing. And with [Andy’s] excessive amount of Online Ceramics, that is really what it’s like. Kids don’t really change that much day to day. If they find a thing they like, they’re running with it. I’m of the belief that Andy got his parents’ credit card and was like, “I’m buying 10 shirts.” That’s his vibe.

It almost becomes an in-joke that in every different scene, he’s wearing a different one. Getting dressed in middle school is such a hive-mind thing: I noticed one of Andy’s friends also has an Online Ceramics crewneck, like maybe he saw Andy bought 10 of them and then thought, “Okay, I guess I’ll buy one too.”

By Sean Manning

By Gerald Ortiz

By Lori Keong

Aaron, that character [played by Judd Goodstein], he pretty much wears a sweatshirt every day. When we started having fittings, every time he put on a hoodie, he was like, “I kind of like this one.” And so we were like, “Okay, we’re going to lean into sweatshirts and shorts, because that’s how he dresses in real life.” And we thought it was kind of funny to have the Online Ceramics crewneck sweatshirt, like he borrowed it from Andy. It’s his silhouette, but it’s Andy’s style. Maybe this is their crossover as friends, that that’s where they align.

The cast poses with director Sammi Cohen (center, kneeling), who is wearing an Online Ceramics Dead & Company tour shirt.

And that’s what a lot of middle school boys wear! It’s like, fancy sneakers, basketball shorts, sweatshirt.

Yeah, the sneakers were a big deal too. That was a very serious conversation. In the end, you barely ever see anyone’s feet, but everyone was worried about creasing the shoes. And I was like, “It’s really fine. I don’t care about that, we’re not in reality. These aren’t really your shoes. It’s okay, you can crease them.”

What was your process to really tap into Zoomer style?

When I first got the job, I went over to Adam’s house to meet the girls and Adam and [his wife] Jackie, and I had a two hour long just sit in the backyard with the girls, and I was just like, “What’s cool? What’s not cool?” Zaara [Kuttemperoor, who plays a character named Zaara in the movie] was also on Zoom with us, because Zaara is Sadie’s best friend in real life. So the three of them just listed out all these things: these are the brands that are cool, this is what’s not cool, this is what we wear. Sunny had just had her real bat mitzvah a week before we started prepping, and she showed me photos of what her friends were wearing, and it was just like, every single person in Converse, every single girl in a short dress. It was so funny how everyone had the exact same silhouette, the same style. And then I spent a lot of time on TikTok too, just seeing what people are wearing, teens and 20-somethings.

By Sean Manning

By Gerald Ortiz

By Lori Keong

What were some of the brands they shouted out? Brandy Melville?

Brandy Melville, but also Princess Polly, which is a brand that I hadn’t heard of but they were like, “Everyone gets their party dresses for their bar mitzvahs at Princess Polly.” There’s a lot of Princess Polly in the movie. It’s funny because it’s just such a normal brand that they were like, “This is it. This is what we wear.”

And it’s super cheap and it ships free—I feel like that’s the defining factor of it, right?

Totally. It’s $39 dresses and every single person has the same one. The exact same black dress, the exact same shoes, and no one cares. No one needs to be like, “I’m standing out.” Obviously in the movie, I didn’t want it to be that way, but to a certain extent, I wanted it to feel real.

On the more casual side, Stacy also has an impressive collection of T-shirts in the movie.

Well, that was another thing that Sunny and Sadie talked to me about. They were like, “Band tees are cool.” And I was like, “Oh, what kind of bands do you guys listen to?” And they were like, “Just band tees. It doesn’t matter. It’s not about the band.” And that was such a universal thing across all the kids, because I would ask a lot of them like, “Oh, what kind of music do you listen to? Would you wear merch for this band?” And they’re like, “I guess.”

There was a sweatshirt that I think almost all of the cast owned that’s an Urban Outfitters sweatshirt with the Nirvana smiley. They all own it. We would wrap, all the kids would put on that sweatshirt and pajama pants, and leave set. I asked all of them, “Do you listen to Nirvana?” And all of them would be like, “No.” [Laughs] Not that I need them to, but it doesn’t even matter. The band does not matter. For me, or I think older generations, if I’m wearing this band shirt, I’m showing the world this is part of my personality and what I love. But for teens [nowadays], it’s just, “Oh, it’s a band and a band shirt is cool.”

I think that’s also why Online Ceramics, whether or not these kids knew about Online Ceramics before, they responded to it because they were like, “Oh, it’s graphic. I love graphics. I love band tees.” It’s less about patterns or textures than more about just, “I want a thing printed on what I’m wearing.”

Andy Goldfarb (Dylan Hoffman) in an Online Ceramics tee, with Lydia Rodriguez Katz (Samantha Lorraine).

By Sean Manning

By Gerald Ortiz

By Lori Keong

How much of your own middle school sensibility and style did you have to reckon with?

It was linear in a way, because I felt like I could only be cool if I had Frankie B jeans. It was like, “If I have these jeans, I’m going to be cool. Popular people will notice me, my entire life’s going to change, and I’m going to get a boyfriend.” [There’s a moment in the film when Stacy’s friend] Lydia wears the Tory Burch skirt and Kym, the popular girl, points it out. I had moments like that growing up…projecting what I am to the world in hopes that they’ll receive me a certain way. You can see Stacy going through that when she goes to the movies with her dad, not thinking she’s going to see anyone; she’s wearing pajamas, a big tee. Then there’s the days where she goes to see Andy at the retirement home, and she’s wearing a cute dress and suddenly has all this blush.

Also in that movie theater scene, Adam Sandler’s in a bathrobe.

That was Adam’s choice. A couple of days before, he was like, “What if we added a bathrobe? What if we really, really embarrassed her?” He’s so comfortable that he just wears the bathrobe in public [and] it’s like, you’re already so embarrassed and then of course your dad’s wearing bathrobes to the movies.

Which feels so Sandler, too. I’m curious—was he just wearing his own clothes in the movie?

When we first started, I made a mood board for every character. I had a page for Adam, and I was pulling street style photos of Jason Bateman and Jon Hamm, just kind of regular men. And I presented it and he was like, “No, I want to be colorful, I want to be fun. This is a kid’s movie. I want to be comfortable.” And then I was kind of like, “Why am I trying to make Adam into someone he’s not, when he’s being the dad to his own kids in his movie?” He’s being more or less himself in this movie to viewers.

We know his silhouette, we know what he likes, and he kept saying, “Just go crazy with the color. Just go for it.” It looks like they’re his clothes because it’s just based on how he dresses.

Even watching it I was like, “I know I’ve seen those orange Hokas before.” Did he take any clothes home from the set?

I mean, a lot of them, he was like [in a low voice], “I’m gonna take these.” Which I’m like, “Well, go for it.”

In the film, Adam Sandler plays fictional dad to his real-life daughter, Sunny Sandler.

By Sean Manning

By Gerald Ortiz

By Lori Keong

Did you get a sense of Sandler’s personal style working with him? Like, how much of it is about comfort and how much of it is just a kooky sensibility?

It’s so much of both. And also he was like, “I don’t want to take away from the girls. This is about them. I want them to shine. I’m just being me.” As a viewer, you’re like, “Okay, well, that’s Adam Sandler and that’s how he dresses.” I don’t need it to be like, “Whoa, it’s crazy that Adam Sandler is wearing jeans.” He doesn’t wear jeans. He wears basketball shorts.

It’s funny, because people reference “Sandler Fits” all the time on TikTok. Does he know about that? Were the kids bringing that up?

I don’t know if the kids really were, but I mean, he definitely has to know that it’s his signature style. I had a little fear when we were making the movie that I was like, am I going to regret not maybe pushing him to do something different? And then over the past year, it’s been such an explosion on TikTok, Sandler fits. And I was like, you know what? It actually worked out really well, because now people are going to see him doing exactly what they want. As a culture, we want to see him like that. It’s what we’re used to and it’s what he likes. And as viewers, we’re all like, “There he is. Iconic Sandler fit.”

After you talked to Sandler’s daughters, did you have similar conversations with the boys in the cast about what they thought was cool? Were they as forthcoming about it as the girls were?

Definitely. Everyone was from all over, so [I was] getting so many different reads. Sunny and Sadie, when they were like, “This is what everyone wears,” I was like, “Okay, but this is what everyone wears in LA, in your friend group, in the part of LA you live in.” I mean, [the movie] takes place in New Jersey, but everyone was from different places.

When I met Dylan or Judd, who played Aaron, it was like I could immediately download their entire wardrobe the second [they] walked in. Dylan was wearing long pants and Yeezys and a big sweatshirt, and I was like, “Okay, he already has this strong sense of style, strong sense of trends.” And then Judd, he was sporty: Nikes, shorts, tees, basketball shorts. The conversations that I had with them were not as in-depth as I had with the girls, but it was very clear. Like, “I don’t wear jeans. I wear shorts.”

Sarah Sherman as Rabbi Rebecca.

By Sean Manning

By Gerald Ortiz

By Lori Keong

I remember that. In middle school, boys never wore jeans.

Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. I had Judd try one pair of pants, and he was like, “I would never wear pants. I’ll wear them to the parties, but I’m not wearing pants.” That’s such a thing. My little brother was like that, too. He was like, “I don’t wear pants. I wear shorts every day.”

Did you have any particular favorite looks in the movie?

I had a lot of fun with the popular girls, they were some of my favorite to dress. I really loved the scene with the popular girls at Kym’s house, when they each have pajama sets on while they’re doing face masks. I tried really hard to get as many small female brands in the movie as I could, like Susan Alexandra and Nikki Chasin, Rachel Comey, Collina Strada, and in that scene, they’re all in independent-designer head-to-toe matching sets. And obviously everything with Rabbi Rebecca, she was my favorite person to dress. … The idea with the Grateful Dead yarmulkes came from Sarah [Sherman] directly. We had 100 patches of different bands. We had a bunch of different Grateful Dead ones, and then there was a Ween one, and a Korn. There was a Slayer one, and Misfits.

All the yarmulkes and kippahs, we had a lot of fun with those, getting a lot of them custom made. It was fun because it’s such a little extra form of expression. And even with Andy’s, his was standard issue. You can’t imagine Andy [is] going to care about this. “I’m just putting on the yarmulke.” It’s like, which one of these characters would care to have something special, and who’s just grabbing one from the basket?

This interview has been edited and condensed.